Mark included a comment from Jim in his recent post that got me thinking
"Jim: I agree that a materialistic culture and uninvolved parents are part of the problem, but it's pretty discouraging (although not surprising) to hear a teacher blithely dismiss the massive problems with union cronyism, self-interest, protection of terrible teachers, and total unconcern with educational outcomes."
The attitude Jim ascribes to teachers depicts perfectly the libertarian attitude of business.
(First order of business: you cannot argue that unions are somehow more corrupt than corporations. Enron, Wall Street and the crash of 2008, and hundreds of other examples indicate no sector of human activity is immune to corruption.)
Business is rife with cronyism (CEOs now all sit on each other compensation committees, which is why CEO salaries have skyrocketed faster than their workers' salaries in the last 30 years). Business leaders hire their sons, brothers, wives, pals and cronies all the time. Somehow that's all okay because, well, it's business.
The libertarian ideal is "enlightened self-interest." Self-interest is the lynch-pin of libertarian ideology. Nobody does anything for altruistic reasons in the money-grubbing world of the Rands Ayn and Paul. Why should union worker be any different?
Terrible businesses constantly battle regulations, which is how we protect society from corporations that have unsafe working conditions, release toxins and industrial waste into the environment that affect the health of us and our children, create unsafe products that hurt those that use them, and so on.
And businesses are totally unconcerned with broader societal outcomes resulting from their output: Pepsi and McDonalds create products that actively harm the health of the American people by making us fat, dumb and diabetic. Oil companies and car companies conspire to produce and fuel machines that pollute the air in our cities, killing people with emphysema, heart attacks and asthma. Cigarette companies make products that they know without doubt cause lung cancer. Power companies burn coal containing mercury that gets into our lakes and river, that we know causes irreparable damage to unborn children.
Yet these corporations are held up as noble captains of industry while unions are reviled as scum. Why is it right for corporations to be totally driven by self-interest and profit, and totally wrong for unionized teachers to have those same motivations?
When you come right down to it, unions are basically corporations run by the workers themselves, rather than some wealthy elite. Union workers are selling their labor for maximum profit, exactly the same way that oil companies sell gas.
Why all the hate for unions if they are, at their core, exactly the same as corporations except that they are investing their blood, sweat and tears instead of their capital? Why shouldn't they get as much as they can? That's just business, after all.
I just don't get American workers. So many are deathly opposed to unions, yet unions are really no different from corporations, except that they work to make the workers wealthier instead of the owners. Most American hourly workers suffer under a third-world serfdom, rather than the egalitarian European model.
Are Americans just afraid to buck the companies for fear of retribution? Is all the brave anti-union rhetoric really just them buckling under to corporate overlords who rule by some divine right of kings? People seem to think that hourly workers don't deserve to make a decent living.
It just doesn't make sense. Unions are made up of the workers. They can ultimately control the union, since the union is them. In most corporations the vast majority of hourly workers have no say. Workers don't have a vote in how the company runs at all. The only control they have is to quit. And in this economy, that's no control at all.
Only when hourly workers are united in unions do they have enough power to control their own fates, when they have enough power to make the corporations deal with their concerns. (This is of course different for certain kinds of high-demand, high-skill salaried workers like managers, marketers, and engineers, who often rise through the ranks to eventually run corporations.)
Why are so many Americans satisfied with being wage slaves? Where's their gumption? Where's their enlightened self interest?
7 comments:
Wage slaves again?
Who pointed a gun at your head and made you work for less money than you freely agreed to work for?
I get the impression you were a big time union guy - always using the job rules to make sure you didn't do any more than the contract required. And then bitched about how abused you were as a worker.
You're absolutely right Nikto. Unions, governments and private sector corporations share an identical tendency toward corruption and cronyism, for exactly the same reasons. So what's the difference?
We aren't all union members, or private sector employees, or government employees. But we are all consumers. And as consumers, we normally have choices. If I'm mad at BP, I can buy gas from Shell. If I don't like the way Microsoft does business, I can buy from Apple, or vice versa. I can hit them where they live, in the money. Same thing goes as an employee, I can work for Apple instead of Microsoft as well.
If I don't like the way a government does business, my only choices are to leave the country or become a complete outcast.
Unions... on the face of it, you'd think I have all the same options with a union that I have with any other corporation. But when you stop and think about it, that's only true in a right to work state. (Something you oppose, right?) In union states, my only options as an employee are to leave the state or change careers. As a consumer, my only choices are to leave the state or do without the product entirely, I can't get it at any price from a non-union competitor because there aren't any. With government employee unions it gets even worse, not only is competition not allowed, I'm required to foot the bill through taxation. As a consumer I can pay a private teacher in addition, but the teacher I disapprove of and refuse to use his services... well I am still required by law to pay for him, aren't I?
We control the unions... sheesh, what have you been smoking? In many states, union dues are taken from your check automatically. In some cases that happens if you work a particular job, whether you're a union member or not. Regardless, you have no say in how that money is spent, do you? Yes, you get to vote in union elections... how often does that happen? You get to choose whether you are satisfied with your employer and those businesses where you spend your money every day, or every time you buy that product or service. More to the point, even if a majority likes Microsoft, I can still buy Apple. With a union if more people like a particular result that I dislike, I'm stuck with it until at least the next election, no?
Not to mention elections can be tweaked for a particular result. I'm not accusing unions of this any more than anyone else, but the point is that it's a lot harder for Microsoft to rig things so that when I buy an Apple, it's still Microsoft that gets my money.
And then again, I have never been required to "slow down, you're making everyone else look bad" anywhere except on a union job. Personally, that's my big problem with unions, in terms of whether or not I'd join one. I'm not putting up with someone telling me I am prohibited from doing my best work.
You can call yourself "pro worker" all you like... but you'll understand if I read that as "anti consumer", huh? 'Cos that's precisely what it is.
If I don't like the way a government does business, my only choices are to leave the country or become a complete outcast.
Or you could get involved in the political process and effect change rather than waste time on this fourth rate blog. Isn't that just what the Tea Party is doing? It seems to me that they have achieve a certain degree of success with many newly elected freshmen in the House and a few in the Senate.
And your example of the private sector is amusing. The free market...where the consumer is in complete control and CEOs bow down before us. What a fucking fantasy land you live in. As I have said many times, the libertarian fantasy is no less ridiculous than the socialist fantasy.
Remember when teachers, public employees, unions, Planned Parenthood, NPR, and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401k's, took billions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves millions in bonuses, gave unlimited and undisclosed amounts of money to politicians, and paid no taxes?
Oh wait. That never fucking happened. The people that are actually responsible are anti consumer.
Only when hourly workers are united in unions do they have enough power to control their own fates, when they have enough power to make the corporations deal with their concerns.
Valid point and historically have helped great deal. However, there is a point in time where the worker's concerns become untenable in the market and begin to sink the ship.
If union labor can justify their high costs with substantial benefits in quality workmanship and efficiency, business would be clamoring for their services. Unfortunately, this isn't the case for many firms which is why union jobs are heading to non-union labor, right-to-work states, and foreign countries.
Unions are great for workers when the balance of scales is tipped too far in favor of businesses but the reverse it true when it has tipped the other way. Businesses either adapt or die and if there is no profit motive, capital owners move to other ventures and the business dies. There is the market force at work.
"What a fucking fantasy land you live in."
Way to sharpen those debating skills Marxy.
Tell him he is a corporate cock-sucker like your friend reverend Jim.
Funny how all your examples of corporations "forcing us to _____" are either:
1. Corporations using government as their agent, because they aren't allowed to use force otherwise (such as Centerpoint).
2. Corporations granted authority to act as agents of government themselves (such as Blackwater).
3. Corporations using salesmanship and economic pressure, just like everyone else who is trying to make a living. In other words, it's not actually force.
As for your "remember when"... notice how all of that bad stuff is either an example of a government agency that was already tasked with oversight before the bad thing happened and failed to do their job (such as the SEC or the MMS), or something you actually don't object to when someone you like benefits from it (such as undisclosed and unlimited donations to Obama)?
To be sure, I don't make a point to read every word you write here, but somehow I missed out on you demanding jail time for members of the SEC and the MMS. Or are you suggesting that when someone offers a bribe to a cop and the cop takes it, the person offering it is responsible but the cop is not?
Way to kill a thread anonymous. Thanks.
Mark has a lot more to say, and you are using FACTS again. Why would he bother to make up things when you will just check them anyway?
You must suck the corporate cock like Mark's enemies always do.
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