[Izkata]

> I provided a range of leader:worker income/power ratios from 1:0 to 1:1 with no commentary whatsoever on outcomes

For a slight perspective change, the thing that leads to what they mentioned: They're saying you forgot about the range 1:1 to 0:1.

[overfeed]

> They're saying you forgot about the range 1:1 to 0:1.

Color me intrigued! Tell me more about these slave-CEOs serving at the beck and call of empowered workers. I didn't merely forget about the 1:1 to 0:1 range, it's an Outside-Context scenario. I confess I have never encountered - or thought about - organizations with inverted hierarchies. Do you have any specific example of such a thing?

[Izkata]

When unions gain too much power and the company can no longer respond effectively to market forces (particularly with hiring/firing), leading to the collective ruin they were talking about.

[_bent]

this doesn't happen because the union is very much interested in keeping the company afloat

[9rx]

The union is interested in keeping the union afloat. If the union sees no other opportunity it can become interested in keeping the company float, but you have not made the case for your statement to be a truism.

Consider an actors union — actor unions have famously walked away from companies without much regard for the longevity of the company they walked away from on numerous occasions. They know in that line of work there is always another company looking to hire them, so there isn't a whole lot of incentive to care about individual companies.

[Jensson]

It does happen just like bloated management also makes a company less flexible even though managers don't want the company to fail.

They wouldn't intentionally push it to fail, but they could easily push it very close to failing and then something else pushes it over the edge, happens time and time again.

[xg15]

Do you have some recent examples?

[9rx]

I was under the impression that in recent times unions had been mostly disbanded, with any remaining being in government that can't fail like a business can. You might have a fair point that we've started seeing a return of them in the last few years (article being an example of such), but it seems much too soon to see them rise up to have the power spoken of in this thread. That only happens as the union becomes more and more comfortable pushing back.

Am I misinformed — that unions have actually been popular in the private sector over the past long while in order to trigger what you speak of recently?

[xg15]

Someone read their Ayn Rand...

[Jensson]

> I confess I have never encountered - or thought about - organizations with inverted hierarchies

Managers tend to make less than pop stars etc, the range exists. On some engineering teams the non-technical manager makes less than the engineers.

Being a manager doesn't mean you are well paid, he is just a bureaucrat managing the relations to those who want your services.