Within Swedish politics there is essentially complete agreement that the union model of labour negotiation should remain. Companies like Tesla are certainly an issue, but comparatively easier to deal with. The larger threat to the union model actually comes from undeclared labour which is a huge, systemic problem.

It ends up being significantly cheaper for the employer (no taxes, benefits, regulation) and can (in the short term) be beneficial for the employee (higher wage, still cashing in unemployment benefits etc.) even if it is disruptive for the collective long term.

In some businesses such as salons for hair dressers or mani-pedi, as many as 40% of labour is undeclared. Restaurants, construction and transportation are also high up.

Oh for sure, there are lots of companies pushing the gig-economy self employment model.

Strictly speaking, gig workers aren’t employed, but rather a contractor who is self-employed. This means that a lot of labour legislation doesn’t really apply (which would include minimum wages).

It is in the pipeline of legislation however, and I know that some unions have started targeting gig employers with collective bargaining. Foodora for instance is covered by collective agreement since 2021.

ironically the majority of those are government employees and police

It’s not ironic in the slightest. It’s for government employees that the conflict of interest between what’s best for the government (often low costs of labour) and employees (generous benefits and wages) becomes impossible to ignore.

Similar incentive structures do exist on a national economic level. For instance lower wages often provide a more competitive industrial basis internationally, even if that is not neccessarily beneficial for the individual employee.

Not much that I know of aside from a bunch of extra bureaucracy. Unions already perform polls on wages amongst members, and that information is generally available to the union members. Furthermore, there’s often even information available about wages within an employer organization if it is large.

The main problem I see with legislated minimum wages is that it becomes a legitimate target for employers in a “take it or leave it” fashion.

Partly, but there is more to collective bargaining than that.

a) Indexed inflation levels tend to be underreported (exactly due to things like this)

b) it does not allow for over-time adjustment of real wage levels. As productivity increases, the real wage usually goes up. During periods of economic crisis you often see the largest wage increases in absolute terms, but a decrease in the real wage due to inflation. These negotiations are the toughest.

Nope.

I’ve been disappointed by oat milk every time I tried it. To me it just tastes bad. At this point I’d rather take the coffee black.

Soy milk tastes differently from milk, but is passable at least.

Compared to the massive increase of meat consumption in the population-dense developing world & other major influences on price such as improvements in the efficiency of meat production, the impact of the veg-movement is nigh negligible.

The price impact is rather on the side of restaurants & grocery chains in their logistics, now requiring a more diverse offering to be able to serve both the traditional clientele and veg-customers. Spreading the same demand over a larger range of products leads to a lower per-item throughput. Hence slightly lower efficiency, more waste & more overhead, which leads to marginally increased food prices overall in western countries.

Was just thinking that, awesome little game!

I do think we agree on the practical implication for jobs - just that laws don’t align with that where I’m at. (If you can’t/refuse to do the job, you shouldn’t be working it)

That’s odd, because one could just say “I can’t change the job description without changing the role I am hiring, and I only need that role.”

It’s central to the problem. Individuals from religious groups sue employers (often successfully) citing that not hiring them or firing them for refusing to fulfill the job description would be discrimination. (This is not unique to any one group btw)

you’d prefer to force people to not adhere to their religion

No. What I’m saying is that they should be solely responsible for the consequences of their faith. Other people should not be forced to give them special treatment due to their religion.

I think you’re referring to Muslim practice as delusional

I wasn’t. I was creating a hypothetical of somebody non-religous (or at least not an adherent to a major religion) placing greater or equal value on not shaving as a religious person might. The point being that major religions are given preferential treatment as compared to other beliefs and preferences.

So to be clear, yeah, a faith to the Muslim god which forbids shaving is respectable and not delusional.

There are certainly different ways for religious folks to be faithful. However, in the modern day, literal adherence to many modern religions essentially amount to centering your life around a myth. At best, it is a sign of being misguided and ignorant with regard to scientific fact (which is incompatible with those myths) and at worst it amounts to a delusion (yes, I will use that word). Willfully rejecting overwhelming evidence.

Somebody can be respectable in spite of that, but in my book, it is a clear negative.

Yeah, obviously.

What’s so obvious about it? The initial example here is facetious and absurd, but what’s to say that I don’t take my “beard honour” just as seriously as someone else does their religion?

Because I’ve certainly met people who take their religion very lightly, yet absolutely will use it as an excuse for special treatment at every opportunity.

A less absurd example might be somebody with the delusion (a.k.a strongly held personal belief) that their value as a man depends entirely on their beard, that they might as well kill themselves if they were unable to have one. Or someone with a facial scar tied to incredible emotional trauma that they use their beard to cover up.

The simple fact is that special treatment of religious adherents is discriminatory, not against them, but against everyone else. The root of the problem is that laws that were intended to prevent special maltreatment of religious adherents have instead become leveraged as a basis to grant privileges. When they don’t get the job after refusing to follow hygiene protocol, shake hands with certain demographic groups or perform job duties, they sue their employer for discrimination. They demand the job, and demand that the job description be changed to fit their personal preferences.

I agree, it should be as simple as “can you do the job or not”. If being clean shaven is part of the job description (which I certainly could find good reasons for, such as gas masks or hygiene) and you refuse to be clean shaven, then you’re out.

The most at hand explanation I think would be biological differences between the genders. Male puberty is, on average, delayed by approximately 18 months in comparison. Girls/women are earlier in development and mature earlier, boys/men later.

Puberty was pretty much the defining factor back in the day for adulthood vs childhood.

Those “special privileges” aren’t a “privilege,” but a duty to one’s faith.

If I were to say I had a “duty” to my own atheist sense of beard honor or whatever, that’d fly out the window. Religion is a preference, a choice. The duty is only to the persons own sense of pride and morality.

We have similar problems with nurses of certain religions in my country, refusing to do their job (for instance related to abortion) and endangering patients citing religion.

Thankfully the regulations have been upheld and these people have been told “If you refuse to do your job, you’re fired.” in these cases, but there is a religious lobby rapidly growing in influence in my country, and have already secured exceptions from stuff like hygiene rules in healthcare.

A “beard exception” matters little in truth, but allow one such exception and suddenly they’re everywhere (I’d argue let people have their beards ffs!). However, this kind of pandering is insane, dangerous and my patience for it is very limited. Religion is their choice, but that is no excuse to impose their will on the rest of society.

Either everybody should be able to have beards, or nobody. Believing in a fairytale should not be tied to special privileges.

Oof, single parenthood is rough. Best wishes and give the 'lil rascals some extra head pats.

I mean most of my friends who have their own places live in 1 room studio apartments unless they’re living with somebody.

Historic sci-fi is certainly interesting!

I do not.

FOSS is the natural conclusion of public code having a negligible cost to supply once it has been produced. Ideally it takes IP out of the equation and allocates compensation towards development rather than rent extraction.

FOSS is a question of centralization & authority vs decentralization & freedom.

An interesting hypothesis I read about focused on the era of the universe when everything was lukewarm. Literally an entire universe in the “sweet spot” for the building blocks of life to form and propagate.

The idea is that the molecules would form, and then once the universe cooled further would freeze and be spread literally everywhere in similar asteroids. The rare part would be a location sufficiently stable in the goldilocks zone to evolve advanced life, not life itself.