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> You cannot just look the other way and pretend there is still free choice when these people are captive and not even able to search for a new job. Holding pe

by jules 9y ago

> You cannot just look the other way and pretend there is still free choice when these people are captive and not even able to search for a new job. Holding people captive is the opposite of voluntary. > Here are a few examples to start with First example: Colorado National Guard massacres workers who refuse to work. Second example: a company, working together with the sheriff, kidnaps and kills people who refuse to work. These examples do not show that the dispossessed have to resort to physical violence because that's their only resort left. The physical violence was initiated by the companies working together with the government. Just read the description on Wikipedia: > Those who went on strike were promptly evicted from their company homes, and they moved to tent villages prepared by the union. The tents were built on wood platforms and furnished with cast iron stoves on land leased by the union in preparation for a strike. So far so good. > Baldwin–Felts had a reputation for aggressive strike breaking. Agents shone searchlights on the tent villages at night and fired bullets into the tents at random, occasionally killing and maiming people. They used an improvised armored car, mounted with a machine gun the union called the "Death Special" to patrol the camp's perimeters. The steel-covered car was built in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company plant in Pueblo, Colorado from the chassis of a large touring sedan. Frequent sniper attacks on the tent colonies drove the miners to dig pits beneath the tents where they and their families could be better protected. The workers were using their right to refuse to work! What the workers needed was precisely government enforcement of the law that you can't just go around shooting people. This is the exact opposite of what you implied it was.

s73ver_ 9y ago
>> You cannot just look the other way and pretend there is still free choice when these people are captive and not even able to search for a new job. >Holding people captive is the opposite of voluntary. Yet, you were saying that compelling me to work 20 hours a day, which would effectively give me no time at all to find another job, was perfectly fine and still voluntary.
- jules 9y ago
  You don't see the difference between physically keeping you captive and offering you a job for 20 hours per day?
pyrale 9y ago
You did not follow my advice: rather than fixating on the violence, look at what happened before: these workers effectively lived in cities where the only jobs available were those provided by the mine owners. In the case of Ludlow, despite it being illegal, they were paid in script money. This means they could only buy from the company, and only what the company would sell to them. The pay incentive system, which only rewarded coal extracted and not, consolidation work led to deadly work operations. Curfews could be imposed in the city by the authority, which was also the landlord, employer and provider of every other service. In that context, claiming that a choice is possible for miners is an illusion. And as many examples illustrate, physical violence is merely one more step which can not perceived as fundamentally different from the previous ones. This is why this violence was the natural next move whenever miners tried to unionize.
- jules 9y ago
  Why is that relevant when the violence was initiated by the company?
  - pyrale 9y ago
    It is relevant because there is more to violence than merely physically harming people. Forcing people to use script money when it's not legal is a form of violence, even if they can leave town. Forcing curfew is a form of violence. Refusing to pay workers for work that isn't related directly to profit, but to workers' safety is a form of violence and endangerment, even though it's the miner that still decides he needs that job so much it's worth taking the risk. Once you've piled up all these kinds of domination schemes, it becomes hard for the owner to actually discern the difference between all of this and physical violence ; it is also a process of dehumanization that makes it much harder to consider the workers deserve safety. Therefore, violence that goes as far as deportation, mutilation or death becomes acceptable. My point being, there is no instance of unfettered relations of power that don't end up like that. I believe there's a large corpus of work on the various areas involved here, if you want a specific precision, I can try to find relevant infos.
    - 9y ago

by jules 9y ago

s73ver_ 9y ago

>> You cannot just look the other way and pretend there is still free choice when these people are captive and not even able to search for a new job. >Holding people captive is the opposite of voluntary. Yet, you were saying that compelling me to work 20 hours a day, which would effectively give me no time at all to find another job, was perfectly fine and still voluntary.

jules 9y ago
You don't see the difference between physically keeping you captive and offering you a job for 20 hours per day?

pyrale 9y ago

You did not follow my advice: rather than fixating on the violence, look at what happened before: these workers effectively lived in cities where the only jobs available were those provided by the mine owners. In the case of Ludlow, despite it being illegal, they were paid in script money. This means they could only buy from the company, and only what the company would sell to them. The pay incentive system, which only rewarded coal extracted and not, consolidation work led to deadly work operations. Curfews could be imposed in the city by the authority, which was also the landlord, employer and provider of every other service. In that context, claiming that a choice is possible for miners is an illusion. And as many examples illustrate, physical violence is merely one more step which can not perceived as fundamentally different from the previous ones. This is why this violence was the natural next move whenever miners tried to unionize.

jules 9y ago
Why is that relevant when the violence was initiated by the company?
- pyrale 9y ago
  It is relevant because there is more to violence than merely physically harming people. Forcing people to use script money when it's not legal is a form of violence, even if they can leave town. Forcing curfew is a form of violence. Refusing to pay workers for work that isn't related directly to profit, but to workers' safety is a form of violence and endangerment, even though it's the miner that still decides he needs that job so much it's worth taking the risk. Once you've piled up all these kinds of domination schemes, it becomes hard for the owner to actually discern the difference between all of this and physical violence ; it is also a process of dehumanization that makes it much harder to consider the workers deserve safety. Therefore, violence that goes as far as deportation, mutilation or death becomes acceptable. My point being, there is no instance of unfettered relations of power that don't end up like that. I believe there's a large corpus of work on the various areas involved here, if you want a specific precision, I can try to find relevant infos.
  - 9y ago