I found one of the attendants later during the voyage and chatted her up

> I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business collusion. Wonder if it’s “not illegal” if it’s done in international waters.

Heaven forbid the workers within or across any of these companies also consider coordinating on anything

The Capital Order lays out an argument that austerity measures are ultimately labor suppression, not necessary. Of course, that’s true of many pieces of policy wisdom: they start from an assumed good. In this case, the assumed good is the current winners should remain the winners despite, well, losing. https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Order-Economists-Invented-Aus...

The capitalist class has always conspired to keep labor down. Meanwhile, a lot of laborers in our profession have fallen for their propaganda of markets and so-called meritocracy, not realizing they have more in common with the fruit picker than their common exploiter. Class warfare is real. It's time tech workers wake up to that fact and start fighting back instead of letting oligarchs walk over them.

> I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business collusion. Are you sure you didn't just see a sales meeting? If you're a farmer in the market for a $200k combine harvester, sales guys will be happy to put you in a $200-a-night hotel so you can attend their invite-only presentation on how their latest models give you 10% more yield with 30% lower labour cost thanks to the new auto-steer mechanism and six-stage threshing mechanism. And they'll hand-hold you through all the calculations to write a business case.

Given the whole Realpage stuff for price fixing, it would not surprise me if there are similar things going on at the csuite layer with various business consultants and backroom discussions. They're all rich assholes, and naturally gravitate to the same venues. It's all the more reason why labor needs to start being more aggressive and properly work together.

> why do all these business leaders all do the same things at the same time? E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + cost focus etc... They all work with restructuring companies!! So, I hope that tells you how smart they are :-)

Business leaders operate in overlapping networks. Conferences, advisory boards, private equity connections, etc. When McKinsey or Bain gives similar advice to 50 companies, you get synchronized behavior that looks coordinated. Labor categorization can be thought of in a more useful framework -- Category 1: Builders who don't know it yet. These people have the cognitive capability, work ethic, and problem-solving skills to create value independently, but they've been socialized to believe employment is the only viable path, or have yet to take the leap of starting "their own thing". They're retained and developed because they're essentially entrepreneurs who haven't discovered their own agency yet. Category 2: Consumers masquerading as producers. They extract more value than they create - through entitlement, minimal effort, or misaligned incentives. They're often the loudest about "worke…