so our take is that the salaries were extremely low for the type of work it was.
just to contextualize the rest of this, we have seen people saying the salaries were too low. we have also seen people saying the salaries were too high. we've seen more of the latter.
like, we intentionally took a substantial pay cut when we moved to the non-profit world. we're making a fraction of what we would in industry, and we do that by choice because we believe in what we're doing and we're getting compensated in part by the belief that we're at least not making the world worse with our work, which is something we can no longer find in a for-profit context.
the cohost staff were making less than us. nobody has any business claiming they were paid too much.
there is a case to be made that they should have paid themselves more, because they need to be able to pay market rate to anyone they bring on board later, because it isn't fair labor-wise to ask anyone else to take less than that. of course, that would only apply if the company was going to turn a profit at some point, which it did not.
so we think it was an entirely defensible choice to pay themselves what they did.
we do believe that, like....... programming salaries have kept pace with inflation, whereas essentially no other industry has. that's a serious problem. everybody should be paid more than they are, except the actual rich assholes.
the macroeconomic policy decisions made by central banks and legislators have heavily favored corporations, at the expense of the working class. that needs to change, that's super important. yes, it's true that tech workers are comparatively privileged, but the solution needs to be to lift everyone up.
was that the argument you were hoping to see, or was there another topic you wanted?