Its from disasters like these that unions are born.
People with money have controlled the local courts in the past, and try to do so in the present. There are other historical evidence of such blatant disregard for the lives, not to mention the rights, of employees by businesses.
What I find most troubling is that you treat workers, especially unskilled workers, like just another commodity for the companies.
I know you hate unions, but remember, they are a great immunization against class warfare, Socialism, and Communism.
You said that the company wins when Frank works for the company at the fee Joe struck over. Would you then allow Joe to picket Walmart? What happens to Joe? He gets mad and does damages--either through attacking Walmart's reputation or attacking Walmart or fighting for "workers rights" on a much bigger scale that Walmart denied him. This is a cost to Walmart. They start losing. When enough workers are like Joe, Walmart will start losing big. Joe has lost. Walmart has lost. And even Frank, he accepted Joe's pay may soon discover, as Joe did, that the pay is not enough to live on. He then strikes and is fired. Now Walmart has to pay to train another employee to take Frank's place--another loss.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Okay Dan, if you accept that shooting striking workers is wrong, then why is it wrong for them to strike and unionize? If we accept on principle that they have rights (n), and this is true for the base case of not being shot; then can we agree that they also have the right to earn equal pay for equal work? So they should have n+1 rights no?
Also I would like to point out that the court system is not particularly robust because it is a part of government, which has been in many states taking an active interest in weakening unions and the rights of workers to collective bargaining.
To extend the point you left unsaid, you know what Bangladesh is not? A first world nation, why should US workers be reduced to a third world living standard and wages if that is what the companies want of their service workers and unskilled labour?
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I'm not going to say these historical examples are beside the point, exactly, but it might be good to consider whether they really do represent a bygone era rather than the present state of affairs. I'm by no means decided about this, but I wonder if the need for government-backed unions might be like the need for affirmative action: once the problems that needed to be solved by the institution are well and truly solved, the institution won't be needed any longer. Whether things have reached that point, in either case, is a whole other subject for debate.
I should also say, perhaps the one arena where I'm entirely convinced that unions are essential is K-12 education. There are many school districts in "unfriendly" parts of the country--whether because the population is elderly or largely right wing or something else--where the school boards cannot be trusted to serve the interests of students and teacher unions are the last bastion of sanity.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Okay Dan, if you accept that shooting striking workers is wrong, then why is it wrong for them to strike and unionize? If we accept on principle that they have rights (n), and this is true for the base case of not being shot; then can we agree that they also have the right to earn equal pay for equal work? So they should have n+1 rights no?
Ha, nice proof by induction. Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Destineer, the reason I brought up bygone era events is not to compare them to now--but to offer them as an example of where this trend can lead. In the 1900's workers were considered chattel. Much of the corporate discussion on "employees" threatens to bring that back. Notice, they are no longer workers. Workers imply that they work and bring value to the company. They are employees--an accounting term meaning financial liability.
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Destineer, the reason I brought up bygone era events is not to compare them to now--but to offer them as an example of where this trend can lead. In the 1900's workers were considered chattel. Much of the corporate discussion on "employees" threatens to bring that back. Notice, they are no longer workers. Workers imply that they work and bring value to the company. They are employees--an accounting term meaning financial liability.
Alternatively, "worker" is a term with connotations of physical labor, evoking images of factory workers and the like. "Employee" is context neutral and seems more applicable to anyone.
But you see demons where you want to.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Okay Dan, if you accept that shooting striking workers is wrong, then why is it wrong for them to strike and unionize? If we accept on principle that they have rights (n), and this is true for the base case of not being shot; then can we agree that they also have the right to earn equal pay for equal work? So they should have n+1 rights no?
Ha, nice proof by induction.
Yeah... Blayne this is a woefully disjointed non sequitur.
"If you have the right to not be robbed by me, then can we agree you also have the right to take my house, sleep with my wife, and shoot me in the face, right?"
I guess your whole point here assumes that basic personal rights (like the right to not be shot by thugs and criminals) also include the ability to use government force to make someone give you something you want. But there's no connection that I can see, and you didn't explain one.
Again, I don't think people should be disallowed from striking, I just think that their employers should have the option to fire them if they decide not to work.
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The more I think about your "Win/Win" scenario the less I think its really a Win for anyone. As you recall:
quote:Here's a simple concrete example of what I mean: Joe and his comrades are striking because he thinks his current job at X Industries pays too little. But X Industries doesn't want to pay any higher wages for the job Joe and his fellows are doing. They also think they can hire other people to do the job for the price they want to pay, to the level of competence that they need.
So, they fire Joe and the striking workers. They hire Fred and some other folks who were unemployed and are happy to make the wages that Joe and his other union members were not happy with.
So Fred and his peers get paid a wage they're happy with, X Industries pays a wage they're willing to pay, and Joe doesn't have to work at a job that pays him less than he is worth. Since he's higher value than that, he can now go on to find a job that pays him properly for his value. Or, failing that, he can re-evaluate how much he thinks his labor is worth, and change his preferences.
The win comes in three forms:
Wal-Mart wins because they have employees at the fee they want to pay them. Except they also have to pay for training of the new employees, new uniforms and other new employee costs. They have lost the experience and knowledge of the older employees like Joe so overall efficiency and customer satisfaction drops. Joe and his co-strikers will not leave quietly or quickly. Bad press will have been made by the strikers, and will continue as they use their right of free speech to attack and condemn Wal-Mart. While Wal-Mart won't be bothered by losing the Joe's business, Joe and his friend will try hard to convince many others to join this boycott.
This leaves off the illegal but probable theft and damage some of now unemployed Joe's co-strikers my do as they strive for what the mistakenly believe is justice.
Wal-Mart has not won.
Joe has not won. He is out of a job. Sure, its a job that he thought he should be paid more for, but you can't call losing a job by itself a win. I am guessing that you would frown on even letting fired Joe get unemployment since he was "fired for cause--not showing up for work" so Joe has to either find a new job now or go on welfare, collect food stamps, ... oh yeah, Wal-mart pay is so small he is probably doing that already. Still, Joe won nothing. He had time to find a new, better paying job before he was fired, as his job was mostly part-time as most Wal-Mart jobs are.
Frank, though, was a winner. Frank got a job he wanted at a base rate he thought he could live with. Yet Frank's win is also tainted. This depends on whether Joe had a reason to strike for more money. Was Joe just greedy? Than fine, Frank won. But Joe went on strike because the pay kept him in eternal poverty, with no chance for advancement, no path beyond $10-$12/hr for years at a time, Frank may find himself considering going on strike in the near future. I think Frank's win is questionable.
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posted
There seems to be confusion overthe concept of a win. I thought i explained it, sorry.
What I mean by a "win" has to do with the contexts of the people involved, and not their overall success. And not the outside judgment of a third party (you) that says whether or not it was a good deal or good for them in the long run or whatever. People are responsible for their own lives, preferences, and choices. A "win" is when people get to make the decisions they want to make, that they believe will lead to a better life.
Walmart decided it would be in their best interests to fire Joe, and they were able to do so. Whether or not this was the best choice they could have made is irrelevant. They thought they knew the risks, and did it anyway. If they assessed the risks badly, that's their mistake. I would rather they make their choices and succeed or fail based on those choices, than you dictate what choices are allowed or not.
Joe is in the same boat. He wanted to strike. Any reasonable approach to a strike involves assessing the possible outcomes, one of which is losing the job you don't like. He thought that was worth it. You have decided that he guessed wrong... How paternalistic! He had the freedom to make his choice, he made it, now he lives with the life that results.
If he guessed wrong, then he made a mistake. I'd rather people be free to make mistakes and learn from them. The idea that a mistake is a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs is a philosophical mistake itself. Mistakes are inevitable, and are opportunities for learning.
The idea that Walmart and Joe "lost" is predicated on a paternalistic view antithetical to a free society. You don't get to make decisions for other people. They are responsible for their own lives, mistakes and all.
Kate, I don't know what you mean. Are you bringing up other issues like healthcare or something? I don't advocate reforms in a vacuum, I'd like across the board incremental improvement. Union issues aren't really even at the top of my list...
Edit: typed on my phone, forgive any errors.
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Joe is not in the same boat as Walmart. Walmart is in an enormous ocean liner and can cruise wherever it wants to. It has tons of choices and if it gets a couple of choices wrong, it will still float.
Joe's "boat" is a couple of boards lashed together. Joe doesn't have the freedom or the choices Walmart has. At least with a union lots of people can lash their rafts together.
This is what you keep missing. Not everyone has the same freedom or the same choices. You keep pretending that everyone is completely free except for what the government imposes and that is just not true. Unless you think that drowning is a choice.
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posted
Even ocean liners can go down to a single sufficiently bad choice, I think.
I'm not sure I understand in what way you think people aren't free. Certainly there is an infinite number of choices and yet at any given moment individuals may only have the option to make a few thousand choices or whatever, and once they exclude lots of bad choices they may only be left with a few reasonable ones. But there are still multiple choices.
And if someone thinks there are no other options than to keep doing X thing they despise, then they've made the choice that trying to find other options is less appealing than maintaining the status quo... Another choice, in essence.
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quote:Even ocean liners can go down to a single sufficiently bad choice, I think.
Yep, but it has to be a whopper. Probably several whoppers for a company like Walmart.
For WalMart, the best possible clerk costs virtually nothing to replace. A person for which WalMart is the best possible job opportunity has a much higher relative cost associated with not accepting the pay, benefits, and working conditions offered to them.
Both WalMart and their employees are "free" to take or leave the agreement, but WalMart has much more power because their agreement with that individual is much less valuable to them than the employee's agreement that single company.
Put another way, think of how often the average employee of major corporation talks about that company at the dinner table vs how often that employee is likely to be mentioned in the boardroom of that company.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Even ocean liners can go down to a single sufficiently bad choice, I think.
I'm not sure I understand in what way you think people aren't free. Certainly there is an infinite number of choices and yet at any given moment individuals may only have the option to make a few thousand choices or whatever, and once they exclude lots of bad choices they may only be left with a few reasonable ones. But there are still multiple choices.
And if someone thinks there are no other options than to keep doing X thing they despise, then they've made the choice that trying to find other options is less appealing than maintaining the status quo... Another choice, in essence.
In other words, you are considering drowning a choice.
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quote:Even ocean liners can go down to a single sufficiently bad choice, I think.
For WalMart, the best possible clerk costs virtually nothing to replace. A person for which WalMart is the best possible job opportunity has a much higher relative cost associated with not accepting the pay, benefits, and working conditions offered to them.
Wait a minute. If Walmart is the best possible job opportunity then what's the problem? They have the bed job they could get! That's awesome! Good for them. If they feel dissatisfied and want to be able to get an even better job, they should increase their skills and then change jobs.
I thought the idea behind striking was that Walmart wasn't really the best job they could get, they were worth more than that, so rather than changing jobs they are trying to convince Walmart to reevaluate them and pay them more.
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quote:I thought the idea behind striking was that Walmart wasn't really the best job they could get, they were worth more than that, so rather than changing jobs they are trying to convince Walmart to reevaluate them and pay them more.
No, it's more of a prisoner's dilemma issue. If everyone acts in their individual best interest then they ultimately have a worse outcome. It becomes a race to the bottom until everyone is working for the absolute lowest pay and benefits they can possible accept. It's only a win for Walmart and, arguably (but not necessarily), their customers. The workers are getting the worst possible arrangement in which they are still willing to take what they are being offered.
The equivalent situation on the other side would be Walmart paying the absolute most they'd be willing to pay. Unions take us somewhere between those two points.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Wait a minute. If Walmart is the best possible job opportunity then what's the problem? They have the bed job they could get! That's awesome! Good for them.
Except that the best job they can get is crap. And not sufficient to keep them above the poverty line.
quote:If they feel dissatisfied and want to be able to get an even better job, they should increase their skills and then change jobs.
Do you imagine this is even possible for everyone?
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Wait a minute. If Walmart is the best possible job opportunity then what's the problem? They have the bed job they could get! That's awesome! Good for them.
Except that the best job they can get is crap. And not sufficient to keep them above the poverty line.
So, aside from improving their skills so the best job they can get is less crap, how do you solve this? It sounds like you just want to wish reality away and make it so that their labor is worth more without any responsibility or action being taken by them. But maybe I'm missing something?
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:If they feel dissatisfied and want to be able to get an even better job, they should increase their skills and then change jobs.
Do you imagine this is even possible for everyone?
Sure, why wouldn't it be? There may be some outliers, and I'm open to discussing those edge cases... but I'm getting the impression you don't have edge cases in mind. You think this is impossible for a significant chunk of people, right? Why?
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quote:I thought the idea behind striking was that Walmart wasn't really the best job they could get, they were worth more than that, so rather than changing jobs they are trying to convince Walmart to reevaluate them and pay them more.
No, it's more of a prisoner's dilemma issue. If everyone acts in their individual best interest then they ultimately have a worse outcome. It becomes a race to the bottom until everyone is working for the absolute lowest pay and benefits they can possible accept. It's only a win for Walmart and, arguably (but not necessarily), their customers. The workers are getting the worst possible arrangement in which they are still willing to take what they are being offered.
The equivalent situation on the other side would be Walmart paying the absolute most they'd be willing to pay. Unions take us somewhere between those two points.
But we don't need unions to achieve that. Reality achieves it just fine. Everyone working for Walmart is making at or above the minimum they are willing to be paid, and simultaneously being paid at or below the maximum Walmart is willing to pay. And if the race to the bottom theory held true then wouldn't they all be making minimum wage, because that's the bottom? But they aren't. Some make more than that.
Fundamentally it seems the only way the race to the bottom idea is even remotely possible also requires no competition. If Walmart was the only employer in the world, maybe, though even then I am skeptical. But in a world where you can go work for Target or Costco or Safeway, it really doesn't make sense.
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Dan, do you believe the current high unemployment numbers don't represent a surplus of workers relative to available jobs?
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Dan, you do realize that "increasing skills" generally requires a surplus of time, money and energy. For starters.
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letting everyone have "the best job they can possibly get" without any sort of a bottom net to prevent poverty concerns isn't even fiscally recommendable (it ends up costing you more in the end)
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Dan, you do realize that "increasing skills" generally requires a surplus of time, money and energy. For starters.
In some capacity, sure, though I also think you're taking too limited a view of what might qualify as increasing one's skills.
quote:Originally posted by MattP: Dan, do you believe the current high unemployment numbers don't represent a surplus of workers relative to available jobs?
Yeah of course they do. I think the point you're hinting at is going over my head, though. Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Yeah of course they do. I think the point you're hinting at is going over my head, though.
I wasn't hinting at anything, just clarifying that this wasn't an area where you had an unconventional opinion.
But on that point, if there is a surplus of workers, then there is further downward pressure on salaries. The lowest salary will be the amount below which no one else is willing to work for because unemployment is of greater perceived value. Minimum wage is only a partial mitigation of this problem and having the lowest wage paid be above minimum wage is not an indication that the employer isn't paying the lowest possible salary.
Again, this is biased heavily in the employer's favor because a surplus labor market automatically minimizes labor costs for them. Workers are accepting the weakest position possible. There is no likely scenario in which Walmart will face the same problem. It happens in some professions, but for low-skill labor, the employer always has the bulk of the power.
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posted
If Wal Mart is the best job you can get, and unless you're living very frugally (in a place where that can provide meaningful, serious savings at and below the poverty line) with responsibility only to yourself, it's going to be only one of at least two jobs in your household. More likely one of at least three. If you've responsibility to a family, there is another chunk of time and money and energy gone-proportionally a large one. Hopefully your car doesn't break down or your house doesn't turn up with a leaky roof, because then your meager savings are toast or you to (further) into debt. Which will do wonders for the impact you can have on the lives and education of any kids you might have.
Through a series of lucky breaks, you haven't been fired for missing work (due to all that other stuff), and everyone in your family has excellent health so you're not broke or crushed by debt.
Well I guess then you could hope for a montage scene that takes care not only of transmitting marketable skills to you but also secures employment for you where you live, in such a way that you can transition easily from WM to this new job.
Yay! Choices. Great choices for those kids, too-they have exactly as much freedom as the children of their store's manager, because freedom is an abstract concept not to be confused with the question 'how MUCH freedom?'
Sorry to be this acidic, Dan, but holy hell are you overstating the ease and simplicity with which one can-other than preemptively-navigate to all of this freedom you're talking about. There might almost be a link between that oversimplificafion and how much better blessed the man at the top is by this sort of freedom than the bottom.
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Destineer, while I agree that such things are of a bygone age *here*, at the same time I don't mind them remaining parts of the discussion because we can see all the time that where the option exists for business to *make* them things of the present rather than the past, they often will. It is not their own good will that makes this so, but fear of public backlash. Indeed, the very things that would make what happened in Bangladesh (much less their response to it) unthinkable here, those things were done in the teeth of their furious opposition.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: This thread makes me die a little inside.
Don't worry though, that part of me has been on life support for years.
haha, why?
That we have to rehash 100 year old arguments.
Any serious study of labor history invariable leads to sadness, because there are so few victories, and most of them fall under attack the moment they happen.
So much of it is stories of crushing sadness, and the worker almost always loses. From the start of real mass labor movements in the Gilded Age until the 1930s and 40s, workers were being crushed by big business and government. After that, they were crushed by business, government AND union bosses. And they're so frequently demonized in the media that it's taken on faith that they're dumb, greedy, lazy, and entitled. I'm just sick of it. And God forbid we turn that same critical eye on the greedy bastards who employ them. Like we're supposed to get down on our knees and kowtow to the bosses for giving us this largesse out of the goodness of their hearts while they get rich off the backs of workers. Without workers there is no business, and there is no wealth, and I'm sick of seeing them demonized for wanting more out of their lives than churning out widgets.
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posted
Dan is right, the problem is the definition of "win".
Dan has defined a "win" as having the freedom to make the decisions you wish even if they are disastrous to yourself, me, the market place, and society as a whole. All that matters, all that is needed for a win, is that everyone has the freedom to do what they want.
The rest of us, and society as a whole, define "win" as the ability to get the best outcome out of the situation. Even if the way to achieve that outcome denies choice and freedom to individuals, it is the outcome that matters.
By the definition that Dan puts as a "win" then legalizing Marijuana, and all drugs, is a win. Legalizing gambling everywhere is a win. Legalizing prostitution (that is not forced upon the prostitute but is a free choice of that person), gay marriage, and suicide are all wins. People are free to choose their fate.
I'm sorry Dan, I disagree with your definition. All you are doing is replacing the word Liberty with Win and using the same definition. Libertarian-ism is a winning strategy because we define winning as Libertarian-ism.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: This thread makes me die a little inside.
Don't worry though, that part of me has been on life support for years.
haha, why?
That we have to rehash 100 year old arguments.
Any serious study of labor history invariable leads to sadness, because there are so few victories, and most of them fall under attack the moment they happen.
So much of it is stories of crushing sadness, and the worker almost always loses. From the start of real mass labor movements in the Gilded Age until the 1930s and 40s, workers were being crushed by big business and government. After that, they were crushed by business, government AND union bosses. And they're so frequently demonized in the media that it's taken on faith that they're dumb, greedy, lazy, and entitled. I'm just sick of it. And God forbid we turn that same critical eye on the greedy bastards who employ them. Like we're supposed to get down on our knees and kowtow to the bosses for giving us this largesse out of the goodness of their hearts while they get rich off the backs of workers. Without workers there is no business, and there is no wealth, and I'm sick of seeing them demonized for wanting more out of their lives than churning out widgets.
I am just always continually surprised with the reactionary loathing of unions from people who are all about things like non-aggression principles.
Truly, TRULY free association (here assuming in where that society doesn't reflexively autonomize into strictly regulated private microfederal entities for protection and basic communal functionality) will come with
guess what
UNIONS
TONS OF UNIONS EVERYWHERE
GET USED TO THEM FOREVERRRRRRRRRRR
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: ... then legalizing Marijuana, and all drugs, is a win. Legalizing gambling everywhere is a win. Legalizing prostitution (that is not forced upon the prostitute but is a free choice of that person), gay marriage, and suicide are all wins. People are free to choose their fate.
I gotta say, of the various takes on Dan's views, that sounds remarkably appealing.
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quote:Like we're supposed to get down on our knees and kowtow to the bosses for giving us this largesse out of the goodness of their hearts while they get rich off the backs of workers.
To me there is this, and also the pragmatic side of it that I am baffled people refuse to acknowledge: employers will generally go out of their way to achieve the best financial success at the lowest cost in resources, whether it's time, money, or effort. Nothing wrong with that, or rather nothing unusual. It's the human condition.
But employers don't employ *anyone* out of some philosophical regard for choice, or concern for the public welfare, or for anything else except to turn a profit. That's why they're businesspeople and not, say, poets. The ones that do are unusual.
Again fine. That's what a prudent person should expect of other people. But when we start imputing some sort of *morality* to this dynamic, whether to say it's particularly moral (or immoral, too, in the case of ordinary competitiveness divorced from things like roasting factory workers), and when we pretend that the system doesn't look more favorably on the people at the top...but especially when we let 'freedom' be a blanket rejoinder to any number of wealth and power disparities...
The employer wants freedom mitigated as little as possible to advance his success in business. He will and certainly has not been shy about using his much greater power, access, and discretionary income to get the government, the press, and even the military and police on his side in that effort-sometimes in an ordinary PR campaign, and sometimes quite a lot more.
But let workers, the people much more like ourselves than the large scale businessperson, work to wield the same kind of influence and suddenly freedom this and choice that and capitalism the other thing.
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posted
First, just a few quick asides, because it seems like some of my positions are being misunderstood and/or there are some wrong assumptions being made.
So, in no particular order:
I'm not demonizing workers. I don't expect (nor does anything I've said require) that employers be particularly generous or whatever. In fact, I'm also not actually on the side of the employers. Many employers throughout history have tried very hard to get government privileges and advantages over their competition. The idea that most employers both want, and benefit from, a truly free market is a total fiction. As is the idea that workers are hurt by a free market.
I'm also not actually a libertarian, per se. Not the least reason being that I think the Non-Aggression Principle is so vague as to be meaningless, and is therefore useless. I don't loathe Unions, either, nor would I be concerned if we had unions "foreverrrrrrr." I just object to specific union-related philosophies and laws.
Now, on to a couple of specific responses!
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Dan is right, the problem is the definition of "win".
Dan has defined a "win" as having the freedom to make the decisions you wish even if they are disastrous to yourself, me, the market place, and society as a whole. All that matters, all that is needed for a win, is that everyone has the freedom to do what they want.
The rest of us, and society as a whole, define "win" as the ability to get the best outcome out of the situation. Even if the way to achieve that outcome denies choice and freedom to individuals, it is the outcome that matters.
But that's not really what "winning" means. Winning, straightforwardly, has to do with a specific party achieving their goals. If the Nazis won WW2, then that would have been bad for the world. It even would have been bad for the Nazis! But they would have, very literally, won. That's what winning means.
You're using "win" in a very abstract, imprecise, metaphorical context. I'm not.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: I'm sorry Dan, I disagree with your definition. All you are doing is replacing the word Liberty with Win and using the same definition. Libertarian-ism is a winning strategy because we define winning as Libertarian-ism.
Not really.
My description of a win/win scenario was just a description of a scenario in which all parties achieved some of their goals.
Now, I admitted then, and still admit, that there are some versions of Joe for whom it wouldn't be feel like a win/win outcome. If Joe approached the strike irrationally, from a position where he wasn't willing to live with the possible negative repercussions of his decision.
I'm describng the scenario where he wasn't willing to give up the job entirely, and the only outcome he was willing to accept was one where the employer gave in to the strikers' demands.
As I said before, though, this would be a terrible way to live. It dictates that the scenario shift from having a win/win outcome and into win/lose. The only way for Joe to be happy is for him to get something that he can't achieve by himself; to get someone else to do what he wants. So if can't do that, then his only remaining options are to be miserable (in which case he loses), or force the other party to do what he wants (in which case they lose).
I freely admit that this sort of win/lose situation crops up in the real world! Frequently, even. But those are examples where giving Joe, giving Unions, special powers is the most dangerous. Failure to convince someone that they should do what you want is a piss-poor justification for forcing them to do it.
quote:Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: ... then legalizing Marijuana, and all drugs, is a win. Legalizing gambling everywhere is a win. Legalizing prostitution (that is not forced upon the prostitute but is a free choice of that person), gay marriage, and suicide are all wins. People are free to choose their fate.
I gotta say, of the various takes on Dan's views, that sounds remarkably appealing.
posted
Yeah, drugs really are about individual freedom. There aren't competing interests and power differentials involved there. And even an argument to outcome is pretty weak given what the "war on drugs" has produced compared to the outcome it was aiming for.
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quote: Failure to convince someone that they should do what you want is a piss-poor justification for forcing them to do it.
But you understand, right, that threatening things like strikes -- and thus carrying out strikes occasionally, to keep the threat viable -- is the only way workers can actually achieve gains, since their employers do not feel any moral obligation and the power imbalance is such that they do not perceive any practical obligation?
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Dan, you are defining a win as when a person achieves their goal. Then I think the problem is that you misunderstand everyone's goal.
Joe's goal is not to leave a company he feels underpays him. If that was his goal than just quitting would be more effective. His stated goal is to earn more money. The strike is his strategy to achieve that goal. Being fired leaves him making no money. That is not a win.
Wal-Mart's self-proclaimed goal was to pay the rate that they wanted to for an equivalent employee. Frank meets that criteria only after training, and some time spent gaining the experience Joe has. If he is hired at the rate Joe was being paid, then it is not a win for Wal-Mart until Frank has been trained and gains equivalent experience. Before that point it is a loss.
Of course, part of that loss will be made up by paying Frank less than they paid Joe--as Joe's pay includes annual pay raises that a Trainee Frank won't be getting. On the other hand the high turnover of employees means that Frank may not stay that long, and then the process continues over and over again.
Wal-Mart comes close to winning, but not quite.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Dan what you object to is similar to the objections to the individual mandate; something key and central to the ability for the organism to function for its desired services.
I also believe that employees would benefit from a "free" market, but that would involve recognizing unions as inherent to the free market as a response to corporate excess and mistreatment of labour; and that how government "benefits" corporations is not equivalent to how "unions" are benefited. I don't see any unions given bailouts.
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quote:I'm also not actually a libertarian, per se. Not the least reason being that I think the Non-Aggression Principle is so vague as to be meaningless, and is therefore useless.
- Under your moral system, are taxes at all morally legitimate?
- Why?
/addendum - a minority of libertarians follow the non aggression principle
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quote:As I said before, though, this would be a terrible way to live. It dictates that the scenario shift from having a win/win outcome and into win/lose. The only way for Joe to be happy is for him to get something that he can't achieve by himself; to get someone else to do what he wants. So if can't do that, then his only remaining options are to be miserable (in which case he loses), or force the other party to do what he wants (in which case they lose).
I freely admit that this sort of win/lose situation crops up in the real world! Frequently, even. But those are examples where giving Joe, giving Unions, special powers is the most dangerous. Failure to convince someone that they should do what you want is a piss-poor justification for forcing them to do it.
People getting other people to do what they want is right at the heart of this little civilization thing we've got going here. The *default*, in questions of employment and employer/employee relations is that each side is trying-and succeeding-in getting other people to do what they want. The only thing that's at issue is the question 'how much?'
Boss wants employees to do x work for y compensation. If they don't wish to settle for y, boss forces employees to either tolerate y compensation or go elsewhere.
It is precisely the same as the sorts of things you're objecting to when the employees attempt to do it to boss, Dan. Except when employees threaten to strike, they are 'forcing' boss to do what they wish, or trying to do so. Yet when boss says y is the compensation for x work, period...somehow we are not to consider this as 'forcing' employees to do what boss wants.
I'm still not sure why one is forcing and the other isn't. It probably lies at the heart of why you may not intend to be on the side of employers (and I do believe you mean that with sincere honesty), but are responding as though you are-because your positions are.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Wow, So apparently true freedom of association comes with my being forced to join a union that I don't wish to join or contribute to?
"Without fail, the right to free association means unions, unions, unions"
Is a negative association considered a free association? I would say that the union takes over $500 from my pocket each year against my wishes and, in my opinion, does not benefit me to the tune of $500 per year. Shouldn't that be my choice? In a right to work state I don't have to join or pay the union unless I choose. I can still join, I can still pay them money, I just don't have to. That is true freedom of association, where I get to choose.
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Posting from phone, but... Tom and Rakeesh:
Do you guys think I am against strikes, and/or think that strikes are somehow forcing a company? I... I'm honestly a little lost to words, if so, since I have explicitly said that I don't think that. There is no inherent force at all in the employer/employee relationship.
What I am against is a situation where someone strikes and the company is forced to go without workers or give in, rather than do something they might prefer, like fire the strikers and hire new ones. That's the element of force. I call it force because it's the law, and if they don't comply they will be shut down or fined or arrested or what-have-you.
The reason I say unions are using force is because they have special laws that prevent employers from responding.
If I want to sell you my car, and we're haggling, there's no force... Unless the law says that I'm not allowed to ask for more than X amount, or it says that you have to buy the car from me regardless of what price we decide, or some other similar restriction.
But, again, I don't think that unions going on strike (in a vacuum, disregarding American laws) involves any inherent force. So as far as I can tell all of your comments to me are based on a wrong assumption. Right?
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Is a negative association considered a free association? I would say that the union takes over $500 from my pocket each year against my wishes and, in my opinion, does not benefit me to the tune of $500 per year. Shouldn't that be my choice? In a right to work state I don't have to join or pay the union unless I choose. I can still join, I can still pay them money, I just don't have to. That is true freedom of association, where I get to choose.
There is something to this, but there's another aspect you're ignoring or else simply not seeing: how many of the conditions, which may have driven you to seek employment there in the first place, owe to union work in the past?
Answers will vary depending on the context-but sometimes the answer is 'a great deal'. So then another question to be asked is 'shall the organization which gained compensation x be forced to negotiate for compensation even for people who don't support it? You're generally getting more than just a new coffee machine for your $500/yr, whether you like to admit it or not.
If the answer is 'yes', well then it abruptly becomes the simplest thing in the world for the employer to weaken and starve out a union.
It's a more complicated situation than you (or Dan) are acknowledging. Strict adherence to absolute free association benefits employers and employees in unequal ways. Insisting that things be ratcheted down to the most individualist level possible at all times serves...the individual with the most power, more.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Its the same argument for taxes, you are "forced" to pay taxes for services that may benefit people you feel undeserving. But this is a legitimate part of the social compact; so union dues are also a legitimate for the same reasons, they form a integral part of the same social compact.
I think its also the same for social security? Part of you pay is deducted right to insure you and everyone else has some form of pension when you or they retire? If you gave the option to opt out the system would collapse.
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At a computer now, so I'll provide a couple more specific responses.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote: Failure to convince someone that they should do what you want is a piss-poor justification for forcing them to do it.
But you understand, right, that threatening things like strikes -- and thus carrying out strikes occasionally, to keep the threat viable -- is the only way workers can actually achieve gains, since their employers do not feel any moral obligation and the power imbalance is such that they do not perceive any practical obligation?
Right... I don't think that threatening a strike or striking is forcing anyone inherently. Only in our society.
In fact, I think that in a world where Unions didn't have the special privileges they do, strikes would be more analogous to the persuasion I talked about in the above quote. It's an attempt to convince someone that they should do what you want. It might fail, it might succeed; either case should be based on the actual merits of both options, not based on what a third party says is allowable.
Again, see my earlier post about how I don't think strike and unions are prima facie bad, and how I don't think that force is involved in the employer/employee relationship when you take external restrictions away.
Darth, I already answered the points you're making, I think. But I'll go through bit by bit to make sure it's clear.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Dan, you are defining a win as when a person achieves their goal. Then I think the problem is that you misunderstand everyone's goal.
Joe's goal is not to leave a company he feels underpays him. If that was his goal than just quitting would be more effective. His stated goal is to earn more money. The strike is his strategy to achieve that goal. Being fired leaves him making no money. That is not a win.
Here is the relevant response:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Now, I admitted then, and still admit, that there are some versions of Joe for whom it wouldn't be feel like a win/win outcome. If Joe approached the strike irrationally, from a position where he wasn't willing to live with the possible negative repercussions of his decision.
I'm describing the scenario where he wasn't willing to give up the job entirely, and the only outcome he was willing to accept was one where the employer gave in to the strikers' demands.
As I said before, though, this would be a terrible way to live. It dictates that the scenario shift from having a win/win outcome and into win/lose. The only way for Joe to be happy is for him to get something that he can't achieve by himself; to get someone else to do what he wants. So if can't do that, then his only remaining options are to be miserable (in which case he loses), or force the other party to do what he wants (in which case they lose).
I freely admit that this sort of win/lose situation crops up in the real world! Frequently, even. But those are examples where giving Joe, giving Unions, special powers is the most dangerous. Failure to convince someone that they should do what you want is a piss-poor justification for forcing them to do it.
I bolded the most important bits. If it's a win/lose scenario for Joe it's because he made a serious mistake, and set himself up for failure. More importantly, he's the one that decided it has to be win/lose. Nobody else. He has full responsibility for that.
I can decide to make win/lose scenarios all day, in every situation, but these are all creations in my head, and nobody else is making me lose (or "win"). It's just my own irrationality.
If I do it too much, I'm an asshole ("You stole my parking spot!")... even more, and I'm a criminal ("This chump left his laptop unattended!")... and if I do it constantly then I'm a crazy guy in the street ("If I close my eyes they'll steal my skin!")... but fundamentally in each case I'm imagining a win/lose scenario where one need not exist.
That's on me, not Walmart.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Wal-Mart's self-proclaimed goal was to pay the rate that they wanted to for an equivalent employee. Frank meets that criteria only after training, and some time spent gaining the experience Joe has. If he is hired at the rate Joe was being paid, then it is not a win for Wal-Mart until Frank has been trained and gains equivalent experience. Before that point it is a loss.
Of course, part of that loss will be made up by paying Frank less than they paid Joe--as Joe's pay includes annual pay raises that a Trainee Frank won't be getting. On the other hand the high turnover of employees means that Frank may not stay that long, and then the process continues over and over again.
Wal-Mart comes close to winning, but not quite.
You're looking too long term, in hindsight. People don't live in the future, they live now, and have to make do with their best predictions.
If Walmart thought that they would lose out by replacing the striking worker, they wouldn't do it. They made the decision based on their best predictions. If they turn out to be wrong later, that's a mistake they can learn from, but it doesn't change anything about the original situation. They hadn't learned from it yet, because it hadn't happened.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Except when employees threaten to strike, they are 'forcing' boss to do what they wish, or trying to do so. Yet when boss says y is the compensation for x work, period...somehow we are not to consider this as 'forcing' employees to do what boss wants.
I'm still not sure why one is forcing and the other isn't.
Just checking in, Rakeesh: You saw my response to this in the earlier, post, right? Your confusion here is based on a misunderstanding of my point. I don't think that striking is forcing employers to do anything, except insofar as the government does, in face, literally force employers to do certain things when faced with a strike.
That's not intrinsic to strikes, though!
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: [QUOTE]I'm also not actually a libertarian, per se. Not the least reason being that I think the Non-Aggression Principle is so vague as to be meaningless, and is therefore useless.
- Under your moral system, are taxes at all morally legitimate?
- Why?
/addendum - a minority of libertarians follow the non aggression principle
Sure. Why wouldn't they be? In general I think that a good role for government (or an even more consent-based government-like analogue) is to create a basic framework of minimum consent to avoid violence, and try and defend the freedoms of its citizens. Even if the government thinks that freedom is immoral, as long as it isn't harming anyone else. Even a government like that would presumably need some funding, and some form of taxation or fee to its users/citizens would be in order.
Taxes generally don' scare me, though, Sam. I mean, I think our government is way too bloated and has a budget that's orders of magnitude bigger than it ought to be. So in that sense, if we solved that problem and shrank the size of government, then taxes could be reduced because costs would be reduced. But lower taxes would be a side effect of the solution, not the goal itself.
By the same token, in practical terms I'm much more concerned about the depth and breadth of the regulatory state than I am about the state of taxation. At a conference I once heard Peter Thiel say much the same thing. A paraphrase: "The effective tax rate on funds I would spend to purchase a technology that doesn't exist because of excess regulation is 100%." I thought that was a cute way of expressing it, and I largely agree with the sentiment.
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Its the same argument for taxes, you are "forced" to pay taxes for services that may benefit people you feel undeserving. But this is a legitimate part of the social compact; so union dues are also a legitimate for the same reasons, they form a integral part of the same social compact.
I think its also the same for social security? Part of you pay is deducted right to insure you and everyone else has some form of pension when you or they retire? If you gave the option to opt out the system would collapse.
So now we've gone from "Unions are great and everyone would choose unions given the chance" to "Unions provide vital services that few individuals recognize on a regular basis, so we need to compel everyone to be in a union," is that what you're saying?
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Point of question was to determine where you stood on the non-aggression principle, in effect.
In essence, the answer to "why wouldn't they be" is the non-aggression principle as a hard and fast moral rule.
You had previously described yourself as an anarcho-capitalist which is based on NAP being an ABSOLUTE and thus the state must be COMPLETELY ELIMINATED (the free market would presumably remain free through magic or something) because something like taxation is inherently immoral and cannot be permitted.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I've decided to put this thread through a word filter that changes the word unions to the word unicorns
quote:So now we've gone from "Unicorns are great and everyone would choose unicorns given the chance" to "Unicorns provide vital services that few individuals recognize on a regular basis, so we need to compel everyone to be in a unicorn," is that what you're saying?
these proposals are so much better
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I liked it till the end, when it took a turn for the weird and pornographic.
And yeah, I'm pretty sure when we talked about anarcho-capitalism before I clarified that I'm not actually a Smash-The-Statist, and in fact I think those people are not only wrong but significantly worse than, say, the average moderate Democrat or Republican in middle America.
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I know you hate unicorns, but remember, they are a great immunization against class warfare, Socialism, and Communism.
Are unicorns any less made up of a group of free individuals as businesses are? Of course not. So if a unicorn is negotiating a contract with a business it is as free to set limits and requirements, including the requirement that all employees hired by that business must join the unicorn. It could just as easily not put in that requirement. Obviously this would be against the unicorn's interests.
Walmart will fire you simply for daring to suggest the idea of a unicorn,
Unicorns are not awesome 100% of the time, but without them, workers would be in a great deal larger world of hurt.
He seems pretty hardcore to me when he says flat out that unicorns are "unnecessary" despite overwhelming historical evidence.
You know, there are no Unicorns in Bangladesh.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: He seems pretty hardcore to me when he says flat out that unicorns are "unnecessary" despite overwhelming historical evidence.
I think this one was my favorite.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Dan, since your ideas about "winning" in job loss scenarios have come up again, I thought I might pose the following again:
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:I know it might seem weird to that I would call a scenario in which someone loses their job "win/win," but it's predicated on the idea that one should have rational expectations, and using force to make other people give you what you want is wrong.
It's fundamentally the same way that it would be irrational for me to want Bill Gates to give me a billion dollars... just writ much, much smaller, and couched in sufficiently mild language that it seems more "reasonable."
What do you mean by "want"? The way I normally understand that term is synonymous with "desire," and I normally think that I desire X if I am happier if X happens than I am if X doesn't happen.
By that definition, I absolutely do want Gates to give me $1 billion. You seem to have another definition of wanting in mind. What is it?
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