Glad to learn from your post that the labor market has recently become perfectly competitive and efficient.

philipallstar 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Glad to learn from your post that the labor market has recently become perfectly competitive and efficient.

Underpaid just isn't a useful term. If it's their best option for a job in the whole world then their employer is the best it could possibly be. Describing that situation as "underpaid" is just manipulative.

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crazygringo 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, it's competitive and efficient enough?

It doesn't need to be perfect for it to be good enough. People change jobs all the time. Yes, it involves some time, effort, and tradeoffs. But the worse your current job is, the higher the benefits of switching are.

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CPLX 3 days ago | parent [-]

Google is an illegal monopoly, that’s the post trial judgement of multiple courts. It has used its monopoly powers to extract vast wealth from various sectors of the economy, and it has also been sanctioned for illegally manipulating labor markets.

So there’s just no reason at all to hand wave any transactions they are involved in as the result of simple supply and demand.

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crazygringo 3 days ago | parent [-]

Google has been found to exert various monopoly behavior in certain markets like ads search. It's not a monopoly overall, like in cloud computing or office applications. And it's very much not a monopoly in hiring for these types of lower-level jobs. Not to mention these are all seemingly through contractors anyways, of which there are many, and they provide these types of services for multiple companies.

So I honestly don't know what you're talking about.

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CPLX 3 days ago | parent [-]

I am talking about the widespread fiction that markets are efficient and rational, despite overwhelming evidence that they are in fact rigged in favor of participants with market power.

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crazygringo 3 days ago | parent [-]

Google doesn't have market power in the market of this particular set of jobs.

Many companies are competing for people with these skills, including for the exact same type of work, and there's zero evidence of any kind of collusion going on.

You're going to have to be specific about what rigging you think is happening. This isn't anything like when Apple, Google, Adobe, etc. were colluding not to poach each other's engineers in 2005-2009 [1].

Job markets like aren't perfect-perfect, but they're mostly decently efficient and rational, as far as supply and demand and pricing goes, with just everyday normal friction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

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CPLX 2 days ago | parent [-]

My argument is the burden of proof goes the other way at this point.

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crazygringo 2 days ago | parent [-]

Good luck trying to convince anyone, then. That's an extreme ideological position, not a reasonable evidence-based one.

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CPLX 2 days ago | parent [-]

The ideological approach is to hand wave and cite market fundamentalism when confronted with a real world allegation.

The evidence based approach is to look at the credibility and history of the accused party.

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crazygringo 2 days ago | parent [-]

Emphatically no. The evidence-based approach is to look at current evidence, and you've provided zero.

Past credibility/history is irrelevant. Just because someone went to jail 20 years ago for a theft in a town, we don't throw them back in jail every time there's a new theft, and then demand they prove they are innocent. But that's what you seem to be asking for. However, that is wrong and unjust.

	▲	CPLX a day ago \| parent [-]
		What makes you think there isn’t any evidence? What do you think “evidence” actually is? The article contains numerous first person accounts with quotes from named people talking about working conditions they experienced, complaining that they are overworked and underpaid. The post I am responding to is by someone who has no direct experience whatsoever citing a broad ideological concept as evidence that it isn’t happening because, in general, they believe the situation being described is impossible.