bit of an ironic example, lebron is considered one of the most undervalued athletes by contract value. mostly due to salary cap and wage scale restrictions in the nba, things the nba players union agreed to.
obviously soccer and basketball aren't apples to apples. but look around the nba and you see many salaries across the top of the scale that suggest the top performers are vastly underpaid.
think it's an interesting data point nonetheless, Barcelona and the Lakers are worth about the same amount. Barcelona takes in a bit more than 2x the revenue, but Messi is paid about 5x more. both are arguably the best/most popular players in their sport. hard to find perfect comparisons, so take it all with a grain of salt. if there is a better comp would be really interested to see it, this is the best I could find.
If the NBA player union disappeared tomorrow and Lebron was able to renegotiate his contract he still wouldn't be paid close to messi. The player union isn't capping his salary, the salary cap is. One of the things the player union fights for is to increase the salary cap so all of its members can be paid more. This is an example of an union getting its top performers higher salaries, not the inverse like you're suggesting.
as for the second point, not sure what this has to do with the original comment/point, specifically the fact that lebron is proof against the idea that "Unions depress wages for top performers". obviously a lot of complex dynamics here, and one could argue that the nba players union has helped make the nba more successful and all the money that came with that. just pointing out that using lebron as a counterargument to the original comment about wages (ie his nba salary) is a bit ironic.
While I agree that the 'Tim Cook' advantage is very important I wouldn't dismiss Steve Jobs' unique abilities so quickly. Yes there are many exceptional designers in the world but to say that was Steve Jobs' biggest influence is wrong. I would even go so far as to say that Ives is the bigger design influence. What I admired about Steve Jobs was his ability to make the right sacrifices. From ditching the floppy drive in the original iMac to refusing to support Flash in the new iOS devices. These sacrifices, while obvious in retrospect were decisions that no other hardware companies were capable of making. While everyone was trying to build what the consumer wanted, Jobs was always focused on what the consumer should want. A huge difference.
As Henry Ford once said: If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
While everyone else tries to make faster horses, Jobs has kept Apple focused on building cars of the future. He'll be missed.
I think you're missing the point. Sal Khan isn't trying to replace all traditional forms of learning. He's not saying that his methodology is perfect and should be the first options. So picking apart his practices based on idealistic principles is really irrelevant.
I think all this criticism just further reiterates how amazing Khan Academy is. Truth is that their will never be an educational system that everyone thinks is perfect. We are all too unique and absorb information in different ways. The fact that people are talking about Khan Academy at this global scale is amazing and only further amplifies it's importance, last time I checked open source education doesn't generate too much press. So instead of seeking perfection, which is unattainable, we should focus more on actually doing the littles things to make knowledge more widespread.
To that end Khan Academy has no comparable peers. Critics can talk all they want about learning theory and this and that, but fact is that Khan Academy is really helpful to a lot of people.
If you think you see a flaw in Sal's approach and can do better, than just do it and we'll see if people like it. You're into education theory, great. Keep reading and writing about education. Sal Khan is into doing, into helping people learn so that they can improve their own lives. Kindly get out of his way.
also see messi's contract for an example of what these athletes are worth in an open market: https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/lionel-messi-barcelona...
obviously soccer and basketball aren't apples to apples. but look around the nba and you see many salaries across the top of the scale that suggest the top performers are vastly underpaid.
https://www.businessinsider.com/lebron-james-makes-less-than...