The behavior is not acceptable. This is a cartel to "fix" the wages of workers - esp. when these tech companies claim their workers are the most important resource.
Now, I am not surprised the book price fixing Apple did with the publishers.
But both Apple and Google get a pass - think if it is done by Oracle or MSFT, well we would be talking about Evil Empire and Death-star
First, Apple and Google haven't been getting "a pass" they've been called out as the primary perpetrators every single time this story has come up. Which has been many times, for several months now.
Second, you don't need your hypothetical: Oracle and MSFT were both involved. And, if anything, they're getting "a pass" because their involvement has always been a secondary data point under the headlines about Apple and Google.
In any case, if the board or geeks in general had any special reserve of outrage for those two companies, that should have surfaced by now, right?
What do you mean "get a pass"? This story has been on and off HN's front page for months and the companies involved, including Apple and Google, have received nothing but strong criticism every time.
> all this outrage over the attitudes of the executives seems overblown to me
I'm no "occupy wall street" fan, but I think taking millions of dollars from the pockets of a lot of workers is very much something to be outraged about.
He's specifically talking about outrage over the attitudes, as in how the execs handled this one incident. His entire point is that the attitudes displayed in this e-mail chain are unrelated to the larger wage-fixing scheme.
Of all the discussion forums on the internet, I'd expect HN to be one where it's possible to discuss things rationally and discuss individual aspects of an issue separate from the whole in a reasonable manner, without being called out for failing to express the proper quantity of outrage at every step. Of course, this is completely naive of me as it ends up being proven wrong over and over.
I get where you are coming from and appreciate the desire to keep things rational. But sometimes there is a time and place to get angry about things that are wrong. Everyone has their own issues, and I can see that this particular one wouldn't get everyone fired up, but it certainly flips my bits: they summarily fired and "made a public example" of a person for not following an illegal policy.
I can understand getting upset about this. I personally see it as a sort of "double dipping" on outrage in this case, but that's just a difference of opinion.
My main point here is simply that not getting outraged at the attitudes displayed here is far from giving these companies a pass on what they've done.
I agree with Mike here. Bear in mind that we're talking about the attitude of the execs, not the substantive issue at hand. Imagine if the issue at hand had been a Google employee deliberately breaking Google Maps for iPhone (back in the day when Google and Apple got on fine). Would anyone be surprised / outraged by Google firing the employee, and Steve Jobs forwarding the email informing him to Scott Forestall with a smiley face? I would think not.
Now, just to be extra clear, I agree with most people on HN that the substantive issue of non-poaching agreements is not acceptable. I expect all companies that were involved to be justifiably raked over the coals for it. But Steve Jobs responding with a smiley when he receives confirmation that the agreed-upon policy has been enforced? Total non-issue.
Even the attitude irks me. You need to fire someone, you fire them, you don't "make a public example" of them as a sign of obeisance to the head of a competing company. I want to know my boss has got my back, rather than thinking they're willing to throw me under the bus without so much as asking me about it if they get a harshly worded email from someone else.
Just for your information, I've been on three separate management courses which say the contrary - when you're trying to set a cultural norm in your company, making a public example of infringers is practically considered the textbook response. The example given usually concerns sexual harassment. You make the punishment of the harasser public as a way of reinforcing that you're serious about the issue.
That said, most management courses will also tell you to privilege process over people - if something goes wrong it's because the process failed, not the person, and as such most of the time a public correction of someone making a mistake is not appropriate, unless it is felt that the person acted knowingly and deliberately against the rules... So unless the recruiter in question had already been corrected on this error, not only should they not have been fired, but they should not even have been reprimanded in public.
I've been on three separate management courses which say the contrary - when you're trying to set a cultural norm in your company, making a public example of infringers is practically considered the textbook response.
Then the textbook is wrong and should be thrown out. These are people we're talking about, real, actual, flesh-and-blood people... with feelings, family, friends, lives, hopes, dreams, etc. Not fucking "resources" or some fungible asset that can be treated as nothing more than a cell in a spreadsheet, and certainly not something that is a valid target for public shaming.
Seems like the opposite. Apple and Google are being called out for their behavior on a regular basis in the tech press, while the other companies named in the suit (Adobe, Intuit, etc.) are barely mentioned.
The other companies don't get the online press their well deserved pageranks and clicks in news aggregators that Apple and Google do when used in headlines.
Agreements between companies to not recruit each others' workers are not actually immoral.
There are many immoral laws, and whatever law is being thrown at them in this case is one such.
I also think it was immoral to stop MSFT from selling their product as they saw fit---with Windows and IE bundled. So you can't accuse me of being partial to one set of companies over another.
You cannot have efficient free markets without rules, because of the presence of externalities and monopolies. That's Econ 101. Beyond that, I'd argue you can't have markets at all without rules. Markets do not generally develop in situations where killing your counter-party and taking his stuff is allowed.
You cannot have free markets period; a free market is an simple economic ideal that is unachievable in the real world, something like a "frictionless surface" or a "perfectly thermoconducting sphere".
What the best approximation you can acheive to a free market is depends on exactly what the features of the concrete set of products you are concerned with is, what features of the free market you prioritize approximating, and what technology (both technical and social) is available in the environment you are working in.
An efficient free market maximizes production. Markets in which companies can externalize costs or engage in monopoly behavior produce less than markets in which these behaviors are prevented.
"Free market" is not synonymous with "anything goes." It's a specific economic (rather than ideological) concept. Most economists believe that certain rules and restrictions are necessary to have any functioning market at all.
The usual economic definition of efficiency would be maximizing utility experienced by market participants, not maximizing production.
Currency-denominated "product" measurements are a common proxy measure for utility, but that's a compromise to the inability to measure utility directly.
> In a free market, everything is allowed, no? There is no arbiter to enforce any rules.
That's not really how you keep a market free. A free market requires regulation. Without it, you get a market dominated by monopolies and cartels, rather than open competition.
According to most supporters of the free market, at least among libertarian types, a free market will prevent monopolies and cartels from forming without regulation
I don't know how much I agree with that, but your opinion certainly isn't universal.
Yeah, but there's little evidence to support that. Corporations will form cartels and monopolies if they get the chance. Unless they consider enabling corporations also a form of regulation (which is kinda true). I do agree that we'd have a more free market without corporations.
Of course, with sufficient lack of regulation, it also becomes possible to just shoot people who monopolize stuff.
Libertarians are not a single group of people - and most libertarians agree that government is necessary to ensure the Law is respected - only a fraction of libertarians actually think no government is necessary at all. What most libertarians agree on is that Big Government is a Bad thing, not that it should be completely removed.
That's a straw man so obvious, it almost self-labels as a strawman. "When libertarians say they want a free market, they aren't actually saying they want a free market..." Come on, if you have to stoop that far, when you're deliberately and openly rewriting the terms that somebody else is using, why not just admit you don't actually have an argument?
What rewriting? "Night-watchman state" and "necessary axioms for the Efficient Market Hypothesis to hold" are completely different things. The libertarians are making an argument from (broadly, there are several branches of libertarianism, after all) Nozickian ethics and conflating it with mainstream economics.
No. Not at all. I really wish people understood what "free market" means. Just like "free software" is used by people to mean open source, free as in libre not gratis, "free market" does not mean anarchy.
A free market is one which is free from government price intervention - subsidies, price floors, price ceilings but also free of monopolies and cartels. In practice, a government may need to step in to break up a monopoly or stop an anti-competitive cartel to maintain a free market.
That is false. A free market is properly defined as a market where the use of force is barred by the government.
So when the government itself initiates force in the market, it is not a free market.
There is no such thing as a monopoly without the use of force. You can temporarily have companies that have a very large share of their respective markets, but monopoly is not properly defined as "a very large company."
A cartel is just an opportunity for other people to make money by undercutting the cartel. For instance, if the cartel is maintaining artificially low wages, the competitor can take advantage by paying "normal" wages and getting the best employees. Hence, a cartel is not stable. (Unless it has government force backing it---as all modern successful cartels do.)
This bizarre fixation with the "use of force" as a critical dividing line is to my mind incomprehensible. "A free market is free except for the arbitrary restrictions I think are fundamental."
I've been thinking about this 'wage suppression cartel' as being the same basic idea as labor unions, only with the monopoly being on the side of business rather than labor.
But in a free market, contractual agreements would be upheld and enforced by an agreed upon arbiter.
Yup - it's the same basic idea as labor unions, but with participants taken from the group that controls 40% of the economy assets instead of those that have a near-minimum wage. That surely makes a difference in the amount of power that they can exert?
The basic idea of leveraging what you have a monopoly over is the same. But it is a good question you bring up of whether a group that controls 50% of economic assets in a particular industry is more powerful than a group that controls 50% of labor in the same industry.
A group where money is concentrated in a few hands, vs a group with thousands of members that controls a labor force that can be easily replaced by robots or outsourced? There is no color to that struggle, it's finished before it started.
collusion is absolutely consistent with free markets. Companies make deals ALL the time. Getting lower rates for supplies, fencing off markets, agreeing to not litigate, etc.
Looking at it another way...these companies are trying to keep their costs down (labor being #1). This in turn allows them to charge lower prices for their products while maintaining a profit margin that keeps investors happy. They are serving their consumers. We should be thanking them for being prudent and not engaging in labor bidding wars that would push their costs skyward. This is capitalism 101.
Companies make deals, but making deals across an industry to fix prices inputs undermines the market. If everyone that used bananas colluded to set artificially low prices, that might result in cheaper banana products, but would result in a deadweight loss. I.e. the loss sustained by the banana producers would outweigh the savings to the consumer.
This wasnt across an industry...this was between two companies...apple and google.
Even still your analogy is still wrong...you are talking about banana consumers (which inherently will always go for the cheapest banana products that satisfy their needs) vs. a business who is trying to keep their costs down to remain competitive.
There is an saying that everything in business should be viewed from the eyes of the consumer. If the consumer is getting the same product for cheaper and the business model is still viable (aka the business can sustain that price) then it's a net win.
Again in your example, banana producers will lower their prices until they cannot be viable and thus they will stop supplying bananas. You cannot collude enough to keep failing business models in business.
> you are talking about banana consumers (which inherently will always go for the cheapest banana products that satisfy their needs) vs. a business who is trying to keep their costs down to remain competitive.
I'm talking about companies that buy bananas, not consumers. The supply chain looks like Farmers -> Dole/Chiquita -> You. If Dole and Chiquita colluded to keep the cost of bananas from farmers low, that is collusion that creates economic inefficiency.
> There is an saying that everything in business should be viewed from the eyes of the consumer. If the consumer is getting the same product for cheaper and the business model is still viable (aka the business can sustain that price) then it's a net win.
This "saying" is blathering that has no basis in economics.
Now, I am not surprised the book price fixing Apple did with the publishers.
But both Apple and Google get a pass - think if it is done by Oracle or MSFT, well we would be talking about Evil Empire and Death-star