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Transnational Thursday for January 25, 2024
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Notes -
There are obviously some state functions that are genuinely essential, or at least things that pretty much everyone wants, so I could see those having a meaningful impact. On the other hand, the idea of public health officials and other officious bureaucrats refusing to show up for work and expecting that this will move public opinion to their side is fairly hilarious from my generally economically libertarian perspective. Oh no, how could a restaurant possibly operate if we didn't have someone checking whether the milk was stored at the proper temperature? Surely this will result in thousands dead from food poisoning!
I would mostly expect this to demonstrate to the public that a lot of government jobs are people that are paid to annoy normal people.
One of the reforms Milei is trying to press through would actually make it harder for essential workers to strike at all, afaik currently there are no restrictions.
The standard move for these strikes used to be using all those non-working folks to block traffic and otherwise cause a ruckus, but Milei promised to arrest anyone who did that. Surprisingly, this seemingly hasn't led to any bad confrontations between the police and protestors.
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Health inspections are genuinely important but the idea that a strike lasting 12 hours would be noticed by all but the most essential workers is farcical.
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