Not every time, or at least the solution doesn't always result in everyone surviving. The Mayan civilization, for instance, is thought to have exhausted their local resources and fallen apart as a result.
It's a story as old as humanity. There's many examples of humans exhausting their nearby resources because they thought they were effectively infinite. Whether that's a forest, a food stock, a water source, or something else.
Most progressive folks I know are pretty disillusioned with the Canadian PM for being a Liberal and not at all a Leftist. His treatment of indigenous people in particular is something they've repeatedly pointed out as glaringly terrible.
Great. Regulation and reduction of plastic production is long overdue.
There are some places where it makes sense to use plastic, but we're far, far overproducing the stuff because it's convenient.
It's fantastically difficult to recycle in practice, burning it produces toxic smoke and carbon emissions, and putting it into the waste stream results in a bunch of it getting dropped on the sides of roadways.
Ok, so say that. Or connect them to "American Values" concretely somehow.
Because right now they are just saying their opponents are "un-American" which means whatever it needs to mean without actually saying anything of substance.
I know. I just... I keep hoping that by pointing out the obvious silliness of the phrase "American Values" that maybe, someone somewhere will read it and be like, "Huh, you know, maybe what I meant to say was, 'My values'...."
Celebrating nationalisation is a political view, and I think the parent poster wanted to use this as an opportunity to extend an olive branch/empathize with others who hold differing views.
Some social assistance programs are probably worth keeping, rather than converting to dollars. Here in the states, for instance, I received regular updates on what to expect as my child developed, what vaccines they should have, what exercise and nutrition needs they have, and when to see a doctor. That info was really useful, much more so than getting mailed a couple bucks.
One thing I tell all my folks and mentees is to understand why they are pushing for promotion.
Engineering promotions are different jobs. You'll be taking on different responsibilities and expectations, and blindly chasing a level bump just because the number of bigger can lead to bad outcomes.
Whether it's pay, prestige, interest in expanded scope, whatever... Make sure you know that motivates your drive for the promo.
Except we are seeing a mass movement in food service today of workers closing up shops for better pay. We're seeing businesses say there's a "labor shortage" (there isn't, they are just unwilling to pay a wage labor wants to work for.)
Something is stewing out there, and I expect to see some road bumps when covid is over.
FAANG companies also underpay their workers. It can simultaneously be the case that they pay their workers best in class wages AND those wages are less than the workers deserve. Apple has immense cash reserves built from the labor of their employees. That is essentially the difference between what value those employees generated for Apple and what they were paid. More of it should go out to the employees, and we should push to make the wages of workers at any company be higher percentage of the value they generate for that company.
It's not unnatural at all, or at least it's not any more unnatural than someone getting to keep a portion of your labor's profit just because they put the most money down when they started the company.
A workers co-op, for instance, splits all the profits between all the employees in an arrangement that is basically "we collectively produced profit X we all get an equal share of that profit."
While "unnatural" is the wrong word, imo, I think it's fair to say that it's "unfamiliar" to most folks and "uncommon" out in the world.
And furthermore, it's how it compares to the profits of the company. If an engineer is returning $500,000k annually in profit to a company from their work, and getting paid $75k of that, they are being exploited. (Or at the very least are undervaluing their labor.)
I've worked in games, I've worked out of games. The workers in games are absolutely being exploited because they think the work environment is unique.
And yes, there's something cool to see people at PAX or elsewhere praising a project you worked on. But saying people are making a tradeoff, or giving up salary to work on games is a defeatist attitude -- big game devs should be paying what big tech companies pay.
You should not have to give up pay to work in games, and it absolutely kills me every time I see an engineer claim that it's somehow noble to do so.
In the indie space, sure, pay is going to be weaker. But there are thousands working for Blizzard, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, CDPR, etc. etc. etc. who are all being grossly underpaid for the value they bring to their company.
> should NOT be treated as an indicator for what "reasonable" pay looks like across the entire industry.
Hard disagree. The comparatively low salaries in other sectors are just that, below what workers should be earning. Things are fuzzier in the indie space, but companies like Blizzard, Activision, EA, Epic, Ubisoft, Rockstar, CDPR, etc. all pay low and absolutely rake in profits.
We should call worker exploitation what it is rather than calling fair compensation at FAANG companies "ridiculous".
It is productive. My local bike shop sells me bike parts I need, just not as conveniently or efficiently as Amazon.
The ruthless pursuit of efficiency as it's own goal is a trap. Squeezing out every societal optimization is a very engineering centric mindset. There are many, many times where the most efficient solution to a problem isn't the "best" one, and we need to collectively get better at recognizing when that's the case.
It's not just aesthetic value. Yes, there is aesthetic value but also there is the value of "People can afford to live and work here." A community that contains some shop owners, some office workers, some landscapers, etc. is a better community in my eyes.