The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#581

Post by hector » Fri Sep 23, 2022 6:17 pm

Philbert wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 6:03 pm
hector wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 1:25 pm
That was a good article.
If I were homeless in Phoenix I'd make it a goal to get together enough money for the 5 hour bus ride to be homeless by the beach in Southern CA instead.
Batter weather. Has to be better public benefits.
Yes, but, if all the homeless people you know are in Phoenix, including the neighbor who keeps an eye on your stuff when you are out doing whatever else you do, the hassle of rebuilding your social network would outweigh the benefits in the short to medium term. Not to mention, if you were homeless and had the means and overall executive function to facilitate accumulating the money for a bus ticket and planning an interstate move you might decide to un-homeless yourself instead.
For sure.
And I might have a drug habit that prevented me from ever having more than $100 at a time.
And, I might just want to be homeless.
A guy named Shellenberger in CA wrote about this. Some homeless people had apartments paid for by the state. They didn't use them much. They preferred living in the tent cities.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#582

Post by mgil » Sat Sep 24, 2022 4:53 am

Giving the homeless people a home and thinking the problem is solved is some kindergarten level problem solving in most cases. Usually these people are at a deficit of rationality due to whatever issues they are struggling with.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#583

Post by hector » Sat Sep 24, 2022 5:52 am

mgil wrote: Sat Sep 24, 2022 4:53 am Giving the homeless people a home and thinking the problem is solved is some kindergarten level problem solving in most cases. Usually these people are at a deficit of rationality due to whatever issues they are struggling with.
That's maybe the demand side issue. Then there are inefficiencies in the supply side issue as well.

https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-sp ... ss-person/

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#584

Post by aurelius » Sat Sep 24, 2022 10:20 am

mgil wrote: Sat Sep 24, 2022 4:53 amGiving the homeless people a home and thinking the problem is solved is some kindergarten level problem solving in most cases. Usually these people are at a deficit of rationality due to whatever issues they are struggling with.
Agreed.

Ending the criminalization of drug use would do more to help with homelessness than probably any other option. But we have too many people in our society that want to punish people for being different than them for that to be a viable option.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#585

Post by JonA » Sat Sep 24, 2022 10:38 am

hsilman wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 8:24 am
a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)
So continuing down the path of sarcasm but with a little bit of thought experiment....

"From each according to his ability,to each according to his need"

I think a lot of the recent democratic socialism folks focus on the latter part a lot. I don't have any issues with that per se but isn't the first half of that equation also important? If people are capable of making the afore mentioned pizza at a very low labor cost shouldn't they be obligated to do that for society, in exchange for having their needs provided for?

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#586

Post by EggMcMuffin » Sat Sep 24, 2022 11:16 am

hsilman wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 8:24 am
SnakePlissken wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 4:25 am I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.
a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)
A fella with a funny mustache back in the 20th century had that idea, and I get the feeling it will become pretty popular (again) given the way the average person in California talks about the homeless.

I try to remember that the only reasonable, logical solutions to social problems are to just beat the shit out of or murder everyone who doesn't get with the program.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#587

Post by OrderInChaos » Sat Sep 24, 2022 3:02 pm

SnakePlissken wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 4:25 am https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wa ... ductivity/
"Dean makes an important point. Whether or not you should argue it should be $26, it is a very strong point illustrating what has been happening with our economy," said Ken Jacobs, the chair of the University of California, Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. Since the 1970s, "We have seen that complete divorce between wages and productivity and massively increased inequality with most gains going to people at the top."

A $26 an hour minimum wage might strike some as unrealistic, with Baker noting that his analysis is more of a "thought experiment" than a practical proposition. For one, more than tripling the federal baseline wage would result in a host of undesirable economic effects, from a spike in unemployment (as employers would need to cut jobs in order to pay the workers they could afford to keep on) to higher inflation.

"The problem is that we have made many changes to the economy that shifted huge amounts of income upward, so that we cannot support a pay structure that gives workers at the bottom $52,000 a year," Baker wrote.
I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.
Can’t comment about minimum wages and such, but can attest that there are copious middle management peeps who rake in healthy annual salaries for far less tangible achievement and with far lower levels of required precision than your typical register/POS operating dude in a restaurant or retail box store.

Government DOD, government not DOD, private banking, traditional corporate, start uppy tech modern shit…

Privates First Class and hourly workers are often held more accountable than many arbitrarily better paid management personnel until you get within striking distance of c suite. Shits savage. Need to find ways to get hustling badasses from permanent underclass employment into middle to senior positions. I almost sound like a populist drain the swamped… but in corporate that process actually does need to happen in probably 85% of major companies.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#588

Post by SnakePlissken » Sun Sep 25, 2022 4:12 am

OrderInChaos wrote: Sat Sep 24, 2022 3:02 pm
SnakePlissken wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 4:25 am https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wa ... ductivity/
"Dean makes an important point. Whether or not you should argue it should be $26, it is a very strong point illustrating what has been happening with our economy," said Ken Jacobs, the chair of the University of California, Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. Since the 1970s, "We have seen that complete divorce between wages and productivity and massively increased inequality with most gains going to people at the top."

A $26 an hour minimum wage might strike some as unrealistic, with Baker noting that his analysis is more of a "thought experiment" than a practical proposition. For one, more than tripling the federal baseline wage would result in a host of undesirable economic effects, from a spike in unemployment (as employers would need to cut jobs in order to pay the workers they could afford to keep on) to higher inflation.

"The problem is that we have made many changes to the economy that shifted huge amounts of income upward, so that we cannot support a pay structure that gives workers at the bottom $52,000 a year," Baker wrote.
I'm not a supporter of raising the minimum wage to crazy levels after having worked with people that are completely useless to society at my Pizza Hut job, but it's a good point to make that with more advancements in Tech come greater overall wealth (or industrial capital if you exclude finance capital), but that a lot of it has been hoarded by companies, their top paid managers, and shareholders at the cost of the people that work for those companies.
Can’t comment about minimum wages and such, but can attest that there are copious middle management peeps who rake in healthy annual salaries for far less tangible achievement and with far lower levels of required precision than your typical register/POS operating dude in a restaurant or retail box store.

Government DOD, government not DOD, private banking, traditional corporate, start uppy tech modern shit…

Privates First Class and hourly workers are often held more accountable than many arbitrarily better paid management personnel until you get within striking distance of c suite. Shits savage. Need to find ways to get hustling badasses from permanent underclass employment into middle to senior positions. I almost sound like a populist drain the swamped… but in corporate that process actually does need to happen in probably 85% of major companies.
This is all true too as well. You may have heard of Price's Law which estimates that the sqrt(n) employees do 50% of the work for a company. So at my job there are 35 people meaning roughly 6 of them do half the work; I can think of those 6 people right off the top of my head too. Management has always been the graveyard at some places for when an employee isn't terrible enough to get fired, but not good enough at their job that the company wants to keep them in their role. That's been my experience for my jobs in engineering, but working in construction and at pizza hut, managers were like slave drivers in a lot of cases.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#589

Post by mgil » Sun Sep 25, 2022 5:52 am

I looked up Price’s Law. It has little to do with productivity and is more about academic publications.

I’d agree a Pareto Law often is found in many businesses/organizations. This is where 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. In a large organization (say 5,000 people), I’d find this to be a bit more accurate.

DoD/USG inefficiencies typically lie in the requirements of the bureaucracy at hand. There’s also been a trend in RDTE management over the decades towards the manager tracking basic HR and administrative stuff (because HR is wildly incompetent in many organizations of sufficient size and complexity) and away from technical understanding of their employees work. This then makes management look more incompetent and also waters down the field of applicants because capable people do not want to take a job that makes them look incompetent.

It’s interesting having to work with “high grades” that are either program management or line supervisors and actually see how poorly those roles have evolved. A lot has to do with the thinning of ancillary staff (HR, administration pools, payroll, etc.) as organizations have “leaned” out those staff and thrown those tasks at program managers and/or supervisors. In an engineering organization, you’ve now got an engineer dealing with bookkeeping, travel orders, HR training, etc. such that the organization puts front line management in the situation of being an exemplar of the Peter Principle on day one. And if they are halfway competent and/or successful in a year or so, they leave the role. No wonder why the remaining lower/middle management in these large organizations is a group of drones.

Not a defense of bad/lazy management, rather observations as the “non-manager/supervisor high grade”.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#590

Post by Allentown » Mon Sep 26, 2022 3:14 am

I spent most of last week doing emergency reporting and exchanging dozens of emails to top-10 level executives concerning a change that impacts .0004% of our business. Not sure if they had nothing better to do last week but it was their #1 priority at 6AM last Wednesday.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#591

Post by SnakePlissken » Mon Sep 26, 2022 5:07 am

mgil wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 5:52 am I looked up Price’s Law. It has little to do with productivity and is more about academic publications.

I’d agree a Pareto Law often is found in many businesses/organizations. This is where 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. In a large organization (say 5,000 people), I’d find this to be a bit more accurate.

DoD/USG inefficiencies typically lie in the requirements of the bureaucracy at hand. There’s also been a trend in RDTE management over the decades towards the manager tracking basic HR and administrative stuff (because HR is wildly incompetent in many organizations of sufficient size and complexity) and away from technical understanding of their employees work. This then makes management look more incompetent and also waters down the field of applicants because capable people do not want to take a job that makes them look incompetent.

It’s interesting having to work with “high grades” that are either program management or line supervisors and actually see how poorly those roles have evolved. A lot has to do with the thinning of ancillary staff (HR, administration pools, payroll, etc.) as organizations have “leaned” out those staff and thrown those tasks at program managers and/or supervisors. In an engineering organization, you’ve now got an engineer dealing with bookkeeping, travel orders, HR training, etc. such that the organization puts front line management in the situation of being an exemplar of the Peter Principle on day one. And if they are halfway competent and/or successful in a year or so, they leave the role. No wonder why the remaining lower/middle management in these large organizations is a group of drones.

Not a defense of bad/lazy management, rather observations as the “non-manager/supervisor high grade”.
My calc teacher back in college first told me about the 80/20 rule with corporations. I think Price's law though could still be applied to corporate settings. It explains why small startups with just a few dozen people are a lot harder to hide in than some large corporation where there are a lot of roles and everyone wonders if they even do anything. I wouldn't call it a "law" though for corporations; maybe call it a rule of thumb or a curvilinear answer to the 80/20 rule in that case.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#592

Post by OrderInChaos » Mon Sep 26, 2022 7:45 am

Allentown wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 3:14 am I spent most of last week doing emergency reporting and exchanging dozens of emails to top-10 level executives concerning a change that impacts .0004% of our business. Not sure if they had nothing better to do last week but it was their #1 priority at 6AM last Wednesday.
The best is when this happens on Monday after a drill weekend (so hungover, dehydrated, sunburnt, largely incoherent until coffee #5 at 10am, disagreeability at its peak) and the whim and whimsy gods pin your department hahaha

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#593

Post by Philbert » Mon Sep 26, 2022 8:19 pm

JonA wrote: Sat Sep 24, 2022 10:38 am
hsilman wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 8:24 am
a) so why don't you just kill them if you don't think they deserve enough money to live?(sarcastic, but also a little bit of a thought experiment I guess?)
So continuing down the path of sarcasm but with a little bit of thought experiment....

"From each according to his ability,to each according to his need"

I think a lot of the recent democratic socialism folks focus on the latter part a lot. I don't have any issues with that per se but isn't the first half of that equation also important? If people are capable of making the afore mentioned pizza at a very low labor cost shouldn't they be obligated to do that for society, in exchange for having their needs provided for?
Slavery remains constitutional in the United States as punishment after conviction for a crime, but I have no confidence in the ability of modern governments to keep any application of slavery from becoming worse than the worst abuses of pre-civil war Mississippi. As far as I can see, once "solving homelessness" is defined as a society level obligation, there are only bad options left, "final solutions" you might call them. I think it is better to try to decrease and de-miserate (new antonym for immiserate) the situation, which is where ideas like drug decriminalization might come in.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#594

Post by aurelius » Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:01 pm

Philbert wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 8:19 pm Slavery remains constitutional in the United States as punishment after conviction for a crime, but I have no confidence in the ability of modern governments to keep any application of slavery from becoming worse than the worst abuses of pre-civil war Mississippi.
I don't think this is correct. My stepfather was county commissioner and the County had to end a successful work program at the jail because the prisoners were not paid. I believe community service can be required because it is a choice. People accept community service in a plea deal to avoid jail. But if in jail, one cannot be made to work for free. Maybe it is just a Federal law that can be changed?

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#595

Post by mikeylikey » Tue Sep 27, 2022 9:33 am

mgil wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 5:52 am I looked up Price’s Law. It has little to do with productivity and is more about academic publications.

I’d agree a Pareto Law often is found in many businesses/organizations. This is where 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. In a large organization (say 5,000 people), I’d find this to be a bit more accurate.

DoD/USG inefficiencies typically lie in the requirements of the bureaucracy at hand. There’s also been a trend in RDTE management over the decades towards the manager tracking basic HR and administrative stuff (because HR is wildly incompetent in many organizations of sufficient size and complexity) and away from technical understanding of their employees work. This then makes management look more incompetent and also waters down the field of applicants because capable people do not want to take a job that makes them look incompetent.

It’s interesting having to work with “high grades” that are either program management or line supervisors and actually see how poorly those roles have evolved. A lot has to do with the thinning of ancillary staff (HR, administration pools, payroll, etc.) as organizations have “leaned” out those staff and thrown those tasks at program managers and/or supervisors. In an engineering organization, you’ve now got an engineer dealing with bookkeeping, travel orders, HR training, etc. such that the organization puts front line management in the situation of being an exemplar of the Peter Principle on day one. And if they are halfway competent and/or successful in a year or so, they leave the role. No wonder why the remaining lower/middle management in these large organizations is a group of drones.

Not a defense of bad/lazy management, rather observations as the “non-manager/supervisor high grade”.

Color me a little skeptical.

These are the same corporations that figure out how to put exactly 1 less Cheeto in a bag or shave a few mils off of a metal part to save money, but are blowing 80% (probably 90% since the implication is the dead weight is in higher compensated middle management types) of payroll cost on essentially nothing, and can't figure out how to do anything about it?

Menards is selling veneered PINE boards for things like door jambs and baseboards. As in, particle board covered in a thin pine veneer. Not cocobolo, not walnut, not oak. Pine. It is cheaper to manufacture an engineered product and cover it with a PINE veneer than it is to sell a solid piece of PINE, the cheapest wood there is. But, you're telling me that 4 out of 5 workers adds nothing to the company and these corporations are just standing around with their fingers in their noses wondering what to do about it?

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#596

Post by mgil » Tue Sep 27, 2022 9:46 am

4/5 contribute to 20%. Likely a necessary 20%.

It’s just a power law. Consider the law I’m arguing against, that’s far more severe in assigning productivity.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#597

Post by mikeylikey » Tue Sep 27, 2022 10:19 am

mgil wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 9:46 am 4/5 contribute to 20%. Likely a necessary 20%.

It’s just a power law. Consider the law I’m arguing against, that’s far more severe in assigning productivity.
Meh. I dunno. I think a lot of what are perceiving is a function of the difference in specialization between small and large companies.

A small company is 5 guys making widgets in a garage.

That company gets successful, it may have 20 people making widgets on a $10m CNC line. By now they have 10 sales people, 2 HR, 3 purchasing and accounts payable, 3 shift managers, a CFO, a COO, and a president. But your line worker actually making the product still has a pretty good understanding of what the other people do, and vice versa.

That company gets to be fortune 500 size and now there are 2,000 people in manufacturing and 5,000 people doing the sales, marketing, social media optimization, union relations, legal, payroll, HR, R&D, travel, investor relations, government relations, packaging and distribution, etc etc etc etc. Much of not all of this really is necessary, and in fact the big company probably makes a better product at 1/3 the price than the startup did. But at this point the people in various areas of the business probably cannot meaningfully relate to what the others even do.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#598

Post by OrderInChaos » Tue Sep 27, 2022 11:17 am

mikeylikey wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 9:33 am
mgil wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 5:52 am I looked up Price’s Law. It has little to do with productivity and is more about academic publications.

I’d agree a Pareto Law often is found in many businesses/organizations. This is where 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. In a large organization (say 5,000 people), I’d find this to be a bit more accurate.

DoD/USG inefficiencies typically lie in the requirements of the bureaucracy at hand. There’s also been a trend in RDTE management over the decades towards the manager tracking basic HR and administrative stuff (because HR is wildly incompetent in many organizations of sufficient size and complexity) and away from technical understanding of their employees work. This then makes management look more incompetent and also waters down the field of applicants because capable people do not want to take a job that makes them look incompetent.

It’s interesting having to work with “high grades” that are either program management or line supervisors and actually see how poorly those roles have evolved. A lot has to do with the thinning of ancillary staff (HR, administration pools, payroll, etc.) as organizations have “leaned” out those staff and thrown those tasks at program managers and/or supervisors. In an engineering organization, you’ve now got an engineer dealing with bookkeeping, travel orders, HR training, etc. such that the organization puts front line management in the situation of being an exemplar of the Peter Principle on day one. And if they are halfway competent and/or successful in a year or so, they leave the role. No wonder why the remaining lower/middle management in these large organizations is a group of drones.

Not a defense of bad/lazy management, rather observations as the “non-manager/supervisor high grade”.

Color me a little skeptical.

These are the same corporations that figure out how to put exactly 1 less Cheeto in a bag or shave a few mils off of a metal part to save money, but are blowing 80% (probably 90% since the implication is the dead weight is in higher compensated middle management types) of payroll cost on essentially nothing, and can't figure out how to do anything about it?

Menards is selling veneered PINE boards for things like door jambs and baseboards. As in, particle board covered in a thin pine veneer. Not cocobolo, not walnut, not oak. Pine. It is cheaper to manufacture an engineered product and cover it with a PINE veneer than it is to sell a solid piece of PINE, the cheapest wood there is. But, you're telling me that 4 out of 5 workers adds nothing to the company and these corporations are just standing around with their fingers in their noses wondering what to do about it?
You’re missing one point; low hanging fruit versus entrenched issues.

It’s a lot easier to identify those externalizations of cost than to weed out systemic problems. The great competence you’re claiming doesn’t necessarily apply to everything internal.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#599

Post by aurelius » Tue Sep 27, 2022 3:48 pm

mikeylikey wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 9:33 amColor me a little skeptical.

These are the same corporations that figure out how to put exactly 1 less Cheeto in a bag or shave a few mils off of a metal part to save money, but are blowing 80% (probably 90% since the implication is the dead weight is in higher compensated middle management types) of payroll cost on essentially nothing, and can't figure out how to do anything about it?

Menards is selling veneered PINE boards for things like door jambs and baseboards. As in, particle board covered in a thin pine veneer. Not cocobolo, not walnut, not oak. Pine. It is cheaper to manufacture an engineered product and cover it with a PINE veneer than it is to sell a solid piece of PINE, the cheapest wood there is. But, you're telling me that 4 out of 5 workers adds nothing to the company and these corporations are just standing around with their fingers in their noses wondering what to do about it?
I think what we are seeing is people that do the production work undervalue 'soft' skills and non-production work. I used to as well. Until I really understood a business has to fundamentally do 3 things:

1) Get work (marketing and sales)
2) Do the work (production, research and development)
3) Get paid for the work (legal and accounting)

1) is the most important. 3) is the second most important (basically 1b). 2) is the least important as it can be contracted out. In fact, many companies fully contract out production. There are numerous examples of this in multiple industries.

As companies get larger they hire more people to perform tasks 1) and 3). 2) has other more efficient solutions than hiring more people (automation, contracting out, and so forth). Large organizations develop bureaucracies to handle the personnel issues that arise. This is basically inevitable. And yes, HR is useless unless you really need CYA for a problem employee. Then they can play a vital role.

If people truly believe these Fortune 500 companies have 80-90% of their staff that are effectively useless, then it should be easy to out compete them in the marketplace. I'm just not buying it.

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Re: The epic tales of Corn Pop’s young companion (POTUS46 complaint department)

#600

Post by Philbert » Tue Sep 27, 2022 8:19 pm

aurelius wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:01 pm
Philbert wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 8:19 pm Slavery remains constitutional in the United States as punishment after conviction for a crime, but I have no confidence in the ability of modern governments to keep any application of slavery from becoming worse than the worst abuses of pre-civil war Mississippi.
I don't think this is correct. My stepfather was county commissioner and the County had to end a successful work program at the jail because the prisoners were not paid. I believe community service can be required because it is a choice. People accept community service in a plea deal to avoid jail. But if in jail, one cannot be made to work for free. Maybe it is just a Federal law that can be changed?
The thirteenth amendment specifically excludes slavery as punishment for a crime from the prohibition of slavery. As you suggested, there likely are Federal or state laws prohibiting the practice.

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