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Seems like discussions about unions never get more nuanced than: "unions are good" or "unions are bad". I wish such topics could be more about learning from th

Seems like discussions about unions never get more nuanced than: "unions are good" or "unions are bad". I wish such topics could be more about learning from the pros and cons of different systems and figuring out new solutions.

f00_ 9y ago
The labor struggle has been so propagandized that it's impossible to talk about. Unions are about organizing to allow people to control their economic destiny. They've been violently repressed since the very beginning. The right-wing ideology of Reagan/Thatcher is prevalent, this hate of government and worship of the state subsidized corporate managers that control society. Anyways, I love the music in Dustforce, i'll leave you with a Chomsky quote "The U.S. is different from Europe and other industrial countries in this respect. The U.S. is, to a very unusual extent, a business-run society. There are all kinds of reasons for that — it has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here. There are a lot of reasons. But the fact of the matter is that the U.S. is run by an unusually class-conscious, dedicated business class that has a very violent labor history, much worse than in Europe. The attack on unions has been far more extreme here, and it has been much more successful. Also, the business propaganda has been far more successful. Anti-union propaganda has been considerably more successful here than in Europe, even among working people who would benefit [from] unions. In fact, a rather striking aspect of business propaganda in the United States is the demonization of government, starting after the Second World War. The Second World War ended with a radicalization of the population in the United States and everywhere else, and called for all kinds of things like popular takeovers, government intervention, and worker takeovers of factories. Business propagated a tremendous propaganda offensive. The scale surprised me when I read the scholarship — it’s enormous, and it’s been very effective. There were two major targets: one is unions, the other is democracy. Well, [to them] democracy means getting people to regard government as an alien force that’s robbing them and oppressing them, not as their government. In a democracy it would be your government. For example, in a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you’re getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on. In the United States, it’s a day of mourning because this alien force — the government — is coming to rob you of your hard-earned money. That’s the general attitude, and it’s a tremendous victory for the opponents of democracy, and, of course, any privileged sector is going to hate democracy. You can see it in the healthcare debate. The majority of the population thinks that if the government runs healthcare, they’re going to take away your freedom. At the same time, the public favors a national healthcare program. The contradiction is somehow unresolved. In the case of the business propaganda, it’s particularly ironic because while business wants the population to hate the government, they want the population to love the government. Namely, they’re in favor of a very powerful state which works in their interest. So you have to love that government, but hate the government that might work in your interest and that you could control. That’s an interesting propaganda task, but it’s been carried out very well. You can see it in the worship of Reagan, which portrays him as somebody who saved us from government. Actually he was an apostle of big government. Government grew under Reagan. He was the strongest opponent of free markets in the post-war history among presidents. But it doesn’t matter what the reality is; they concocted an image that you worship. It’s hard to achieve that, especially in a free society, but it’s been done, and that’s the kind of thing that activists in the IWW have to work against, right on the shop floor. It’s not so simple, but it’s been done before." https://chomsky.info/20091120/ https://chomsky.info/20091120/
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  I hadn't seen that Chomsky quote but he sounds completely delusional. And I'm from Europe. I'm aware of no country democratic or not where paying taxes is a "day of celebration". I have never seen anyone celebrating paying taxes. To believe that in other countries people love taxes and government, and the USA is uniquely special in this being not the case, makes me wonder to what extent Chomsky really understood the world at all. Nor does Chomsky appear to understand conservative philosophy. He simply divides the world, Marx-style, into "workers" and "business owners" and then assumes business owners must hate democracy because taxes. The actual divide is between conservative and leftist, and conservatives like their government small and local i.e. the opposite of Federal. Many business owners happen to be conservative but so do many workers, as the number of Trump voters in former rust belt states will attest. Chomsky can't even stay consistent on what this strawman of "business owners" actually want - he starts out by claiming they hate democracy (=government) and then later claims they both hate and love government at the same time. Not surprisingly after inventing a non-existent class of people with non-existent beliefs, he then struggles to understand them. And this guy is supposed to be some great intellectual. Sad. Thomas Sowell has far greater understanding of the political philosophies and views that divide the people.
  - WatermelonApe 9y ago
    He's practically a Marxist if you weren't previously aware. There are plenty of "intellectuals" who are highly regarded in academia and also delusional Marxists. Intelligence and attachment to reality aren't requirements to succeed in academia unlike other highly paid and influential professions.
  - js8 9y ago
    I think you misunderstand his points. > I have never seen anyone celebrating paying taxes. He doesn't claim that people do that, he says people should do that (if there is a reason). > The actual divide is between conservative and leftist I think you're wrong. There is left/right divide and liberal/conservative divide. The latter deals with the size and definition of the ingroup, the former with the inequalities within the ingroup. > claiming they hate democracy (=government) Democracy is not the same thing as government.
danmaz74 9y ago
I, for one, believe that the World needs unions, but there are lots of big problems with lots of unions - eg here in Italy, there is no union I like. One of the biggest problems here is that unions look too much at the short term "good" for their members, instead of the long term; often it's a mix of individual immediate self-interest, tribalism (ie: protect every member of the tribe, even when they do the bad of the tribe), and economic illiteracy/ideology that allows this to happen. From what I read, unions eg in Germany are more realistic and also get much better results. But they're often accused of being too "business friendly".
commandlinefan 9y ago
So here's what I can't seem to get my head around. I keep reading how we - programmers, developers, software people - are in such high demand while observing a world where the perception, at least, is that we're a dime a dozen. On the one hand, I make good money doing something I genuinely enjoy all day - not retire early money, but not "how am I going to pay the water bill this month" either, and I've only been out of work for a month in the past 25 years. On the other hand, I sit in a wide-open bullpen next to people who are shouting into speaker phones all day and inputting timecards at 15-minute granularity. I have to forecast how I'm going to spend my time weeks in advance, and that forecast had better not include anything as mundane as "reading the Bootstrap documentation" because education is my responsibility, not their problem. I've been rejected from four times more jobs than I've been accepted to. Now, you may say that I'm in this relatively low-status position because I suck - and you may be right - but I have decades of experience and a master's degree in CS. Nobody can say that I don't at least look good on paper. We "technology people" ought to have the upper hand here. We shouldn't need a union - we should just be able to say what we need to produce what we're being asked for (time and quiet) but the prevailing atmosphere is more like "you're lucky you even have a job; shut up and stop complaining".
- open_bear 9y ago
  > "you're lucky you even have a job; shut up and stop complaining" You probably have seen the dotcom crash yourself - there were a lot of developers feeling lucky to even have a job. There probably will be another IT bubble burst, and a lot of people will regret they did not form a union when they had at least some say in the matter.
- Kiro 9y ago
  I'm not feeling that atmosphere at all. Here programmers are treated with utmost respect because there's such a high demand for them. That's also the reason why very few are members of a union, even though I live in a country with the strongest unions in the world. Programmers simply dictate their own conditions without the help of unions and the employers have no choice but submit in fear of losing them.
Psilidae 9y ago
This is what I want. I personally feel like I am (or should be) on the side of "unions are good", but I'm also confused by how much "unions are bad" sentiment there is. But my confusion is almost entirely because of _the lack of anyone talking about the issue_. Honestly, most of what I know about unions is from ~8 years ago when I got the gist of "unions help workers voice needs and desires, but businesses don't like paying more" in my AP US History class. I feel like I'm missing a huge part of the issue, yet I have not actually heard anyone from either side actually getting into the details of _why_ there's an argument.
- bjhoops1 9y ago
  I think the answer lies in the history of the collapse of the mid-20th century consensus (capitalist economy with strong unions, regulations, welfare state ad broadly shared prosperity) and the rise of neoliberalism starting in the 1970s. Neoliberalism seeks to roll back the welfare state, deregulate industry, and - above all else - crush unions. It's an ideology created and propagated by and for the billionaire class, who resented the limits imposed on their power in the mid-20th century, and it captured both political parties by the 1980s. A couple good articles on the subject, looking at it from both a Republican and Democratic perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-... http://theweek.com/articles/725419/decline-fall-neoliberalism-democratic-party http://theweek.com/articles/725419/decline-fall-neoliberalis...
bjhoops1 9y ago
People who say "unions are good" almost always have a critique of unions (they should be more democratic, member-led, etc.), but our neoliberal environment is SO strongly anti-union that it's not strategic to give ammunition to billionaire-backed union busters. (Ironically, the intensely anti-union environment actually makes for worse unions. When you're struggling to survive it's hard to be on your A game)

f00_ 9y ago

The labor struggle has been so propagandized that it's impossible to talk about. Unions are about organizing to allow people to control their economic destiny. They've been violently repressed since the very beginning. The right-wing ideology of Reagan/Thatcher is prevalent, this hate of government and worship of the state subsidized corporate managers that control society. Anyways, I love the music in Dustforce, i'll leave you with a Chomsky quote "The U.S. is different from Europe and other industrial countries in this respect. The U.S. is, to a very unusual extent, a business-run society. There are all kinds of reasons for that — it has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here. There are a lot of reasons. But the fact of the matter is that the U.S. is run by an unusually class-conscious, dedicated business class that has a very violent labor history, much worse than in Europe. The attack on unions has been far more extreme here, and it has been much more successful. Also, the business propaganda has been far more successful. Anti-union propaganda has been considerably more successful here than in Europe, even among working people who would benefit [from] unions. In fact, a rather striking aspect of business propaganda in the United States is the demonization of government, starting after the Second World War. The Second World War ended with a radicalization of the population in the United States and everywhere else, and called for all kinds of things like popular takeovers, government intervention, and worker takeovers of factories. Business propagated a tremendous propaganda offensive. The scale surprised me when I read the scholarship — it’s enormous, and it’s been very effective. There were two major targets: one is unions, the other is democracy. Well, [to them] democracy means getting people to regard government as an alien force that’s robbing them and oppressing them, not as their government. In a democracy it would be your government. For example, in a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you’re getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on. In the United States, it’s a day of mourning because this alien force — the government — is coming to rob you of your hard-earned money. That’s the general attitude, and it’s a tremendous victory for the opponents of democracy, and, of course, any privileged sector is going to hate democracy. You can see it in the healthcare debate. The majority of the population thinks that if the government runs healthcare, they’re going to take away your freedom. At the same time, the public favors a national healthcare program. The contradiction is somehow unresolved. In the case of the business propaganda, it’s particularly ironic because while business wants the population to hate the government, they want the population to love the government. Namely, they’re in favor of a very powerful state which works in their interest. So you have to love that government, but hate the government that might work in your interest and that you could control. That’s an interesting propaganda task, but it’s been carried out very well. You can see it in the worship of Reagan, which portrays him as somebody who saved us from government. Actually he was an apostle of big government. Government grew under Reagan. He was the strongest opponent of free markets in the post-war history among presidents. But it doesn’t matter what the reality is; they concocted an image that you worship. It’s hard to achieve that, especially in a free society, but it’s been done, and that’s the kind of thing that activists in the IWW have to work against, right on the shop floor. It’s not so simple, but it’s been done before." https://chomsky.info/20091120/ https://chomsky.info/20091120/

peoplewindow 9y ago
I hadn't seen that Chomsky quote but he sounds completely delusional. And I'm from Europe. I'm aware of no country democratic or not where paying taxes is a "day of celebration". I have never seen anyone celebrating paying taxes. To believe that in other countries people love taxes and government, and the USA is uniquely special in this being not the case, makes me wonder to what extent Chomsky really understood the world at all. Nor does Chomsky appear to understand conservative philosophy. He simply divides the world, Marx-style, into "workers" and "business owners" and then assumes business owners must hate democracy because taxes. The actual divide is between conservative and leftist, and conservatives like their government small and local i.e. the opposite of Federal. Many business owners happen to be conservative but so do many workers, as the number of Trump voters in former rust belt states will attest. Chomsky can't even stay consistent on what this strawman of "business owners" actually want - he starts out by claiming they hate democracy (=government) and then later claims they both hate and love government at the same time. Not surprisingly after inventing a non-existent class of people with non-existent beliefs, he then struggles to understand them. And this guy is supposed to be some great intellectual. Sad. Thomas Sowell has far greater understanding of the political philosophies and views that divide the people.
- WatermelonApe 9y ago
  He's practically a Marxist if you weren't previously aware. There are plenty of "intellectuals" who are highly regarded in academia and also delusional Marxists. Intelligence and attachment to reality aren't requirements to succeed in academia unlike other highly paid and influential professions.
- js8 9y ago
  I think you misunderstand his points. > I have never seen anyone celebrating paying taxes. He doesn't claim that people do that, he says people should do that (if there is a reason). > The actual divide is between conservative and leftist I think you're wrong. There is left/right divide and liberal/conservative divide. The latter deals with the size and definition of the ingroup, the former with the inequalities within the ingroup. > claiming they hate democracy (=government) Democracy is not the same thing as government.

danmaz74 9y ago

I, for one, believe that the World needs unions, but there are lots of big problems with lots of unions - eg here in Italy, there is no union I like. One of the biggest problems here is that unions look too much at the short term "good" for their members, instead of the long term; often it's a mix of individual immediate self-interest, tribalism (ie: protect every member of the tribe, even when they do the bad of the tribe), and economic illiteracy/ideology that allows this to happen. From what I read, unions eg in Germany are more realistic and also get much better results. But they're often accused of being too "business friendly".

commandlinefan 9y ago

So here's what I can't seem to get my head around. I keep reading how we - programmers, developers, software people - are in such high demand while observing a world where the perception, at least, is that we're a dime a dozen. On the one hand, I make good money doing something I genuinely enjoy all day - not retire early money, but not "how am I going to pay the water bill this month" either, and I've only been out of work for a month in the past 25 years. On the other hand, I sit in a wide-open bullpen next to people who are shouting into speaker phones all day and inputting timecards at 15-minute granularity. I have to forecast how I'm going to spend my time weeks in advance, and that forecast had better not include anything as mundane as "reading the Bootstrap documentation" because education is my responsibility, not their problem. I've been rejected from four times more jobs than I've been accepted to. Now, you may say that I'm in this relatively low-status position because I suck - and you may be right - but I have decades of experience and a master's degree in CS. Nobody can say that I don't at least look good on paper. We "technology people" ought to have the upper hand here. We shouldn't need a union - we should just be able to say what we need to produce what we're being asked for (time and quiet) but the prevailing atmosphere is more like "you're lucky you even have a job; shut up and stop complaining".

open_bear 9y ago
> "you're lucky you even have a job; shut up and stop complaining" You probably have seen the dotcom crash yourself - there were a lot of developers feeling lucky to even have a job. There probably will be another IT bubble burst, and a lot of people will regret they did not form a union when they had at least some say in the matter.
Kiro 9y ago
I'm not feeling that atmosphere at all. Here programmers are treated with utmost respect because there's such a high demand for them. That's also the reason why very few are members of a union, even though I live in a country with the strongest unions in the world. Programmers simply dictate their own conditions without the help of unions and the employers have no choice but submit in fear of losing them.

Psilidae 9y ago

This is what I want. I personally feel like I am (or should be) on the side of "unions are good", but I'm also confused by how much "unions are bad" sentiment there is. But my confusion is almost entirely because of _the lack of anyone talking about the issue_. Honestly, most of what I know about unions is from ~8 years ago when I got the gist of "unions help workers voice needs and desires, but businesses don't like paying more" in my AP US History class. I feel like I'm missing a huge part of the issue, yet I have not actually heard anyone from either side actually getting into the details of _why_ there's an argument.

bjhoops1 9y ago
I think the answer lies in the history of the collapse of the mid-20th century consensus (capitalist economy with strong unions, regulations, welfare state ad broadly shared prosperity) and the rise of neoliberalism starting in the 1970s. Neoliberalism seeks to roll back the welfare state, deregulate industry, and - above all else - crush unions. It's an ideology created and propagated by and for the billionaire class, who resented the limits imposed on their power in the mid-20th century, and it captured both political parties by the 1980s. A couple good articles on the subject, looking at it from both a Republican and Democratic perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-... http://theweek.com/articles/725419/decline-fall-neoliberalism-democratic-party http://theweek.com/articles/725419/decline-fall-neoliberalis...

bjhoops1 9y ago

People who say "unions are good" almost always have a critique of unions (they should be more democratic, member-led, etc.), but our neoliberal environment is SO strongly anti-union that it's not strategic to give ammunition to billionaire-backed union busters. (Ironically, the intensely anti-union environment actually makes for worse unions. When you're struggling to survive it's hard to be on your A game)