MisterFrog
@MisterFrog@aussie.zone
- Comment on Government urged to let Iranian women's football team stay in Australia until safety is assured 4 hours ago:
You’re being duped friend. On average new arrivals to Australia are less likely to commit crimes.
The reason I say you’re being duped, is that the rich and powerful want us fighting amongst ourselves, instead of noticing that they’re screwing us over.
The housing crisis is being caused by massive asset inflation, we have literally tens of thousands of empty homes, and houses WAYYYYY more expensive than what they’re actually worth.
Fuck Labor, fuck the LNP, but also fuck One Nation. They’re trying to dupe you into believing all the problems in our society are being caused by migration, which just is plainly not true.
Get mad at the real enemy friend. Let’s take back our country from the leeches at the top.
Join your union, join local community groups. The only way we take back power for the people is organising as a united working class against the leeches: the billionaires…
- Comment on Victorian government faces backlash from small businesses over right to work-from-home laws 3 days ago:
This is problem with the employee, and not WFH.
And I’m glad as a state we’re not throwing the baby out with the bath water on this one.
You’ll figure it out how to manage 2 days WFH, I’m sure. It works absolutely fine for the vast majority of workers and employers.
- Comment on Victorian government faces backlash from small businesses over right to work-from-home laws 3 days ago:
Okay, but how would WFH affect that.
Especially since you said others did WFH with no probs, I’m really struggling to find how WFH in particular is so unworkable for you or other small businesses.
- Comment on Victorian government faces backlash from small businesses over right to work-from-home laws 3 days ago:
If youre making lots of mistakes, and others are helping you out a lot, then your performance needs to improve.
Is this not a type of performance monitoring? And to be fair, would performance not be monitored in the same way (assuming it’s a desk job) not matter if they’re working from home or not. I just am usually a bit sceptical that WFH is much of a burden.
This might be a little un-generous, but it seems that you believe the employee is making more mistakes at home, but it could also be your own bias that you know they have a child at home, and you think they’re more distracted. I’d encourage you to just look at their work and decide from that if there’s actually an issue here (there may well be, I obviously have no idea).
You’ll save yourself headaches down the line if you end up putting them on a performance management plan (if it really is a serious issue and not overreacting, again I have no idea), if you base it entirely on performance, and that way there will be no accusations of bias.
If they’re getting their work down, I’d encourage you to not worry about it and if they’re not, the issue is with them not holding up their end of the bargain - not WFH.
Me personally, I like being in the office, because it’s so much easier to bother each other for a quick chat about XYZ issue. When you’re at home all you can do is message, since it’s hard to tell how focused someone is. At the office you can base it on vibes. I am also single with no kids, so I am strongly in favour of WFH for everyone by default.
My point is, for a small business managing performance is much more challenging with WFH.
I obviously won’t tell you how to run your own business, especially since I’ve never managed a team before, let alone a small business. But I’m still finding it hard to imagine why it’s so much harder for a small business (if it’s just a desk job).
Anyway, just my 2 cents to encourage you to catch yourself being biased because of children (if you are, you may be right on the money!)
Good to catch with ya :)
- Comment on Victorian government faces backlash from small businesses over right to work-from-home laws 4 days ago:
Does this not just come out in the wash based on their performance? Like, even if they were say working 6.75 hours instead of the 7.6 standard per day (38 hour standard work week) and were getting their tasks done to a high standard, who cares?
With the time spent not commuting, they’re probably hitting their work hours easy.
This is obviously not legal advice, but the angle I’d take if I I were you is if their performance is lacking, just don’t even mention the kid at all, it should be squarely focused on performance, that’s the only thing that matters to you.
Just my two cents that I think this won’t be a big deal in the end, even for employers. Covid has shown us working from home works just fine for most desk jobs.
Disclaimer, I don’t have kids, and am an employee of a business where I have to submit timesheets, so these comments are based on my own opinions and not from experience or expertise.
- Comment on Chris Bowen urges motorists not to panic-buy petrol 4 days ago:
Hopefully this will make a number of people realise how heavily car dependent we are in Australia, not to US-levels, but pretty significantly.
There’s no solution to traffic other than viable alternatives to driving.
We need to invest in quality public transport, and in the meantime rapidly expand bus routes (making them less spaghetti-like, and increasing frequencies)
- Comment on Under half of young Australians believe democracy is always a preferable form of government 4 days ago:
Journalists are the absolute worst at citing their sources. Change my mind.
- Comment on Under half of young Australians believe democracy is always a preferable form of government 4 days ago:
Really not loving that you’re implying that socialism isn’t democratic.
In my opinion it’s not really socialism if it’s not democratic.
- Comment on RSA urges Albanese govt against further privileging religion through a faith advisory body | Rationalist Society of Australia 1 week ago:
May His Noodly Appendage guide us out of these troubling times
- Comment on RSA urges Albanese govt against further privileging religion through a faith advisory body | Rationalist Society of Australia 1 week ago:
Kinda feels like religious discrimination to me…
- Comment on Power Games: Who’s driving high power bills? 1 week ago:
Sorry, I should have been clearer. People should still pay for the electricity, but at the very least the transmission and most of the generation should be publically owned.
And energy retailers like some states have are so dumb. "Shopping around’ for electricity when they’re just slightly repacking the rate the transmission company sets is so stupid.
- Comment on Public health advocates say more transparency needed in debate over illicit tobacco as industry links questioned 1 week ago:
Sorry I should have been clearer. I agree the addiction is insidious.
However, making it prohibitively expensive I would argue is part of the reason smoking rates plummeted, as well as no indoor smoking and other smoking restrictions.
I’m only arguing that the illicit trade has been allowed to bloom, and that the black market could be massively curbed with actual enforcement.
And I’m being incredibly sarcastic because there’s often someone coming out of the internet woodwork to say that taxing tobacco isn’t effective.
That, there are people out there who think smoking is nice, which I think is really dumb, because the high really, really isn’t worth the cancer.
I totally get it’s very addictive and if you’ve started, it’s very hard to stop, and I sympathize with those people. Only having a go at the people who argue for removing the high taxes, and that smoking is a “personal choice”.
- Comment on Public health advocates say more transparency needed in debate over illicit tobacco as industry links questioned 1 week ago:
All talk about “omgggg you’re creating a black marketttt” is nonsense, we’re hardly even enforcing anything.
If we properly enforced tobacco restrictions we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Sorry, but the high from nicotine is boring as shit and hardly worth the effort.
If it were actually difficult to access illicit nicotine, no one would be doing it.
Case and point: our smoking rate MASSIVELY plummeting before the illicit trade became prevalent.
Nicotine is boring, do a real drug. Wow, you got a little light headed, worth cancer? Change my mind.
Disclaimer: I’ve had very strong hits of nicotine before.
- Comment on Power Games: Who’s driving high power bills? 1 week ago:
Capitalism is the reason.
Price stability only exists in a world where we nationalised energy infrastructure.
How will we pay for it? Wow, tax. Wow. What a novel idea. Maybe we’ll actually get paid for our natural resources. What an idea.
- Comment on Ban under-16s from riding ebikes and e-scooters then require a driver’s licence, Queensland inquiry to recommend 1 week ago:
I’m not against licencing for ebikes, especially if it allows 35 km/h top speeds (25 is a bit slow really).
Needing a car to get the licence, is a bit silly though
- Comment on ‘I did this to help and now I’m the one who’s going to need help’: NDIS call handlers describe pressure cooker workplace 2 weeks ago:
Privatisation has never been a net good in Australia.
- Comment on Israeli journalist who said 100,000 Gazans should have been killed after 7 October could be denied Australia visa 2 weeks ago:
ALP had better deny the visa. Else their propaganda of “social cohesion” is going to be even more farcical than it already is.
- Comment on Exclusive: Albanese government expresses interest in setting up privileged faith advisory body | Rationalist Society of Australia 2 weeks ago:
The Labor party have been centrists for decades, they’re just leaning into it even harder now.
Australian Socialists (Vic Socialists going national) and Socialist Alliance exist, and probably others I don’t know exist. Hell, even the Greens are somewhat more left wing than Labor (despite having a really stupid internal party structure which is a bit dictatorial).
Left wing voters need to wake up and realise the “Labor” party are a misnomer and have been for a very long time.
- Comment on 'Need to do more of everything': Australia's 2030 goal that's at risk 2 weeks ago:
The size of vehicles and the entitlement of drivers is getting ridiculous.
30 km/h on side streets is just sensible and done in many European countries.
Limiting the size of personal vehicles, particularly bonnet height, is sensible and should have been done yesterday.
Additionally, you can design large vehicles with proper front visibility (vans fit a bunch of stuff her someone still have great front visibility.
These American style utes are ridiculous and should be banned.
- Comment on Council scraps four-day work week plan after backlash from business sector 2 weeks ago:
Cowards. Could have at least done it as a trial
- Comment on Coles downplays meaning of 'Down Down' price tags and advertising in case against ACCC 2 weeks ago:
Watch the fine be so small it’s just the cost of doing business
- Comment on With their first female leader gone, can the Liberals shake their 'women problem'? 3 weeks ago:
As much as I dislike the teals for similar reasons to disliking the Liberals, they at least have some semblance of care and (identity) equality.
They hate workers, but at least they think climate change is happening and that women and LGBT+ people deserve rights.
Would be good for them to fill that niche in AusPol.
- Comment on Three Australian millionaires say the nation’s super-rich should face higher taxes 3 weeks ago:
Do you not understand how jobs and providing services for money work?
I most certainly advocate for a better society where work is more democratic than it currently is (in general).
I’m well aware of how jobs work, just that I don’t think it’s a efficient or fair way to structure society (in general). It’s pretty hard to argue that the amount of money people have is purely, or even mostly, correlated with merit or how hard someone works.
There’s nothing wrong with profiting off your employees labour though.
Agree to disagree. I’m not having a go at any small business owners in particular, since they many don’t profit that much more than their employees anyway - just in general it’s not desirable and we ought to move away from capitalism.
Oh I see you are a fan of communism lol. Never mind.
Technically not communism specifically ,because I think money is a useful accounting tool, which allows people to choose what they value, and don’t think we need to get rid of it - but much of a much. Yes I am a socialist and not shy about it.
- Comment on Health star rating to become mandatory on all packaged food in Australia 3 weeks ago:
country of origin for each too
This probably wouldn’t reasonably fit on the packet. There ought to be a QR code on their that links to an Australian government website where they provide all this fine detail though.
- Comment on Three Australian millionaires say the nation’s super-rich should face higher taxes 3 weeks ago:
I think perhaps we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this.
I need to reiterate that your former colleague is just living within the system we have, and I can’t make personal comment on whether or not he’s done any of the worse things I mentioned.
Initially, it was him and his wife, yes. Though they now have a decent sized company with a few hundred employees.
How is this not proving my point?
He has a decent sized company, that generates profits for him from the labour of their workers, who share in a smaller share of those profits. And this is the typical arrangement. I think it’s pretty hard to argue that (in most cases) the amount of profit people generate vs what they get paid is just.
I’m sure he’s worked hard - well, I guess he has - but it can’t be denied that his excess wealth is only possible because of other people’s continued labour.
if he should keep all the work and wealth to himself
This is fundamentally what we disagree on. He didn’t “share” the work. He had an idea, worked hard on that idea, and then hired other people in order to grow his company and make more money. That’s capitalism, and people pretend as if it’s the only way we can structure society. As if innovation would stop existing without the profit motive.
Innovation would happen regardless. The profit motive only “drives innovation” because that’s how we’ve structured things to work. I also find the claim doesn’t hold water because a huge portion of innovations are already from publically funded university research which otherwise wouldn’t be funded.
Currently a few people profit massively off other people’s labour, and looking at wealth inequality, and pay inequality, it’s getting worse and worse every year.
Unless one has the opinion than a tiny percentage of the population is thousands of tens-of-thousands times more productive and deserving than everyone else, then it’s kind of hard to argue the current state of the world makes sense.
I have no issue with some people making more money than others to reflect their harder work. But only to a point. The profit motive seems like a stupid way to do this though, because it’s also pretty plain to see that innovating is probably not even the main way more profit is achieved.
Monopolies, dark patterns, price gouging, wage theft off-shoring and other anti-competitive behaviours are far more common paths.
Again, nothing against your former colleague personally, as I don’t know him.
- Comment on Three Australian millionaires say the nation’s super-rich should face higher taxes 3 weeks ago:
$500 million purely in sales of software he wrote alone? That would be a feat for sure.
Nothing against him personally, just that buy-in-large this former colleague of yours would be an outlier, the ultra wealthy generally generate profits off the backs of other people’s work.
The part that’s wrong isn’t doing well and making money, it’s advocating against taxing corporations way more than we are, lobbying for loopholes, and engaging in rent seeking behaviour. Which is extremely, extremely common. Having some kind of cap on how much wealth you can amass seems sensible to me.
I’m sure he’s worked hard and done well for himself, but are we really suggesting that once you have money, you don’t “make your money work for you”? What that phrase really means is you can invest, which is only possible because of other people’s work at the end of the day.
Yes, I am doubting a bit that after his real work of creating a product, that the rest of the money he’s made is directly from that work, or made possible by a system that in general is profiting of the working class.
At a certain point allowing people to have vast sums of money is antithetical to democracy, which seems almost self-evident to most people no matter their other political views.
So no, your former work colleague hasn’t done anything wrong, but doesn’t mean it’s a great way for us to structure society. *Gestures broadly to everything*
- Comment on Three Australian millionaires say the nation’s super-rich should face higher taxes 3 weeks ago:
All of the world’s billionaires have amassed their wealth off other people’s labour.
If you can name me ONE billionaire who hasn’t, I’ll be extremely shocked. One billionaire who just worked for their money.
Selling something to investors is indirectly profiting off others labour, just in advance. You think the investors pull up their sleeves and generate billions? Lol. No no, they get workers to make whatever business profitable.
Some billionaires may have created something worthwhile (Taylor Swift, for example), even she has an army of workers who make her continued career possible. (Even though she definitely was a “self-made” billionaire starting without massive capital).
Billions is so much you can practically never spend it. And no one can work literally >1000x harder than someone else. Or generate something so worthwhile they deserve billions.
You don’t need the profit motive for people to create great things. The creator of insulin sold the patent for $1. And countries like Denmark (while still be capitalists) are proof that more people would be entrepreneurial if they have more of a safety net to try. We’re probably missing out of tonnes of innovation simply because the person hasn’t been given the chance through education or they’re in poverty.
And we only have poverty because we live in a system where you can amass unlimited wealth, on the backs of everyday people, instead of the workers sharing in the profits of their labour.
Without the labour of others, or the proceeds from the labour of others (advertising, investment, etc), it’s impossible to make a billion dollars.
- Comment on Three Australian millionaires say the nation’s super-rich should face higher taxes 3 weeks ago:
We could abolish billionaires entirely. No one needs a billion dollars. No one “earns” a billion dollars.
- Comment on Australia quietly builds tariff wall on Chinese steel exports 3 weeks ago:
We really ought to do more processing here. It’s pretty silly that we ship of raw resources
- Comment on Sydney protest: NSW premier defends police in ‘impossible situation’ after accusations of violence against protesters 3 weeks ago:
It’s because they don’t give a shit about accountability or democracy.