If there is a way to kill a vulnerable person, a conservative will find it.
Do your part to combat conservatism. Exclude conservatives from your daily life. There is no place in polite society for such vile, grotesque villains.
Sure, ALL conservatives are grotesque villains who love killing vulnerable people… Some people should hear themselves speak, smh. Username checks out I guess.
And your solution is to shame and dehumanize the entire conservative community into submission/irrelevance? Labelling everyone on your right a villain, nazi, fascist or whatever solves absolutely nothing and kills any attempt at honest discourse.
I’m sorry but hardly anything you said about conservatives in this thread was in good faith. Otherwise, kindly point me to any moderate conservative casually calling themself a villain.
Everything I have said in this thread has been factual. I am not attempting to convince you of anything. I am pointing out the harmful, grotesque nature of conservatism. You disagree. I understand. Thank you for your feedback.
You are now free to return to stormfront or nambla or wherever conservatives like to hang out these days.
There it is, calling me a conservative without any proof. Good job grouping me with all the other “villains”. Nevermind that I’m a life-long leftie who understands nuance.
Aight, it’s getting late here. Good luck with that two party system of yours. Seems to work out great for you! Go extremism!
So you’re saying that you oppose the people removing the water then, right? How about J6? Do you believe it was a coup attempt by Trump and his compatriots, and they should all be held accountable? I have yet to meet a Conservative that does not dance around the subject. Please show me that I’m wrong.
Of course it's not all conservatives, but it's enough conservatives that do (or support, donate to, etc) shit like this that cause people to die, one way or another.
Instead of crying about it why don't you go after your fellow conservatives about the shit they do instead of others for calling it out.
DC is a bit of an oddity, it's not a state, so there's no governor to deploy the guard, plus much of their governance has to be approved by Congress, this is part of the reason that there's a push for DC statehood, residents are getting tired of this mess.
All so the minority party can still play politics and be relevant. Would be an easy win for dems, but they’re allergic to winning or executing policy that means they would continue to win. It’s all a big clownshow failed-state made to look like we’re not just serfs that toil our lives away for the profits of people who would just as soon kill us all as let go of their massive portion of global wealth.
The House passed the DC Administration Act last time the Democrats held it. The problem is the Senate filibuster. The GOP would rather disenfranchise than cede any bit of their power. The situation is eerily similar to those around the Kansas-Nebraska Act 170 years ago.
Don’t you find it odd that there is always some sort of republican scheme or “problem” keeping the democrats from getting anything meaningful done?
At what point are the Republicans political strategy masterminds that can never be beat, even when not in power?
Or
At what point do we realize that corporate democrats don’t actually want to win or play dirty politics to beat the obviously cheating Republicans?
Why is it that only the Republicans can “play dirty” to advance their agenda? Why can’t the democrats, who are supposed to be fighting for the people against the Republicans, ever get anything major done?
You don’t need to think too hard to realize that it comes down to class and that American politics is smoke and mirrors for us and power for the corrupt/elite and lawmaker/lobbyist class. The corporate democrats (the only ones who have had any power in the last 3 decades) haven’t done fuck all for us. They are a pressure escape to keep us from realizing the system is bullshit all the way down and burning it to the ground.
Don’t get me wrong, Republicans are still the biggest cancer in the system. I’m just tired of democrats getting power and then not using it to make the middle class’ life better consistently over time.
The whole system is broken and I’m done hearing about how hard democrat politicians have been trying for the past several decades when things continually get worse and the republican party remains the minority.
They couldn’t deploy until someone gave the order to deploy.
This authority to activate the D.C. National Guard has been delegated, by the President, to the Secretary of Defense and further delegated to the Secretary of the Army. The D.C. National Guard is the only National Guard unit, out of all of the 54 states and territories, which reports only to the President.
Basically Trump and the above listed people didn’t order them to them to be deployed.
As the Jan. 6 riot was unfolding, city leaders were making frantic calls to Army leaders, asking them to send Guard troops to the Capitol where police and security were being overrun. City leaders complained heatedly about delays in the response as the Pentagon considered Bowser’s National Guard request. City police ended up reinforcing the Capitol Police.
Army leaders, in response, said the district was demanding help but not providing the details and information necessary to determine what forces were needed and how they would be used.
So, send in a smallish number of troops and find out if more are needed yourselves. This excuse doesn’t add up to shit in my eyes.
That means that despite the show being a resurgent hit, there were no big secondary payouts.
So, I am an engineer/scientist. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by billions of people. Most likely you, the reader of this comment are using it right now, because some of the products I worked on are telecom products, that are widely used to transfer information.
The amount of secondary payouts I receive is EXACTLY ZERO.
My honest question is, why those writers should be any different? They should be paid when they make their products, according to the contract they signed. But why many think they entitled to something more?
And no, I do not think that argument "but it is difficult work, it is not constant" works here. There are lots of difficult, non-constant, seasonal, whatever jobs there that pay even less.
You get what you demand, and what you bargain for, which is why they are now on strike. You valued your knowledge, experience, and expertise in telcom, in different ways, and less over the long term, than workers in the entertainment industry, who, for the majority of the entertainment industry's existence, have been taken advantage of by the producers of that entertainment. You decided to work for a salary and benefits, and got yours upfront, their industry works a different way as a result of historically predatory entertainment industry practices.
Yep. My team is composed of brilliant engineers who lack common sense, and average engineers who might not have a deep level of mastery who keep them in check. It’s a working system.
I work in machining. The amount of drawing I've received from engineers that could not be machined makes me question the intelligence required to become an engineer.
If all us engineers got paid every time our code was used, the Internet as it exists would be absurdly expensive. Really, it couldn’t exist. Thank god engineers don’t have the same “I need to be paid every time something I created is used by anybody” mentality. You’re building on the work of millions of people before you, you owe it to others to contribute (and make a living in the process).
Of course, the industries are different in important ways. But you should be able to explain the differences, not just wave them away with “ur just jelly lol”
IMHO, copyright and IP law is ridiculously protective. People should get a few years to benefit from their creations, then they should be public domain. This lifetime-plus-70-years bullshit is stupid. Companies are exploiting those stupid laws to milk us on every platform for decades with each media artifact, and artists and writers just want to get a cut of the action. IMHO, it’s the wrong fight, and I can’t really support them in it: “give writers a share of the rent you milk from us” is not a cause I wanna get behind.
No, they shouldn’t be profiting from rent on IP any more than anybody else does. The government should make some major changes to intellectual property law to stop that.
Anyway…do sales & marketing people get paid an unreasonable amount? Are they rolling in cash while writers suffer? Seems to me that most the marketing people I’ve met in my life were just getting along like everybody else. They don’t seem like the right people to be angry at.
You worked in a shitty industry, I’m in the valley and the marketing guys make top bank, I was a Sr principal at one of the biggies and they blow me out of the water.
Sales is often on a different level, commission is incredible.
I was reading a book on this recently and it had a good reason for why some departments get all the money and some don’t. Imagine you have a market that is saturated with products, you decided you can and want to buy, but can’t choose. In that case, sales/marketing is what brings in the most money, so they have the most power and get paid accordingly.
Now imagine the post-war booming economy where every car made gets sold and cars are fairly established as a product. Sales and engineering performance are not that important, but financial departments grew immensely, because the competition was on optimizing, cost-cutting, investment and consolidation.
Last example: new industry, still figuring out the best methods, newest products and killer apps: engineering has the most power.
Given the economy we’re in right now, where money is tight, new products outside the AI hype/boom are going to be companies fighting to sell you their product, so marketing is winning right now, but it may change.
Yes, that same book also talked about how success and pay is only 5% performance and the rest is self promotion and sucking up…that helps put a lot of life in perspective
The estimated total pay for a Writer at Walt Disney Company is $69,619 per year. This number represents the median, which is the midpoint of the ranges
Disney pays higher than average. Writers can get paid a hell of a lot less. And it’s often only a part-time job that lasts only a few weeks or months a year.
So yeah, I’d say the marketing executives get paid an unreasonable amount compared to the writers who actually make a huge contribution to creating the product.
Copyright law is ridiculously protective. You can thank Disney, the corporation, for that. The original law said 30 years. That was enough for the creator to make a career being creative. Micky would look a whole lot different by this point.
I guess it depends right? If a show or movie or other piece of art continues to bring income in, where does that money go? Particularly when the team that created it have effected disbanded and therefore aren’t technically on the same payroll that income is arriving on. I would argue it should not solely go to the owners of that production house.
Residuals makes sense in a way that doesn’t really apply to engineering because typically engineers will remain at a company and their continued employment is how they continue to gain income from their work.
You could maybe say an actual equivalent would be engineers getting shares in their company, which would function the same as residuals. I think that is a more apt comparison.
I think the shares in a company thing is a good comparison, because I went to university at a place that churns out a lot of grads who found or work for startups. It’s a minefield because often the reason early employees get paid in partly in shares is because they couldn’t afford to pay them the “true amount” upfront.
Why shouldn’t we, as engineers, be entitled to a small percentage of the profits that are generated by our code? Why are the shareholders entitled to it instead?
I worked in Hollywood before becoming a programmer, and even as a low level worker, IATSE still got residuals from union shows that went to our healthcare and pension funds. My healthcare was 100% covered by that fund for a top-of-the-line plan, and I got contributions to both a pension AND a 401K that were ON TOP of my base pay rather than deducted from it.
Lastly, we were paid hourly, which means overtime, but also had a weekly minimum. Mine was 50 hours. So if I was asked to work at all during a week I was entitled to 50 hours of pay unless I chose to take days off myself.
Unions fucking rock and software engineers work in a field that is making historic profits off of our labor. We deserve a piece of that.
As the other poster stated, you get what you negotiate for. If you don’t negotiate for those secondary payments then you don’t get them. It’s right to argue when it’s “right or wrong” for those payments but you can argue whether it’s fair.
The corporations take on the risk but when it pays the payout isn’t fairly distributed. It unfairly goes to the top players who didn’t take any risk on because they are seperate from the corporation.
Also just because you don’t get any doesn’t mean nobody else should. You can try and negotiate that with your employer if you want. If you keep that mentality then you’re only bringing everyone else down to your level. We should be elevating each other. That mentality is just jealousy and it will keep you where you are.
Sure, but when the risks the capital takes are so low & long-term as in showbusiness (everything got consolidated af), and the payouts so huge compared to cost (especially excluding like top 5 most payed ppl on the project) … you might think that the negotiations weren’t made fairly on equal grounds.
Otherwise, if there were meaningful risks, the corps would have no problem sharing (=lowering) that risk at least with immediate stakeholders/workers. I bet most writers would take minimal or no pay to get in on the profits (that can last decades). Most writers work on several projects a year so so if business risks would be actually important, lowering them via lower initial costs for shared uncertain future profits would be a win-win scenario.
Ooh boy you’re gonna get the “anyone rich is evil give me free stuff because you have more” mob all animated.
But you’re right. They have a contracted rate to do a job (good or bad, fair or not). It makes for a flashy headline to say “look what the downstream revenue was”.
Instead of making up a scenario in your head and then getting riled up over it, why don’t you read the level headed and educated responses that have been written?
Only 14% of SAG members made enough money this year to get health insurance. Similar is true for the WGA. The low income economy that industry is fueled by only ever worked because of the residual system.
Okay you weren’t picked for any shows the past three months but that’s okay because your residuals cover rent and health insurance.
Not anymore, because the streamers refuse to pay residuals.
You couldn’t make a less informed comment about this affair if you tried, really. There was an existing system, companies took advantage of a loophole in that system to profit more and give execs massive pay days whilst giving the people who did all the work nothing, and now the people who did all the work are refusing to work until they get paid again.
I don’t know what people like you are hoping to achieve here other than demonstrate a profound level of dumbassary.
Like others have said, this is the wrong mentality. Instead of asking “why should they get it when I don’t?”, You should simply be asking “why don’t I get it?”
Turning us against each other is how the ruling elite stay in power. 💪
My honest question is, why those writers should be any different?
So I am also an engineer. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by millions of people. (I’m being a bit cheeky here by copying you, but this is true of me too.)
The compensation packages of engineers are wildly different than that of writers because our jobs are steady.
The compensation structure of writers is designed to carry them between shows when they are not making any money. They also need excess cash to fund retirement savings, insurance, and other benefits because they are unemployed for long and unpredictable stretches.
The residuals system was designed to address this very specific structure of the writing profession. As engineers, we don’t have these wildly unsteady employment schedules, so the residuals system is not warranted in our profession.
Your experience as an engineer/scientist is valid, but you have to understand how wildly different writing is as a career path, and how compensation packages are different out of necessity.
And no, I do not think that argument “but it is difficult work, it is not constant” works here. There are lots of difficult, non-constant, seasonal, whatever jobs there that pay even less.
Sure, industries like retail, tourism, and food service have similar weaknesses, but those industries are unskilled. Writing is highly skilled labor. WGA members are responsible for writing the most valuable media on the planet, American film and television.
The distinction between writing and these other industries can be measured in dollars.
Sure, industries like retail, tourism, and food service have similar weaknesses, but those industries are unskilled.
I understand what you are trying to say, but no they really aren’t. They require a very different skill set than being an engineer or a doctor, but I guarantee that you do not have the skills that I do with knives, playing with fire, and making knives. I know this because an engineer doesn’t have the time to spend 20 years working as a cook/chef, and 2 as an apprentice blacksmith. That being said, I’m useless if you hand me math above pre-calculus. I can remember algebra and pre-calc, but I don’t remember calculus any more.
There’s no job that is “easy.” In all actuality the lower the pay, the harder the job is to do. There are very few exceptions to this rule.
I took hard jobs because I’m a pyromaniac and so I made that work for me. Cooking and blacksmithing are just playing with fire.
Smithing is definitely skilled labor. It’s the classic example of an artisan.
But work in most of the food service industry (front and back) is unskilled. And by “most” I mean things like fast food, cafeterias, diners, chain restaurants etc. In all of these cases, you can hire Joe Shmoe off the street to wait tables.
Fine dining is a special case. Obviously you need significant skill/training to be the chef at a Michelin star restaurant, for example.
And I’m not saying that unskilled labor is easy. It’s not. I spent a decade in food service as an unskilled laborer (mostly fast food and cafeterias). It’s exhausting and difficult. And I’m not saying that unskilled labor is undeserving of a living wage. What I am saying is that the labor pool for unskilled work is much much larger, so it’s near impossible for that kind of worker to demand residuals or equity in the same way as an engineer or screen writer.
Who is getting money from your work? Do they deserve it? More than you?
Having the good fortune to have money earlier shouldn’t entitle someone to more money later. Investors are important, but shouldn’t be allowed to have all of the benefit.
I think you’re missing a detail here, which is that before streaming was a thing writers would make significant amounts of their money by getting a show syndicated on a network, that was the whole deal. Streaming is being treated differently, effectively resulting in then receiving a very large pay cut because even if they make a successful show the payout doesn’t come.
And it’s true they could structure things so that they don’t receive a secondary payout, but their base salary was negotiated with that later payout in mind. You and I don’t receive secondary payouts for our work, but our salary is also adjusted to recognize that.
farmhand fits your description, but they pay less because they don't need skilled workers, anybody with a working body can do it. Can't just drag in a random guy to do your writing, acting, or VFX.
Bcs taking someone’s work & capitalize on it just because the original worker didn’t have the means to do so … some people might see as immoral in a lot of cases.
One of the cornerstones of capitalism tho.
Also note the huge difference scales, bcs it matters a lot: if you sell a peace of tech, or business, or property at fair price (like dcf or whatever), then you already got compensated justly or as close to that as possible with the information available at the time. But if you were forced to sell at an arbitrary fixed rate bcs the buyer forced you into it from their position of power over you (and made a huge profit in a short amount of time from that) … you might feel different about the situation.
Like, even your, if you would be able to get secondly payouts, would you not collect them?
Also, if the negotiations & payout would be fair, the strike would not make financial sense for any party, or have an effect on the business.
So, I am an engineer/scientist. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by billions of people. Most likely you, the reader of this comment are using it right now, because some of the products I worked on are telecom products, that are widely used to transfer information.
You’re an employee, actors are (generally) independent contractors so the comparison breaks down. Most people who don’t understand the situation have been making this comparison.
The closer analogy for you would be if you, as an independent engineer, created a library that Oracle licensed instead of bought. Something they are bundling into their latest database server.
Should you, as a developer, take less per unit because Oracle starts selling through a new channel? Say the Windows app store instead of through their website directly?
I mean, it’s ok if you feel like that’s ok but I don’t think most people would agree with you when they really understand what’s going on.
The unions gave the studios a sweetheart deal in the infancy of streaming so that it wouldn’t smother in the crib. Now that it’s profitable, don’t the artists and writers deserve the same level of compensation for streaming as they get through other channels? Not more, just the same.
I worked on products that many Lemmy users are using to read and post. I don’t expect residuals because that’s not how my industry was built / ever worked.
Writers are in an industry that previously paid them every time their work made money. That’s the difference.
Engineers are absolutely the shittest negotiators. They bring so much fucking value and are happy to get a mug and a pat on the back for inventing something that makes a company millions. Compare that to sales where often the top performer can make close to the CEOs pay.
Do you get stock RSU, Stock options, or other in incentive for general success? For writers residuals are more directly tied to their work. And there’s a bit of a difference in terms of residuals being understood as part of the upfront contract risk/reward.
Residuals are analogous to equity in the tech industry.
You almost certainly received part of your compensation as stock or stock options. You can hold onto your shares and receive dividends long after you have left the company you contributed to.
Residuals are like equity in a movie or film, rather than a company.
A lot of people kwows how to write. Less people know how to use autocad.
As said it looks like you don’t have a clear idea how science and engineering work.
“Someone else’s idea” is the idea of scientists and engineers. They are the people who have the ideas, design products and implement ideas. Products are created by them. There is no suit who come up with ideas, and you cannot replace scientists and engineers with suits. Considering them as easily replaceable is the way companies fail. This is the reason their contracts come with more perks and benefits than other positions. You could compare them to writers, directors and crew members in a movie. What science and tech are missing are actors. The 2 guys you mentioned are more comparable to actors than writers.
That said, scientist and engineers deserve a piece of long term profits of the products they contributed creating, similarly as writers. Unfortunately they don’t have strong unions as writers… But they should
What a weird measure of time for a show. It’s not a song. Why not use something more suitable, like views?
Edit: it’s 50 million hours. If each episode is about an hour long, then that’s about 50 million views. If there are 10 episodes per season, then that’s 5 million viewers per season.
It’s semantics, but the equivalent for a song would be plays. I think the problem with using views or plays for a metric like this is that they don’t account for people that take in the entire piece of media. It considers people that accidentally click an episode and then close it after some seconds, and people who watch an episode from start to finish, to be the same. One of those people are going to see a lot more ads than the other, thus making the company more money. Just my hypothesis tho.
I wasn’t implying they get paid better. The comparison to views vs plays was done to address the “It’s not a song” comment. How did you get that implication from my message?
yes, they sure did, but not enough, because at the time they accepted their last labor agreement, they were being paid when the studios and producers were selling their work on in other distribution avenues covered by that agreement, and now they studios are selling them on in other avenues of distribution which weren't covered by that agreement, and aren't compensating them for it.
It's really not that difficult of a concept. It's all in the employment agreement you work under.
Have you thought about ther needs? What if they need a new yacht or private jet? They only made a hundreds of millions of dollars last year. Only tens of thousands of dollars a day. How are they supposed to live in that salary?
It sure doesn't. It's not difficult, only expensive, and expenses studio executives would rather stay in their own pockets, forever, which is why they're striking.
I can get behind fair wages, but I don’t understand residuals. You were paid to do a job, but you also expect a cut of whatever future revenue it might achieve?
If you don't understand residuals, like owning stocks, which continue to pay out on future worth through dividends, when their values go up, I'd suggest you pick up a book.
I mean why not? If your labour helped create the thing, and it’s still generating value, why not receive a share of the value? Especially when higher up execs who might not have even worked on it at all are making bank from it.
You were paid to do a job, but you also expect a cut of whatever future revenue it might achieve?
If it’s in the contract then yes.
If you’re wondering why it’s in the contract, this is very common in lots of different business types.
Up front, there may not be a desire to make a huge investment. What if isn’t a success? So you tell whoever is making , “hey, we’ll pay you measely dollars now to make it, and pay you percent of money that comes in for it down the road.” This way you can invest a smaller amount up front ensuring the thing gets made, but everyone involved gets a cut based on the future success.
Since the success/amount made isn’t determined in a one-time deal, you pay out the shares of the success over time: aka residuals.
I get why this is something that comes to mind but the idea is changing the way things are done to pay the labour more of the value of the product they produce.
It’s basically just updating their agreement to work with streaming and other new avenues to make it the same way it worked for them on network TV before.
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