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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   1728 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 25, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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