The tech labor market would not exist as it does today without substantial very specific regulations of various parties' behavior; e.g., stopping me from:
1. copying my employer's codebase, or
2. exfiltrating my employer's customer and pricing lists, or
3. holding two jobs at competing companies at the same time, or
4. shorting my employer's stock then actively sabotaging the company.
To say nothing of the even more basic stuff like squatting in my employer's office or even just using force to take what I want from the company or its executives/sharholders, for example.
Labor markets can't exist without lots of strong legal guardrails, and in the case of tech those property rights and contractual obligations are highly fictional and extremely unnatural. Intellectual property, non-competes, non-disclosures, securities regulations on insider trading, laws about industrial espionage and sabotage, the list goes on. All of it highly fictional and unnatural.
Modern markets are, definitionally, just a dynamical process playing out that is governed by an enormous collection of state-backed rules. Nothing like what you might consider a "natural" market, such as early civilized man bartering at the bazaar.
The amount of propaganda/brainwashing required to believe that something like a modern equity or labor market is a naturally occurring phenomenon... oof.
I'm absolutely serious. Try to take the things you know about the free markets, supply and demand, etc. and simulate them in your head. Like, run them in a game loop for a couple steps. It should become apparent that the ideal free market is not even an equilibrium state.
thwayunion|2 years ago
The tech labor market would not exist as it does today without substantial very specific regulations of various parties' behavior; e.g., stopping me from:
1. copying my employer's codebase, or
2. exfiltrating my employer's customer and pricing lists, or
3. holding two jobs at competing companies at the same time, or
4. shorting my employer's stock then actively sabotaging the company.
To say nothing of the even more basic stuff like squatting in my employer's office or even just using force to take what I want from the company or its executives/sharholders, for example.
Labor markets can't exist without lots of strong legal guardrails, and in the case of tech those property rights and contractual obligations are highly fictional and extremely unnatural. Intellectual property, non-competes, non-disclosures, securities regulations on insider trading, laws about industrial espionage and sabotage, the list goes on. All of it highly fictional and unnatural.
Modern markets are, definitionally, just a dynamical process playing out that is governed by an enormous collection of state-backed rules. Nothing like what you might consider a "natural" market, such as early civilized man bartering at the bazaar.
The amount of propaganda/brainwashing required to believe that something like a modern equity or labor market is a naturally occurring phenomenon... oof.
TeMPOraL|2 years ago