[consulting] Unionizing Drupal

[Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg]

Sorry, that should have read "rather insightful" #spellcheckFAIL
--
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
Partner | Business Lead
Zivtech, LLC
http://zivtech.com
alex at zivtech.com
office: (267) 940-7737
cell: (215) 866-8956


On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 12:34 AM, Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
<Alex at zivtech.com>wrote:

> Jeff-
>
> While I think your actual e-mail is rather incitement, the quote you used
> is pretty silly. Socialism is a 'failed experiment'? Not only is European
> Socialism alive and (relatively) well, but the software we're 'consulting'
> in was created while Dries enjoyed the fruits of the socialist experiment
> (the evil Socialist threats known as free education and health care). By any
> rational comparison, American workers are much worse off than their European
> counterparts, and yes, that includes artisans.
>
> To give one example of how I think--as a business owner--small businesses
> are far worse off as a result of a lack of 'socialism' is healthcare. We
> have to pay anywhere from 5-20% of our employees wages (depending on if
> they're single or married and how many kids they have) to a broken
> healthcare system that gets more expensive and broken by the day. I wish
> more than anything else that healthcare would be taken out of the hands of
> private industry- not only is it is hugely wasteful, and insufficiently
> available, but it is also one of the single largest drains on US startups.
>
> Anyway, that quote aside, I think what you are saying in regards to being
> an artist/artisan is spot on, and that's exactly why I think a guild would
> be a perfect fit. I fully believe that skilled Drupal/Open Source 'laborers'
> (including development shops, contractors, and workers at larger orgs)
> should organize themselves to leverage their collective expertise to the
> benefit of ourselves (the artisans that make it happen). Within that context
> I do believe that many of the same items discussed under "unionizing" would
> still apply: helping to standardize rates across the nation as well as
> across the globe, helping to define what it really means to be an "artisan",
> and hopefully helping to foster more working relationships between members.
>
>
> --
> Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
> Partner | Business Lead
> Zivtech, LLC
> http://zivtech.com
> alex at zivtech.com
> office: (267) 940-7737
> cell: (215) 866-8956
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 7:52 PM, Jeff Greenberg <jeff at ayendesigns.com>wrote:
>
>> "Both communism and socialism are failed experiments in perpetual
>> motion, the latter fueled by the inertia of propaganda, and the latter
>> by other people's money." -Ben Avram
>>
>> Unions serve their purpose, which is primarily to protect workers of
>> rote. Unions have never been a force in fostering outwardly-facing
>> innovation. Most Drupal developers, and most freelancers in general, are
>> innovators, not rote programmers.
>>
>> Odesk seeks to treat programming as a commodity, an hourly wage for an
>> activity no longer differentiated by talent or innovation, so ensured by
>> keeping framed diaries of activity that must fit into the single-tasking
>> mold rather than a value-priced product. The Odesk model applied
>> elsewhere would have us pay for a meal based solely on the time spent
>> preparing it.
>>
>> I am an artist, not a manufacturing line worker or a plumber. Like
>> painters, sculptors, writers and architects, my rate is based on the
>> final product, the innovation, quality and skill I bring to its
>> creation, not how many lines of code I generate per hour, and that's
>> what clients here prefer.
>> _______________________________________________
>> consulting mailing list
>> consulting at drupal.org
>> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/attachments/20100808/db5bea3d/attachment.html