https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583 is the main discussion now. That's a better article than this one from the point of view of the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because pure advocacy posts aren't as supportive of intellectually curious conversation. They're much more likely to start off on a polarized footing and degenerate from there. Also, they don't contain much information. In that way they fall in a category of related things like online petitions, event announcements, etc., that we tend to moderate as off topic for HN.

Certainly there have been plenty of stories on HN that are critical of Google, and they're not off topic, as long as they meet the site guidelines by being intellectually interesting. Note that word 'intellectually' though, because there are plenty of other kinds of interesting, which are fine, but not what this site is for.

Whatever happened with that anti-poaching agreement the big SV companies had? Because it seems to me the pay and conditions would be a lot better in a truly free market.

The time to assert your rights is when you have leverage, if you wait until you need those rights because you have no leverage it’s too late.

Germany seems to have strong unions and a strong auto industry, but the German economy as a whole has suffered decades of wage stagnation. One outperforming industry alone doesn't negate the broader correlation between restrictive labor laws, and degraded economic performance.

Also, Germany has many advantages in manufacturing that are independent of its labor laws, like a strong work ethic and tradition of engineering, good trade schools, etc. So an argument can be made that it has a strong tendency to be a manufacturing power that is capable of counter-acting the harmful effects of bad policies.

One possible indication that unionization has had a harmful impact on German economic development is if you look at Germany's past compared to its present you see that it developed more rapidly relative to its contemporaries before embracing the social-democratic/unionized-workforce model.

Is the optimal social order defined near ancient Euphrates or in the industrial revolution era UK?

Imagine trusting the "Market" to make wise decisions.

The market just means other people, free to act without compulsion.

It works because information is transmitted through local decisions, as the changes local decisions make to supply/demand impact the prices that are communicated to the economy at large.

The resulting price system is a result of more economic calculations than any central economic planner could perform, which is why more market-based economies outperform more centrally-planned ones, as the empirical evidence shows.

Anyway, libertarians as a group are the most educated:

https://www.people-press.org/typology/quiz/?pass&src=typolog...

The above shows they do also have the highest incomes, which would support your "they're trying to protect their privilege" theory.

And libertarians are the most rational:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Libertarian views are more consistent with those of economists:

https://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html

And the majority of libertarians arguments are both based on first principles and appeal to people who like this type of argument.

There was a recent post showing the version control history of HN article tiles. That's one step in the right direction.

If something appears to be just a minor amendment to an event that's already been represented on HN, it gets penalised. Dang has a comment about it somewhere.

I've already seen posts on here about both Google firing organizers and hiring the union busting firm. It doesn't appear novel and deserves the penalty.

There are loads of things that affect weighting and ranking here. Not that I mind, I largely support the way this community is run, pretty hard thing to keep the site down te as valuable and as interesting as it is.

I just heard the news about the firing and allegation google hired a firm with expertise to bust unions.

If you’ve ever worked an entry-level job at any firm with high turnover (retail, food service) you will know first hand managers excel who can manufacture write-ups, which become the basis for just-cause firing.

It’s a thing!

I mean... I hope this is not a new revelation to anyone.