Right, before corporations there was no supply and demand, everybody just meditated when they were hungry and were nourished by falling manna.

Facebook satisfied latent demand to be able to contact people from past schools who were otherwise out of contact. Like a never-ending school reunion.

It doesn't matter if a person spends the time on a "better" mousetrap where there is no demand for one. That is not the limitation. The problem is, if there is not demand for it, how is it even "better?" You can build it, and even if it is better, if there is no demand then nobody will notice it is "better," or agree. I see lots of products offered that are "better," and then the next year they're no longer for sale. Why? Because there wasn't demand for a "better" what-the-what. The only way to sell the better what-the-what is to convince customers it is also a better thingamajig. But if you do that, you haven't changed the demand for thingamajigs or what-the-whats, you've only shifted the demand from one to the other. No new trade value is created, because no new demand was created.

Even people who agree that live traps are morally superior still usually buy traditional mouse traps, for example.

Even the Government requires customers (citizens) to govern. If nobody follows you, you're not viable.

It goes back to feudal city-states, or lordships, and beyond. True, the Lord has nearly absolute power over his serfs; but also, the serfs came willingly, the Lord became a Lord by attracting people to his protection. Just like a Clan Chief.

Demand almost always precedes supply, because for one thing almost no need is actually new. So even a new product is targeting an existing demand. If you have demand and no supply, it is like a vacuum, there is pressure to create supply. If there is supply and no demand, there is no pressure to create demand.

It is like the chicken and the egg. Until you have knowledge of how the details work (DNA) it seems impossible to tell which comes first. But once you have some understanding of the details, it becomes obvious that the chicken egg was laid by the proto-chicken. The chicken egg came before the chicken, just as the proto-chicken egg came before the proto-chicken.

It is very rare for a business owner to create a job. Almost all the jobs "created" are going to displace others doing the same work. Which is all good. Only in the rare case where the is pent-up demand and a lack of supply, where by creating a new supply nobody else can create, you satisfy demand that would otherwise not be satisfied. Not only is that rare, but it is also short-term; in the future everybody knows how to satisfy that demand, there will be balanced supply and demand, and creating additional supply will not create additional demand just change who supplies it.

When they say it is a "good idea in principle," that means they disagree with you on it, but they don't want to hurt your feelings. Had you understood their intent, it would have succeeded, but you took it literally, tried to get them to actually sign up, and were surprised and hurt when they didn't. And even invented reasons ("chicken") why.

People are usually a lot more afraid of losing pay to union dues than to retaliation for forming one. The idea that people who disagree about unions are just afraid is probably insulting to the people voting no, and isn't going to help persuade them. In software it isn't apparent there is any benefit. A union can go on strike, but they can't prevent layoffs. They can threaten to strike to try to get a better contract, but they can't prevent replacement workers during the strike. Professional workers who already have individual bargaining power aren't automatically going to see the value in paying somebody to organize strikes.

http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=4...

This explains it all, with pictures. Rehabilitation is a thing, but it is mostly a TV thing.

I'm just grateful that they came along and made us Gen-X "slackers" stand out for our solid work ethic.

"Consideration" means pay. It sounds like you got bullied by a lawyer. If it is without consideration, that means it isn't an enforceable part of the contract.

http://dictionary.law.com/Defa...

Could you have fought it and won? Only if what you're representing here is really what happened. But if so, then it wouldn't be "maybe" it would be "easily."

The company reasoned it as, "he believes whatever we tell him the lawyer said, and will agree to crazy stuff if we say so, so lets have him sign it, and then use it to totally screw him. He can't figure it out himself, and we'll be putting him under resource pressure so there is no way he's going to hire a lawyer when we already told him what the lawyer will say."

Sometimes I have employees that are Special, and I admit I do set different rules for them. I don't think they have any clue what the "normal" rules are, so it is really the only way to make use of Special labor.

They're not writing software, though, that is for sure.

That you want a 71%-er to be some sort of special snowflake says a lot about you, probably more than you intend. You might have actually said that a 31%-er is peculiarly good, it isn't clear, but I'll just assume you meant 71% is peculiarly good.

Whatever skill or ability they have is what they are being paid for as a professional. Manual labor, of course, is not being paid for unless part of the job description.

Even if they're a 99.99999%-er, they're no more peculiarly good that they were hired to be. That is the nature of being a professional.

None of your abilities or talents are "special." They just are whatever they are, and if you get hired as a professional, they'll be what you bring to the job. Even if you fancy yourself an elite member of the top 29%.

Software developers are considered "professionals" even when paid hourly, and so they get stuck in the same rules as a salaried professional, and the actual time the work was done or if they're on the clock doesn't matter.

You can't just apply common sense and logic, you'll come up with a wide variety of plausible-sounding but incorrect answers. The law will have an existing, specific answer. No thinking is required, just knowing what you did or didn't already research, and what the precedent says about it.

Or to use a computer metaphor, in law the APIs are already provided and nobody wants to try out a new wheel. NIH is reserved for the SCOTUS.

No. Only neurons that spit out ideas related to his work. ;)

A contractor works for a different company, that is the whole point. A contractor is on site not because they're an employee, but because their employer has a business relationship with the client.

Who the legal employer is is very important to these other legal things that touch it.

If he was a hourly laborer, doing the work after hours would be enough, but for professional work that just doesn't help. It would have to be both after hours, and also unrelated to his work. He can write linux device drivers or something, but replicating the stuff at work... they own that too.

They (and you) probably just don't realize they own it all, so it will never come up. ;) Unless you had a separate assignment document, and you actually paid them extra for the copyright, they still have it.

The most common mistake is trying to include the assignment in the main contract. Not valid. The next one, and this gets almost everybody, is that without some consideration (money) given in exchange for the assignment, it isn't a valid contract. If all the money that changes hands is based on the work, then there is consideration for the part that gives you an implicit license, but no consideration for the copyright.

A lot of people just assume that because they handed a lawyer money and signed paperwork, that everything is legal and enforceable. But lawyers are often not as good as that. And, with something like this just having the lawyer keep explaining it all to the client long enough for the client to understand it would triple the cost. In order to be competitive, they don't drag you through the whole process; just the parts they think you'll need. The contractor isn't likely to mess with you over this because for various reasons, so they don't dot the i's or cross the t's.

And when you're a professional such as a software developer of some sort, they also own what you do off of their premises if it is related to your job. As, for example, if you were creating your own apps for their proprietary framework. This would be true even if you worked on some other part of the framework, but where it is plugins and you write plugins at work, it is an easy analysis.

If you want to own code you write away from work, it has to be completely 100% unrelated to the job. 100%