Media news is normally super-boring, but I think it's very interesting that Gawker is going to form a union and sort of doubly interesting that it's such a friendly union. Nick Denton, who owns the company, didn't oppose unionization and the bargaining union seems to have been defined in such expansive terms that it includes a lot of editors who you'd normally consider managers -- people who presumably have hiring and firing authority, people who set writers' schedules (or lack thereof), and the like. There's nothing wrong with a not-so-contentious unionization process, but it's very unusual in America.
A big question here is whether this will lead to flatter payscales (as is typical at union shops) and if that will lead to some kind of exodus of star writers. If it does, it could obviously be a huge problem for Gawker. But if it doesn't, it seems like this could really start a trend. The digital media industry is very heavily concentrated in two jurisdictions (New York and DC) with union-friendly politics, so even as labor keeps taking it on the chin nationally this seems like a promising industry for organizing.
I think Chapter 22 of the General Theory is enduringly relevant:
It may, of course, be the case — indeed it is likely to be — that the illusions of the boom cause particular types of capital-assets to be produced in such excessive abundance that some part of the output is, on any criterion, a waste of resources; — which sometimes happens, we may add, even when there is no boom. It leads, that is to say, to misdirected investment. But over and above this it is an essential characteristic of the boom that investments which will in fact yield, say, 2 per cent. in conditions of full employment are made in the expectation of a yield of, say, 6 per cent., and are valued accordingly. When the disillusion comes, this expectation is replaced by a contrary “error of pessimism”, with the result that the investments, which would in fact yield 2 per cent. in conditions of full employment, are expected to yield less than nothing; and the resulting collapse of new investment then leads to a state of unemployment in which the investments, which would have yielded 2 per cent. in conditions of full employment, in fact yield less than nothing. We reach a condition where there is a shortage of houses, but where nevertheless no one can afford to live in the houses that there are.
Thus the remedy for the boom is not a higher rate of interest but a lower rate of interest![5] For that may enable the so-called boom to last. The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump; but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom.
Think about Greece with its "unsustainable" economy bolstered by government borrowing, or the US with its "unsustainable" housing boom. Indeed, those particular arrangements could not be sustained forever. But why, when they unwound, were they replaced by a boom in unemployment? Surely it's not hard to come up with a higher-productivity sector for people to work in than the unemployment sector? To simply observe that the old arrangement suffered from some mis-valuation problems doesn't explain what's really mysterious and troubling about recessions.
Another thing about the Facebook/surplus/GDP thing to note is that this is not exactly a new issue. Consider that back during the high growth days of the 1950s and 1960s we had, among other things, the invention of the television industry. The measured output of said industry was the value of the ads that aired on TV. But the entertainment value to the American people of broadcast television was obviously far higher than that. People loved watching television! It is difficult to quantify, but it seems to me that the introduction of television (and then color television) was probably a much bigger deal in terms of consumer surplus than the introduction of Facebook.
TV on the Radio, "Happy Idiot"