"I don't do non-union work" is a perfectly reasonable position to take.
You can't claim unions lift workers and then rope them in from opportunity with the other hand.
Had he chosen to do nothing that career would never have succeeded. The union did not benefit him his career, his actions did. He had the opportunity to choose SW and did not because the cost of losing union membership was too high. So again, what did the union benefit him? If he was simply choosing to value the union for his own reasons, then you haven't answered the question, you've just shifted the answer to Gary Oldman who is not here to answer for you.
The latter, I agree with the former reforms.
You also aren't getting this sort of top down reform without obtaining more political power than the upper class. That's not going to happen without better organizing (Union, political movements, whatever).
The generalization about utopias is something I've lived through.
Meaning that you're fine with me being required to join a union in order to work? No. I'd rather have the freedom to choose for myself, even if it means I have to give the same freedom to others.
For most of gaming's history it has been a niche product without mainstream appeal. Do you unionize every fledgling industry? No. It hasn't been four decades in the making. The majority of bad sentiment has come in the past five years, exacerbated by a goldrush mentality and kickstarter burns. The goldrush is over, the big projects are paying out massively to employees. Star Citizen has spent hundred of millions on staff and capital and needs to raise more. Epic is pouring cash back into the industry rewarding workers.
There are more people employed in the industry than ever and some see the collective as a route to personal power. I can't agree with that.
Really? So the Atari boom was niche? 500,000 arcade machines sold in 1982 was niche? 30 million Nintendo Entertainment systems in American homes was niche?
It hasn't been a fledgling industry by any reasonable measure for at least 25 years if not much longer.
How many artists, testers and game designers do you know that moved into finance, media jobs, or architectural visualization (very much a niche industry). At least 75% of people working in the video game industry doing skilled and professional work can't easily transfer to a different field in the same way as an electrician cant move in to plumbing.
Games is not in a position of minimizing all risk. What industry is? If you want a safe job get into defense contracting. Go back to university and retrain like everybody else does.
It's baffling to see this attitude on Hackernews, famous for tech entrepreneurs who have more pivots in their career than a pirouetting ice skater.
Are comic books mainstream? They sold millions of copies, they are still a niche interest. Not until the Wii did games open up to a 'casual' market. With phones it's truly everywhere now.
There is a generalized dissatisfaction that the wealth generated by tech is not adequately being reached by its workers. Union advocacy is only a component of it. Tech might pay better than other industries, but its workers are just as affected by costs in housing and healthcare, just as everyone else.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923085
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065
Literally the first 3rd party gaming company was because workers were unsatisfied with Atari.
https://www.gptoday.net/en/news/f1/207607/history-ferrari-an...
Disgruntled employees are the birth of something new, not a call to clamp down.
Who is calling for tech & gaming unionization because of the first 3rd party gaming company? It's not the majority of bad sentiment. It's not even news.
I don't understand your point.
Not new. Not recent.
I would not call taking away a worker’s right to work a benefit for a skilled worker.
Sorry, but I’m going to call the compelled speech option far more dystopian than right to work.
In fact, they play to the already ridiculously anti-union sentiment that the vast majority of Americans (this article is about America, apologies if you are foreign) hold.
Unions can go way too far, and they can do harm, but the overwhelming majority of Americans live so far away from that point that it's not even a fruitful discussion to be having.
I understand working conditions in the US sucks and I hold no bones about fixing them. The union is an infinite tool that will not stop at fixing engineering conditions. It has the ability to own the industry. That is not an outcome I want to see, I'd prefer to give 50% of my salary to whoever wants it than have a union tell me how to run what I do.
For the sole reason of trying to replace Steam as the dominant store platform on PC. Epic isn't just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. This will not continue once Epic achieves their goal of buying their way into being the middleman between developers and gamers.
Were they to compete with Steam properly they would crush Steam's store feature set. The Epic store is still under-developed compared to Steam by a lot. Regardless of their perceived intent the entire point is that the little guy is being rewarded and the system works even if it appears 'evil'.
No we don't, that is called slavery.
"Were they forced to work? Yes and no. What happened if they decided not to work? Weeeeell... if they were rich, nothing. If they were poor, they would have died."
Hasn't that always been true of society, across all government models (or lack thereof)? At best, you don't have the rich that don't need to work... but what are the situations where the vast majority don't need to work (as far back as hunting/gathering).
I was downvoted, why?
You know what whatever. I know better than to ask HN moderation for any sort of transparency or any dedication to actually fostering discussion vs just reinforcing the particularly awful groupthink that dominates this place.
I've posted thousands of comments explaining HN moderation—probably tens of thousands, in fact—so I'll have to differ with you on it lacking "any sort of transparency". What would you like to know?
What are the actual rules? You are the most arbitrary and least transparent mod I've ever dealt with. You wield the word "unsubstantive" as a cudgel. You seemingly only hold the goal of stifling discussion that might be against the accepted HN positions. The result is board that yes, does mostly lack flame wars. It's also bland and processed and almost impossible to contribute to, and I lay the blame on that squarely on you. The very poor downvote system does not help. Restricting downvotes to high karma users just lets a handful of people dominate discussion.
> "wage slavery not being much better" is an empty cliché
7 million+ working poor. Millions more one unexpected expense away from financial ruin. "empty cliche".
Also could explain to me why this
> > We live at the absolute _extreme_ of capital power over labor power.
is fine. This response
> No we don't, that is called slavery.
is fine.
But my post reaches the bar of unsubstantive flamebait.
I can take a crack at replying to your question about those specific comments though. A comment that said only "We live at the absolute _extreme_ of capital power over labor power" would be lame and unsubstantive, but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21983921 went on to say other things that made for a thoughtful comment, though the generic ideological topic (unions-good-or-bad) is a bad one for HN. I don't see why we would moderate a comment like that.
The reply "No we don't, that is called slavery." is lame and pedantic, but I wouldn't call it flamebait. That is the contrarian dynamic which can't resist pointing out a logical flaw in something somebody said. HN has this all over the place, as does everywhere else ("someone is wrong on the internet"...) They are low-quality comments but they don't typically start flamewars unless there is some other baity element in there.
You, on the other hand, have been posting obviously flamebaity and ideological battle comments as well as fuming about "groupthink" and "wrongthink" and downvoting and how awful everything here is. You might find HN less "impossible to contribute to" if you took its intended spirit to heart. You could start with trying for thoughtful conversation and assuming good faith, as well as the rest of what https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ask.
and instead of reflecting on that for a minute you will continue on in exactly the same manner.
I was able to contribute to this site for years without issue before you came along. I find the moderation here now arbitrary, heavy handed, and pretty extremely biased.
> You, on the other hand, have been posting obviously flamebaity and ideological battle comments as well as fuming about "groupthink" and "wrongthink" and downvoting and how awful everything here is
Having and expressing any sort of ideology is against the rules. Great thanks.
Higher karma users have the ability to downvote. They use that to enforce their ideology. Anything that goes against the grain too much immediately gets downvoted and flagged. You personally described the my comment on wage slavery being bad as an "empty cliche". That's not condescending low effort flamebait?
You are so entrenched in your own ideology you can't even tell how deep you've gone. Just completely impossible to reason with.
When people go on about how badly they were treated on HN, but omit any verifiable details, I call such comments linkless martyrs [1]. Without links, readers have no way to make up their minds for themselves [2]. The past pattern has been that such claims are greatly exaggerated, leave out critical details, or are made up. Sob stories and tales of injustice are easy to produce, but looking at what actually happened reveals otherwise.
Perhaps your case is the exception? If so, you can easily prove it with links that show how you were posting like this "for years without issue before you came along". pg was 10x quicker to ban accounts than we are, so my bet is that what you're saying is false.
1. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
2. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
> I call such comments linkless martyrs
You take pride in coining cute little phrases like that?
> If so, you can easily prove it with links that show how you were posting like this "for years without issue before you came along".
I really have no interest in playing your games at this point. I explained myself, you dismissed everything I said and seem to have zero interest in an honest conversation. Instead you'd rather pick a line and jerk yourself off about what a way with words you have.
> "wage slavery not being much better" is an empty cliché
Still haven't explained how that isn't unsubstantive flamebait. Smug jerk.
Exactly what I expected.
Well of course they were. High karma users get to decide what is allowed on HN.
It's a pretty bad system.
The downvoting system on this site is a really broken by design sort of feature. It's entirely just a manner to ensure the groupthink stays on track.
The #1 problem in most cities is too many people are making too much money and it’s driving housing prices through the roof.
The demand for skilled labor is astronomical. I would not call that absolute extreme power of capital over labor.
Grind the years and that will lead to sucesss. No innovation or additional learning needed. Just wait.
https://youtu.be/LRVwlif6th0?t=171
Niko has to cut costs to make low budget films and the union mandates someone watch the camera feed for the director, completely unnecessarily in the modern era. The film industry is notorious for the boundaries around union and non-union work. Gary Oldman's decline of a role in Star Wars used union rules as an answer:
>Oldman's spokesman is reported to have told the newspaper: "Gary was excited and looking forward to working on the film. The snag is that the movie is being made without members of the Screen Actors Guild. It means Gary would have been working illegally overseas. Out of respect and solidarity with the other members, he could not and would not consider violating the rules of his union."
Unions bring many complications and seeing them as a universal good is a problematic perspective.