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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28472 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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You make a good point. Strictly speaking an economic analysis of this stuff should be culture-free, with no implicit notion that the employers are conscientious, bright and noble and their employees are parasitic drag-em-downs. They are just two groups of actors engaged in contractual dispute/process. Whatever emerges from that just is the market. There's no reason why a victorious union should not be thought of as the clever, superior stock of human capital.

But the US-style Daniel Plainview conservativism always leaks its way in.

Unions aren’t market forced and are protected by the government. Market forces would be the company paying the marginal wage to get to equilibrium for the workers they need which is often fairly high.

If unions can be influential enough to get government protection, then that is something the market must take into account.

The market only exists in this form itself because of government protection so complaining unions get it too is just special pleading.

In other words there are other factors than market forces to be accounted for. They are neither more nor less legitimate than the market itself.

Markets are natural. They come up organically. People who specialize in one thing want to trade with people who specialize elsewhere.

The only thing govs do for markers is prevent crime.

And give a resolution process for fraud,and theft and IP infractions. And ensure they abide by rules that the public want enforced, and build the roads the product moves on, and educate the workers the company employs and so on and so on.

A modern market is not the same as two farmers haggling over how many chickens per bushel of wheat. It is, like it or not reliant on the government.

A market can exist without government but it wouldn't be this market with all the advantages that entails. You must take the rough with the smooth.

Ya so we agree to pay taxes. But end of day the market is still free people agreeing to transactions. That’s not true with unions

Also the issues you described don’t apply to Ford. Whose making a fraudulent ford.

I’m all game for attacking tech firms who the issues you describe apply to.

But it is free people voting for politicians who enact pro union laws. Just as legitimate as the market itself.

Unions are as much market forces as the entire edifice of corporations and business, which are also protected by government.

This idea that all the weird and specific permutations of business ownership is natural oh but unions are artificial and imposed by government is wrong.

So if it weren’t explicitly illegal to fire workers for trying to form a Union, retaliate against those who do or replace striking workers with no requirements on taking back strikers, would unions exist?

Companies existed well before governments mandated the form. There were businesses in every civilization that ever existed. They are perfectly natural and able to exist without a state to protect them.

The Union is weird in that they are fully created and defended by government laws with few versions of them existing in places that don’t have those carve outs. Guilds existed in the dark ages, but that’s really as close as you get.

The first recorded strike action was of construction workers on a pharaoh’s tomb, IIRC. Something tells me that Bronze Age god kings did not have laws against firing workers for organizing.

So if it weren’t explicitly illegal to fire workers for trying to form a Union, retaliate against those who do or replace striking workers with no requirements on taking back strikers, would unions exist?

Do you think unions simply spontaneously popped to being after it became illegal to fire workers?

If I've understood correctly, basic union protections became a thing in the United States with Wagner Act in 1935, and unions (AFL, IWW etc.) obviously existed before that already.

The Union is weird in that they are fully created and defended by government laws with few versions of them existing in places that don’t have those carve outs

Unions are not created by the government. Workers must vote to unionize a workplace. Unions existed back when unionizing was illegal, and laws simply protect the right to unionize.

Well, yes, and if the government hadn’t created those laws unions would not exist. Even the right to hold an election in the workplace, during work hours is given to the unions by the government. What other activities and social obligations does your boss have to give you time during the workday for, or force employers to provide time and space for? You cannot even force employers to allow regular voting on their campus during work hours, but they’re forced by law to allow the union vote.

Where would employers prefer the election take place? At the union hall, where a majority is guaranteed to vote to form a union? Isn't it to the benefit of employers to hold the election on site, during working hours?

Anarchism has never worked, what are you speaking about when you say "able to exist without a state to protect them"?

Anyway that is not really relevant. The fact is that companies get some advantages from modern states. They are more prosperous when the state protects them. So they have to accept the downsides that come with this prosperity.

One could imagine in certain circumstances a non government backed union. But it would be very different.

I think some states have unions in the trades where you can hire a union electrician or a non union electrician. Since there is still free trade the union can’t withhold service to boost wages.

But in that situation the union can provide things like training, quality checks, various insurance etc and to employers during maybe a few week project they can just asks the union for people and not have to have full time electricians on staff or deal with training, insurance, quality, etc.

Yep. Effectively guilds. There can be benefits. The problem arises when government puts a huge thumb on the scale.

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