- Hot
- New
- Categories...
- Producer's Lounge
- Producer's Vault
- The Gulch: Live! (New)
- Ask the Gulch!
- Going Galt
- Books
- Business
- Classifieds
- Culture
- Economics
- Education
- Entertainment
- Government
- History
- Humor
- Legislation
- Movies
- News
- Philosophy
- Pics
- Politics
- Science
- Technology
- Video
- The Gulch: Best of
- The Gulch: Bugs
- The Gulch: Feature Requests
- The Gulch: Featured Producers
- The Gulch: General
- The Gulch: Introductions
- The Gulch: Local
- The Gulch: Promotions
- Marketplace
- Members
- Store
- More...
All of the issues unions were originally supposed to have been created for have been not just addressed, but over addressed in the morass of law and regulations we have to deal with.
As in any collectivist action the end product is always at best mediocre.
never been in a union. I used not to believe in unions
at all; still, Ayn Rand, in "The Fountainhead", was somewhat satiric in presenting a character named
Jules Fougler, who called himself (emphasis on
called himself) an individualist and said he did-
n't like unions. I do not think the government
should give unions any power in the private
sector. As to the public sector, and long as the
government is supported by enforced taxation,
its employees should not be allowed to be in
unions in those jobs. If the government did
not give unions any power, then, in case of a
strike, I guess it would not be a violation of
rights, whichever side won. But that is not how
it is at present. The unions have too much
power, which the government has given them.
People who use Force are prosecuted, but only Government is allowed.
http://www.plusaf.com/linkedin/linked-in...
:) Exactly what I've been thinking and saying for years! In a few bright glimmers, it almost seems like those ideas are starting to gain traction in the mass media... :)
Unions are 100% collectivist.
Jobs DO NOT belong to the workers, Jobs BELONG to and are the sole property of the "business" or "business-owner."
Unionization happens usually as a result of government intervention in the market, ironically enough. Whether that is due to restrictive trade agreements, environmental permitting (a huge one), or a host of other taxes or special preferences, Unions always fall apart when there is true competition both for labor and for products because the extra overhead necessary to run a union and use union labor eventually gets squeezed out by customers seeking better value.
Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" was one of the most ridiculously cause-and-effect examples of this, though definitely not as the author thought. Why did unionization take over in the early 30's? Again - thank governmental rules and regulations like the creation of the FDA.
They can fire, hire, offer to pay whatever, offer health benefits or make everyone 1099 contractor. The job exists at the total behest of the business owner, not the employee.
When the workers own management, it's called unionization. When management owns the workers it's called slavery. It's that middle ground where both respect each other that we call capitalism.
As the business owner is was MY choice when to hire, the duration of the employment, and was based on mutual agreement between me, and the person I hired.
Management does not own the worker, nor did I suggest any such thing. I stated the business OWNS the Job, not the person who fills that Job.
That job could be filled by any of the applicants the Business owner chooses. Not at My behest because I want the job.
The Job, exists because of the employer, not because of people who want a job. If someone fills that job, they are trading their time to the employer for compensation.
The job exists because of the market. Then both employer (providing capital) and employee (providing labor) work to satisfy the market and reap a profit.
There is no proverbial market, only a task I want fulfilled, that I want to pay someone else to do. I OWN THE JOB.
Same is true of business. The minute you "think" that somehow the job is owned by the employee, you have deviated seriously from "Objectivism."
What I am doing is not relevant. The fact that I as a business owner, have "something" whereby I want someone else to perform a task no matter what that task is. means that I own that job, not the person filling the task whatever that task is.
That job exists because I as the employer CHOOSE to have someone else fill a task either I cannot do or do not want to do or do not have time myself to do. Again, I OWN the job.
The Job exists regardless of whether there is anyone willing to fill it or not. The "Job" exists simply because "I" as the individual wanting something done had deemed a "task" of some sort needs accomplished, be it moving dirt or installing a 500 million dollar IT system.
Take the kids and a perfect example. I have a "Job", the "Job" is to move 6 tons of dirt to the back of my property. If I do the "Job", or hire someone, the "Job" exists simply because I have a task I need completed.
I offer the neighbor $5.00/ hour to move my dirt. he says no, that is not enough money. The job still exists, say if an illegal immigrant wants it and is willing to do it for $5.00/hr. If I have no takers, and the dirt stays there for 6 months and starts growing weeds, "I" still have the job, it is MY job, I OWN the job.
I decide that I will pay $10.00 per hour for someone and take an add in Craig's list. I get 50 people who will move the dirt at that rate. The Job is still mine to either hire someone or not, and who I give it to.
I decide that I do not want to pay someone and I do the "Job" myself. No matter how you slice it, cut it, dice it, the Job is MINE not yours. In fact my wife has a LOT of jobs for me to do, that have not been done for years. Job still exists and there was NO mutual agreement on when I would or if I would do it.
First, DEFINE "JOB", get Agreement, and go from there in some logical fashion. Neither of you have done that, yet.
Sorry.
I suggest that the 'job flight' is/was caused by free-market opportunities created by competition from Other Countries to offer 'good enough labor and quality' at lower prices than were being demanded and struck for in the US.
I put forth the idea that Obama's and Congress' ire about corporations' relocating their HQs to other countries is just another, similar version of "competition," and Obama and unions HATE competition where they might lose power.
Hm?
The ringer in those "laws" was the "binding arbitration" crap. The result of all that has virtually destroyed American auto & machinery industries and more. Had the CEO's of such industries played some Atlas Shrugged things would have been different. Look at GM, broke but bailed out (by the taxpayers and investors, go figger!) and now building it's Cadillacs in China. Ditto Chrysler and Caterpillar.
My main point was/is that ALWAYS 'tis GOVERNment lying at the root of such problems. Corporate entities need to learn to say NO and mean it!
When I search for 'root cause,' though, I keep coming up with VOTERS being essentially 'stupid enough to vote those folks into office,' and not those 'guys in office' alone!
They're being measured and encouraged to behave the (stupid, counterproductive) way they do by the voters who elect them and the MONEY that helps them get elected by convincing stupid voters to vote for them (Whatever The Source Of The Money Is!).
Btw, I recommend Hazlitt's book very often!
About the Cadillacs in China thing... If GM can make them cheaper IN China FOR the growing market of affluent people IN China who might have different preferences for options IN their cars IN China... I'm sure as hell not going to fault GM management for moving manufacturing or marketing FOR China TO China... :) That, from a corporate governance point of view, would seem downright silly!
One could make the obvious comparison to any 'foreign manufacturer' making product for US markets which inflict similar shipping delays and cultural disconnects that work the other way around on Them!
Governments are the Root Cause. always. Voters are born with the same "intelligence" as anyone else, thus they are not "stupid", but become brainwashed into what is, in effect, forgoing their very Right to Life by the GOVERNment's "educational" system, now totally directed toward the BS of "sacrifice" for the "greater good" Seems to me that it's impossible to read Ayn Rand and not get that message!
Without having and using the Force of Government, Collectivism in any form could not exist, now could it?
As to GM, it's management bent over to union demands and thus went bankrupt. So then GOVERNment bailed it out, with monies stolen from WE taxpayers, claiming that somehow it was "too big to fail", and screwing it's stockholders in the process. Chrysler almost the same, partnering up first with Mercedes and now Fiat. I don't know all about Ford, but it has moved much of it's manufacturing to Mexico and Canada. I really don't much care if companies move -- their first order of business is profits and thus survival, but again it's GOVERNment which is again the root cause, which has turned America down from the greatest producer in this world to something like #27 in the world. We are now left with the spoils, the burger GNP.
I actually agree with you, Dean, and what I flippantly call 'voter stupidity' is what I believe to be just what you describe: average folks who've drunk the Kool-Aid supplied by parents, teachers and government agencies and representatives (and movie stars) who've never learned the benefits of real Critical Thinking ... for whatever reason.
I do believe, though, that, while it easily appears that Government is the 'root cause,' my style of Critical Thinking (or what some folks call the Socratic Method, I think...) encourages me to keep asking "Well, WHY is THAT the case?!"
I don't think Government IS THE root cause! I think it's evolved into a Prime Mover and Power Center for the evils we discuss here, but I also think that THAT Happened for Reasons which should be examined and peeled back, layer by layer, like a huge onion. Tears and all.
Funny thing about America no longer being The Producer Of/For The World, too... Other countries have held that mantle and handed it on to others. A decade or two ago I had a similar image appear for me in the world of software and computer Operating Systems. Back when Linux first voiced its birth cries in the huge shadow of Mainframe Systems.
People thought Linux and its offspring would never amount to anything. I disagreed, drawing a diagram with Linux in the lower left, Mainframe OS's in the upper right, and several other flavors of operating systems 'on the line' connecting those two.
What I realized was that, as each of the operating systems and environments added features and functionality to compete with mainframes, their 'position' would move vertically upward, where the vertical scale was exactly that... features and functions... until, some years in the future, they'd be on an almost horizontal line of features/functions.
Some time after that, I had the epiphany that industrialization of countries seemed to follow a similar trend... Manufacturers migrated to any country where the workers had sufficient education and skills to be productive and less expensive than whatever/wherever preceded them!
I watched as US manufacturing migrated to China, China 'offshored' their manufacturing to places like Vietnam, Cambodia and others, and the image came to mind that this was exactly like a line of dominoes tipping against each other and falling in order....
And the Last Domino would be somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa.
And that's EXACTLY what developed over the past several decades, exactly as I predicted.
But the Final Situation is interesting... if all Operating Systems have similar functions, features, resilience, etc., how do you choose one over the others?
Similarly, as decades pass and the Manufacturing dominoes keep falling, what happens when ALL of the dominoes are lying flat and just about every country that could have been tapped for cheap labor has an educated workforce demanding higher pay, cars, houses, TVs and a big refrigerator (and fast internet service)?
They all become more homogeneous and they ALL lose their cost-advantages over their previous 'competitors.'
Companies (and programmers) will have to adapt their business plans to that kind of new environment, and I don't think ANYONE is thinking that far ahead at this time. When 'that time comes,' only the ones who've thought ahead will survive, in pure Darwinian, Capitalistic Competitive fashion.
Long after I'm dead and gone, probably, but inevitably, as I see it.
One of the things that I find hilarious is that O, our "Fearless Leader" and all of the Brain Trust in Congress and around DC can't seem to understand that, not only do Companies compete for market share, COUNTRIES are also in a Competitive Market, and them with more corporate-friendly environments will ALSO beat the ones that are more 'user-hostile' to companies than they are. Witness the current flap in DC about corporations migrating out of the US 'to save on taxes.'
The DC "intelligentsia" can not comprehend that this 'market,' too, is competitive and any efforts on their part to regulate or control it (as a monopoly for their own country's benefit) will, in the end, fail miserably.
I think the Loss of Critical Thinking (if there ever was any much of it in my lifetime) is Root Cause of most of these problems, but I'll be damned if I know how to effectively reverse the tide.
Cheers, and good luck. Live Long, Prosper, Shrug, Survive.
The web is overflowing with such.
Having passed 100 points now, I just made "contact" to gripe about profiles which are available only to "Producers". That doesn't work for me, so unless I receive a positive response, I'm outta here, sorry.
My work is done at http://no-ruler.net so see me there if you like.
You can find annoyance and maybe some amusement at my personal site, http://www.plusaf.com , if you wish, too.
Cheers!
I downvoted your subsequent repetitions of this for beating the point into the ground.
I agree with this, but be careful how looters see this. Jobs are very hard to create. I have occassionally talked to people who act as if getting capital, finding customers, setting up a system, finding talent, motivating people are easy, and the owner can just push a button and, poof, more jobs appear. It's only reasonable to hire people if they make more money than they cost, so business owners want to create as many jobs as possible.
"Every market participant is somewhat "sovereign", but is answerable to those with whom he wants to trade. "
That sums up a lot in once sentence.
Look at percentage or numbers of union memberships over the past five or ten decades. Notice any trends?
Back in the 70's, UAW was striking for 25$+/hour wages for what I called 'lug nut tighteners' on GM's production lines when I was dragging down a basic salary barely into double digits per hour with a BSEE.
Fast-forward a few decades and look at the degree of automation that replaced tons more UAW employees than outsourcing did even after that! They cut their own throats with their demands! And now we should all feel guilt or sympathy for the beleaguered Unions?
Meh!
Or for the past 8 years, 2007, 2015 (or whatever else), and column format.
"About Zero%"?! Information or Data Source, please?!
I suppose you believe that the unemployment rate is also under 6%?!
Those GDP numbers do not account for the massive increase in debt, or the inflationary effect of creating $1 trillion per year in fiat money. If you want to reference that to GDP, OK, fine, that means that you create a 6 to 7% inflation via the printing press to get a 2+% apparent increase in GDP. That sounds like we lost 4 or 5% to me. It is for precisely this reason why Galt's Gulch had a gold standard in AS.
Unemployment has lots of slices, but most 'numbers' take just one kind of slice and assume that everyone understands the characteristics and limits of that slice. Sure...
GDP can, I trust, have multiple 'definitions' too, and that cuts both ways on this discussion, also.
Here's one such 'definition' from Wikipedia, and it doesn't, at least at the top, seem to include debt... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domes... .
If you include debt, I'd love to see a chart, or better, a graph of how it's changed over the decades.
Same for "unemployment," as nowadays people try or want to include "searching for work, 'underemployed,' and other kinds of 'unemployed people' " in the numbers, but those numbers rarely seem to be broken out separately, but just rolled into the total (or NOT rolled in,) depending on the point they're trying to make.
And I hate that. I think we need to 'call them on it' when folks put forth "data" like that without including definitions or assumptions, even briefly.
Thanks!
:)
Remember though the socialist triumverate is corporatists, statists and union leaders. The members are just cannon fodder
That being said, I know there are problems in refineries, but its from a combination of unions and the government that has created it. The unions lock-out the ability for non-union workers to be used for additive labor, so to 'add' labor is a lifelong commitment for the employer.
Second, the refineries are all running at 120% capacity... when was the last time you heard of a refinery being built? most of them have been here since the 70's... the EPA makes new permitting pretty much impossible, so they keep adding capacity to existing facilities and running them around the clock.
Getting the government to take some ownership in that problem would never happen though, not under this regime. Likewise, the Bush family wouldn't help the situation either, as the refinery companies are making a lot of money by over-subscribing the capacity of existing facilities, the last thing they 'really' want is competition.
Accidents though have become commonplace, I don't blame the workers themselves for being uncomfortable. We just had a massive explosion in the SF Bay Area last year at the ancient Chevron facility in Richmond. Pretty much all of them seem to have an explosion/toxic cloud/flame-off issue every year or so.
Its the kind of environment where you really don't want people on the job for 12 hour days 9-days straight or something, there is an interest in public safety there... Since they are always at major ports, its not like they are in the middle of nowhere either.
Step one: insist in all negotiations that a significant amount of compensation come in the form of stock ownership in the company you work for. Step two: divorce the company from providing "benefits" beyond cash -- the Union can organize individually managed retirement and healthcare accounts/plans (or the individual can invest a reasonable portion of his/her salary in retirement and in healthcare plans that provide what s/he wants in the form of healthcare (without any agency mandating what they have to have -- for example, I'm 57 years old and very responsible, I don't need maternity coverage; As a trained and experience Mental Health Professional I do not believe substance abuse issues are "diseases" thus I do not need substance abuse "coverage." Thus, I would not chose insurance plans that have such. I understand others might feel more comfortable having such coverage and they are free to buy such as market value.)
Thus, workers gain a stake in the companies success and individuals learn the value of the "free" benefits they currently sacrifice compensation they could be receiving in cash. At the micro level individual workers gain significant increases in salary and control over some very important aspects of their future. Unions are forced to "retool" to become better stewards of the trust workers place in them. At the macro level, vast amounts of investment occurs as individual workers actively involve themselves in the Capital end of Capitalism and the price of healthcare is reduced radically.
Lastly, and most importantly for this experiment in freedom, the forces unleashed will force the government to repeal the 16th Amendment and pass a more rational tax process (i.e. the FairTax Act).
Of course, sometimes even they get infested with unions. Which makes me giggle. Let's hear it for moochers eating their own young!
My guess is that the Union members are noticing things that management are completely blind to and the "grievances" are the only way that they know how to express themselves collectively.
Unless there is a middle-man to help management to understand and address their concerns they have been indoctrinated into thinking that a strike is the only recourse.