Unions being weak in the US is due to anti-union propaganda though, which as you likely know was the point I was making. Very few industries have even a single union let alone competition.
Complaining about the lack of competition when union representation has been decimated, seems like pointless bikeshedding. I'll happily talk about the lack of union representation, but "unions bad because of [trivial complaint]" is a distraction.
> Complaining about the lack of competition when union representation has been decimated, seems like pointless bikeshedding
On the contrary, history shows us clearly that the fact that union membership has declined in the US and the fact that union membership in the US is typically on an exclusive representation basis are deeply linked.
In fact, you can still draw your same argument ("the US Government and industry has spent the last 150 years crushing unions and weakening them") from this fact - it just has little to do with propaganda, as you claimed.
> but "unions bad because of [trivial complaint]" is a distraction.
If you want to have that argument, please find someone who said that and argue with them, instead of responding to my post, which is saying something different altogether.
This is a fine comment except for the end. You unfortunately have a habit of taking swipes at people you're talking to here. Could you please up your game a bit and omit those? Your comments tend to be quite good otherwise, but it's not ok to break the site guidelines like this.
> This is a fine comment except for the end. You unfortunately have a habit of taking swipes at people you're talking to here. Could you please up your game a bit and omit those? Your comments tend to be quite good otherwise, but it's not ok to break the site guidelines like this.
I'll admit that that sentence is a bit dismissive, but it's a deflection in response to a comment which is itself dismissive and aggressive towards me and which is trying to bait an unnecessary argument over an uncharitable reading of my original (innocuous) statement. Hopefully that's evident in context.
I'll be honest: there are usernames I recognize by name. There are users who have made a habit of posting aggressive, dismissive, snarky replies to even my blandest comments, often trying to bait an argument and drawing the conversation towards a specific tangent. There are some users who post comments that are "civil" in tone but express racist or homophobic sentiments towards me. (In some cases, it's plainly obvious that they're trying to continue personal grudges from other threads; they've linked directly to the previous thread or copied sections of text verbatim!) In my view, either one goes against the spirit of the guidelines for this website - fostering productive conversation - as well as the letter.
Yes, it's true that trying to deflect or cut off an argument like this is a defensive response. But it's a defensive response that's been learned over years of participating on this site, and from seeing moderators take no visible action against people "civilly" directing bigoted comments at individuals, while publicly taking issue with the people defending themselves (albeit impolitely) from those exact comments in the same thread. While that might not be the intention, and while there may be reasons for this (e.g. engaging visibly with the people likely to be receptive feedback as opposed to those who won't), it's the pattern that I (and others) have noticed.
I very much appreciate the time and effort that you (and others) put in to running this site, which is exactly why I'm taking the time to write this comment and explain the broader context.
Other people breaking the rules doesn't make it ok to break them yourself. That's the way we end up in a downward spiral, since it always feels like the other person started it and/or did worse.
Funnily enough, my comment upthread originally included the statement that this has been so consistent a problem with your comments that I actually anticipate it when I see your username. I took that out because I didn't want it to seem like I was picking on you personally. But since you mention "there are usernames I recognize by name", maybe it's helpful information. It's much harder to see these patterns in oneself than it is in others, especially the people we most disagree with. The only way to fix that is to take on a higher standard for yourself—not because a higher standard applies to you, but as a compensation for the strong bias to always see the other person as the greater problem. We all have that bias, so we all need to apply that fix. It's a community-level effort.
That said, if there are other accounts repeatedly breaking HN's rules, we'd certainly appreciate hearing about it at hn@ycombinator.com.
It's not true that we take no visible action against people posting bigoted comments. We do that a lot. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We can't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, so we rely on users to help. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
You can help by flagging such comments, so that moderators are more likely to see them. I took a look at the history of comments you've flagged, and in most cases there ended up being visible evidence of moderation. In egregious cases, it's best to email hn@ycombinator.com, because usually that will lead to swifter action.
> Funnily enough, my comment upthread originally included the statement that this has been so consistent a problem in the past that I actually anticipate it when I see your username. I took that out because I didn't want it to seem like I was picking on you personally. But since you mention "there are usernames I recognize by name", maybe it's helpful information.
Yes, I had seen that, which is why I mentioned that in my comment.
> Other people breaking the rules doesn't make it ok to break them yourself. That's the way we end up in a downward spiral, since it always feels like the other person started it and/or did worse.
I understand, and I'm not saying that it makes it okay. I'm explaining that, when people see patterns in which violations of rules get called out publicly and which don't, it sends a message. The reason I'm letting you know because I believe that's not the message that your team intends to send (if it were, I wouldn't be bothering).
> It's not true that we take no visible action against people posting bigoted comments. I've personally done that hundreds if not thousands of times. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.
The last time you and I interacted on here (Jan 2019) was in a thread where you took issue with a snarky comment I wrote, and I responded by pointing out the same thing - that I was responding to a person who was even more aggressive, clearly acting in bad faith, and accusing me of "racism" for explaining why a post was offensive to people of certain ethnic backgrounds (including my own). My comment apparently warranted a public moderator response; the parent that I responded to apparently did not. The other was eventually flagged, but only much later - long after the post had fallen off the front page.
Perhaps moderators don't necessarily read the parent post when responding to a comment, but because most readers assume that mods do, a situation like that makes it look like moderators are condoning one type of behavior over the other.
It doesn't help that, in any system that relies on user flags for reporting behavior, users from minority backgrounds ultimately are flagged at a higher rate, even if they adhere to the rules the same proportion of the time. There's peer-reviewed research that's explained this phenomenon, but most of it boils down to the obvious dynamic: people are less likely to report objectionable behavior if they agree with the content, and people are more likely to disagree with content that openly expresses viewpoints from minority groups.
> You can help by flagging those comments, so that moderators are more likely to see them, and in egregious cases it's helpful to email hn@ycombinator.com.
I have typically avoided flagging these comments because I've (perhaps incorrectly) been under the impression that they're not actioned - in all the years I've been on this site, I don't think I've ever seen moderators publicly calling out this sort of "civil bigotry" that I'm describing.
However, if that's not the case, I'll make note of that and will flag those from now on instead of responding myself.
As I said above I have no interest in diving into these trivial and frankly baseless arguments. Talking about inter-union competition when there are no unions is a huge waste of time and energy. Let's actually have unions first before we worry too much about unions being too powerful.
Using it as an argument against creating a single union seems like a distraction.
Unions in Europe are usually optional and are thriving. Unions in USA are usually forced and are not thriving. Don't you think that USA should learn a bit from Europe about this since they are typically far ahead of USA on worker rights issues?
> Talking about inter-union competition when there are no unions is a huge waste of time and energy.
The same factors which led to the rise of exclusive representation are the ones which led to the drop in union representation across the board.
If you want to ignore that, fine, but don't be surprised or disappointed when you don't end up with the result you seem to want (more union representation).
Complaining about the lack of competition when union representation has been decimated, seems like pointless bikeshedding. I'll happily talk about the lack of union representation, but "unions bad because of [trivial complaint]" is a distraction.