The reason we're all here is because the government currently is dictating those rates in representation of the utility companies needs and not the citizens. How this is essentially socialized is beyond me; yet, I do concede that the same rules applied differently would much more likely meet that standard.
We already have an independent systems operator (ISO) to match the amount of load on the grid with the amount of generator current supplying it. I think this model could be expanded to where the state could literally own the transmission lines and equipment and use various regional contractors which would be engaged to maintain it in coordination with the ISO.
Then we have stable infrastructure where generation _and_ maintenance are open markets which may allow customer rates to no longer be controlled by a utilities commission and instead be directly computed from the actual suppliers costs plus taxes. It may even allow for more regional electric companies to form to provide better service to peculiar areas of the state.
The logical conclusion of the scenario being floated here is that if enough workers resist their own exploitation, the "job creators" will take their capital and go... somewhere. And then there will be no jobs.
(Obviously I'm being facetious. There will, of course, be jobs. And also, a lot of capital owners sitting on the sidelines, debt payments incoming with no income stream.)
The workers aren't drones, they have the agency to choose another job. If a company is underpaying workers relative to the rest of the market, they'll struggle to hire and retain employees without the interference of a union.
> The workers aren't drones, they have the agency to choose another job. If a company is underpaying workers relative to the rest of the market, they'll struggle to hire and retain employees without the interference of a union.
The problem is that all employers have certain common interests, and they are generally more organized and powerful than individual workers, which biases the market status-quo in their favor. The market doesn't fix that.
What's keeping any one of these Id software developers from accepting a competing job offer elsewhere?
Yes, there are scenarios where employees are stripped of agency. E.g
a factory owner taking and holding foreign worker's passports. But if you're going to allege that something is preventing these works from accepting competing offers, you have to offer evidence for that claim.
> Benefits are part of an employees compensation package. A competing offer could have even better healthcare than Id.
If a period of unemployment kicks you off an insurance program that's covering life-essential treatment for a loved one, there is no mechanism of "choosing freely" here; ex-employees don't have the option of covering health care themselves and there are no guarantees that the other employer's health care will cover existing treatments even if the coverage is better in theory.
> This is illegal and the last time SV companies were found doing this the government punished them
Every recruiter has spreadsheets of blacklisted employees, one of the reasons why companies frequently outsource staffing to outsides for plausible deniability.
> Illegal in CA where ID is based. NDAs don't prevent you from working at competitors, only from taking confidential info.
So illegal en CA but legal pretty much everywhere else, once again limiting you if you want to move because COL is too high in California and reducing the pool of real employment alternatives.
> Id is located in the Bay Area, probably the place with the greatest concentration of software jobs in the country if not the world.
Software jobs but not gaming jobs. California suffers from an artificial shortage of affordable housing due to insane tax laws and building restrictions. There's nothing free market about this.
Id employees can apply for jobs while remaining employed at Id. You're writing as though Id employees must first quit their jobs before seeking a new one. And even if they do have a period of unemployment between jobs, COBRA continues to cover them for up to a year.
> Every recruiter has spreadsheets of blacklisted employees
If you're going to allege illegal anti-poaching agreements, you ought to provide evidence of those claims.
> So illegal en CA but legal pretty much everywhere else, once again limiting you if you want to move because COL is too high in California and reducing the pool of real employment alternatives.
Actually, I just checked this and in 2024 the FTC banned non competes nationwide.
> Software jobs but not gaming jobs. California suffers from an artificial shortage of affordable housing due to insane tax laws and building restrictions. There's nothing free market about this.
And? Id software developers are free to work non-gaming software jobs. A big part of the reason why game dev jobs offer less renumeration is because people are passionate about games and are willing to take a pay cut to work in the industry.
If an Id employee is not willing to work non-gaming software development jobs that's a restriction imposed by their own decisions, not by their employers.
People in this thread are comparing Id software developers to slavery. The fact that they'll have to go on COBRA in between jobs doesn't make this comparison to slavery any less absurd.
> If you're going to allege illegal anti-poaching agreements, you ought to provide evidence of those claims.
Yes because companies are famous for being highly law-abiding under every circumstance and every major instance of corporate fraud has been identified and properly punished at a criminal basis.
C'mon man, the US is a country where wage theft is 3 times higher than all other formst of theft combined. Informal blacklists are as simple as keeping a notebook in writing and letting people know through hidden WhatsApp channels.
> Actually, I just checked this and in 2024 the FTC banned non competes nationwide.
The rule is vacated by an injunction.
> And? Id software developers are free to work non-gaming software jobs. A big part of the reason why game dev jobs offer less renumeration is because people are passionate about games and are willing to take a pay cut to work in the industry.
I have no idea why you think that a job being desirable and in high demand means that the people who effectively perform the job are somehow less deserving of workers' rights. The entire point behind having workers' rights is that basic job affordances and rights a non-negotiable because we do not allow certain forms undignified work.
So you're asking to prove a negative with respect to blacklisting?
Some factories have been caught physically locking employees in the building and not letting them leave. Can I say with certainty that this isn't happening at Id? No, but it's still not valid to baselessly assert that it is happening at Id Technologies because other instances of this behavior have been documented.
The fact that desirable jobs like game dev means employers don't have to compete as hard to attract talent. That's not infringing on game developers' rights. Game developers have the ability to work in jobs other than game dev. If they choose not to pursue those opportunities that's a choice they're making on their own initiative, not an infringement on their rights.
Workers rights like safe working environments, minimum wage, and other laws still apply to game devs.
Do you have evidence that Id is being subject to some sort of no poach deal?
Nobody doubts that employers can curb worker's ability to accept competing offers. The question is whether there's actually any evidence backing up the claim that Id employees aren't free to leave.
Doesn't need it to justify unionizing. Unionizing is a right, and it was previously not exercised because there was no evidence of the will of the market to defraud or conspire against workers. It is now written plain for all to see that indeed, these types of arrangements are kept in board members back pockets. It is not their job to protect a companies interest in renumeration execs and shareholders. It is their job to get their share in spite of the management class's proven track records of the proclivity to engage in shenanigans and lies.
The fact you can't understand solidarity is your problem, not theirs.
And I'm telling you that what you're asking for doesn't mean a lick. Someone already pissed in the pool. Once you know it's been done, you can't uncrack that egg.
Plan on capabilities. Not "what you feel like they might draw the lines". Odds are, your feelings are in error, and they are capable of much worse. And if they're actually decent people, to everyone, all is good. If all they want is to juice the most out of the most gullible/naive, that's what the union is for.
Again, is there any evidence that Id Technologies has engaged in the illegal practices that have been mentioned in this thread? People have been confidently asserting this, but but when asked to substantiate this the best they can do is point to example of other companies engaging in such practices.
If you support the unionization effort for other reasons, that's fine, but let's be clear: the allegations that Id is engaging in no-poaching agreements or some other illegal activities remain totally baseless. There is no reason to think that there's something preventing Id employees from accepting competing job offers from other companies, despite the insistence to contrary in this thread.
You're asking me to prove a negative. Bosses at other companies have been caught locking employees in factories and physically preventing them from leaving.
Can I say for certain that this didn't happen at Id? No, but anyone making that claim ought to actually provide evidence that it happened at Id, not simple point to some other company that engaged in this behavior.
You are correct. Unions do not exist to exploit employers, they exist precisely to make working conditions acceptable (livable) and no more, most of the time. There are outliers, like Police unions, which have ulterior motives, but on the whole it is a labor movement meant to prevent the abhorrent conditions to which capitalism naturally backslides, which we saw after the industrial revolution.
There are a lot of defacto cartels where all of the corporations determine a ceiling on wages they won't go over.
There was a big case with Apple and other Silicon Valley corporations were found to have colluded to not hire employees working for any of the other companies.
> There was a big case with Apple and other Silicon Valley corporations were found to have colluded to not hire employees working for any of the other companies.
And there's some factories in Asia that confiscate foreign worker's passports.
Nobody is claiming that workers' ability to move jobs is never compromised by employees. The question is, is there any evidence to back up that Id employees are in this situation as commenters are claiming in this thread?
And it sure looks like the answer is "no", given that the best people can come up with is point to a decades old no-poaching agreement and speculate that something like that might be happening at Id.
"In July 2025, a class action lawsuit was filed against Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric and other U.S. nuclear plant operators, alleging that they conspired to suppress and coordinate worker pay for thousands of employees dating back to 2003. This lawsuit claims the companies acted together to keep wages low, which plaintiffs allege violates antitrust law"
"In a landmark verdict on April 14, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division notched its first-ever jury trial conviction for criminal wage-fixing under the Sherman Act in United States v. Eduardo Lopez in the District of Nevada. A home health care staffing executive, Eduardo (“Eddie”) Lopez, was found guilty of (1) conspiring with several competing home healthcare staffing agencies to fix the wages of home health nurses in the Las Vegas area, and..."
https://www.crowell.com/en/insights/client-alerts/doj-secure...
Is there any evidence that wage fixing is happening at Id?
Again, bosses kidnapping employees and holding them by force is extensively documented. But posting a bunch of stories to that effect doesn't matter for the topic at hand unless one of those is happening at Id.
This collusion affected 8 companies, and stopped over a decade and a half ago. Is there any evidence that Id employees are being subject to this kind of no poach agreement?
Because people replied to my statement that Id employees are free to accept competing jobs elsewhere claiming that that employees at Id don't have that ability. It sure looks like this claim is baseless.
This isn't a court of law. This is real life, bucko. You don't operate for your own protection on the good faith you think the rest of the world has for you, you plan on capabilities. What you call baseless, is you screaming into world that "you can't prove it, therefore it isn't". Wrong. We have eyes. We have seen the nature of the people we share the world with, and it tells us, that these bastards will happily collude if they think they won't get caught. They got caught doing it before when they had the benefit of good faith. It is 100% valid that the labor force integrate the learning with regards to capital's tendency to duplicity into their operating loop. I will no longer engage with attempts to convince the uninitiated to close their eyes and "just trust bro". Well over a decade being that guy and getting used.
If you're a junior, or someone trying to get into the field. I can't tell you the right path. But I can tell you, the people with the purse strings care only about that purse, and parting with as little of it's contents as possible, and getting as much out of you in the process of doing it. I can tell you I made the decision over 10 years ago to go the non-organized route. It worked. For a while. But at great personal cost medically, and likewise when I inevitably had to make the choice between becoming the better cog for the market, or being there for the people who matter most to me.
Don't delude yourselves. Organize. The people hiring you do. You must as well. Organize enough, and we as a society may finally recalibrate enough to achieve a new equilibrium that doesn't involve mulching each other for the sake of Mammon and Moloch.
To be clear, that claim of 4,000 comes from a member of Hezbollah:
> According to the Lebanese government, the attack killed 42 people,[11] including 12 civilians,[12] and injured 4,000 civilians (according to Mustafa Bairam, Minister of Labour and a member of Hezbollah).
The wikipedia page's other reference claiming that the majority of those injured were civilians is also vague. For instance, it writes, "On 26 September, Abdallah Bou Habib, Lebanon's Foreign Minister, confirmed that most of those carrying pagers were not fighters, but civilians like administrators"
> It was an attack mostly on Hezbollah, but a lot of civilians got hurt in the process, because not everybody is sitting there fighting on the front. These are people who have pagers or have telephones. They are regular people. Some of them are also fighters, but not most of them. A lot of them are administrators working here and there. . . .
This is a very different claim that what the article reads. "Administrators" and "not fighters" is a very different thing than "civilian". A woman working in my building also works in the Army's HR department during the day. She's literally a member of the military, but it's also not wrong to say she is "not a fighter" and an "administrator".
In short, the idea that we have credible evidence that the 4,000 people who were injured (and more, importantly, those that were actually maimed rather than receiving light injuries) were mostly civilians doesn't seem to pan out.
That's not really a good description of terrorism. Terrorism is going after non-military targets, or at least indiscriminate targeting, for the express purpose of causing terror.
If an enemy tank platoon is rolling down the street, the operator of an antitank missile certainly knows that blowing up the lead tank and killing the crew in front of their compatriots is going to instill terror in the rest of the tank platoon. Taking that action anyway is correctly described as an act that intentionally instills terror, but that's not an act of terrorism. War, regardless of if it's waged lawfully, is often terrifying.
The way to successfully argue that Israel's pager attack was an act of terror is to show indiscriminate targeting - not merely highlight how terrifying it is to have a bunch of high level officers killed at once. However, investing a lot in the latest information gathering technology sound like the opposite of indiscriminate targeting.
I obviously can't speak for how the public writ large would react to our hypothetical. But I can at least speak for myself that if Hezbollah somehow, say, flew a bunch of drones onto IDF bases and killed officers, then that would be an act of war but not an act of terrorism no matter how terrified it might make Israelis feel.
It very much is. Free VPNs almost always have some sort of catch. E.g. HolaVPN users agree in the ToS to become an exit node for other VPN users: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hola_(VPN)
If social media is so compelling, then teens almost certainly will take whatever steps are necessary to access it.
I'm still not following. Ads for a pickup truck are probably more likely to feature towing a boat than ads for a hatchback even if they're both capable of towing boats. Because buyers of the former are more likely to use the vehicle for that purpose.
If a disproportionate share of users are using image generation for generating attractive women, why is it out of place to put commensurate focus on that use case in demos and other promotional material?
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