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A corporation is a mechanism for individuals to pool capital and achieve greater return from that capital than any of them would using only their own personal r

A corporation is a mechanism for individuals to pool capital and achieve greater return from that capital than any of them would using only their own personal resources. A union is a mechanism for individuals to pool labor and achieve greater return from that labor than any of them would using only their own personal resources. The only difference between them is the resource being pooled. As a result, I have great difficulty understanding why people are accepting of one but condemn the other.

rcoveson 8y ago
Corporations pool resources to make things or offer services. Unions are just bargaining devices that attempt to tip the scales. If you want to compare unions to corporations, consider this: What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage? By pooling their bargaining power, they can achieve a far better result! This is of course illegal (at least I'm pretty sure it is), but even if it weren't, it would be easy for startups to take advantage of: Suddenly, there's a surplus of tech workers looking hard for different work. Unions have the same problem: Some people might be happy to work for wages that the union considers unfair, causing the union to collapse. Unless, that is, there were some law requiring the businesses to only hire from the unions. I'm extremely happy to be employed in a field where I have natural bargaining power that doesn't need to be augmented by legislation. The day programmers unionize is a sad day indeed: It's just a few years before the whole profession is automated or outsourced away.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  Interesting question: What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage? Rather than use a hypothetical, lets use a couple of actual things that have happened; "all the local tech companies got together and:" * agreed not to offer jobs to the other's workers * agreed to get H1B visas rather than pay hire wages * converted previous employee jobs into contracting These are all things that have happened which could not be counter acted by disorganized labor pools. So when you say "I'm extremely happy to be employed in a field where I have natural bargaining power that doesn't need to be augmented by legislation." I expect you will find at some point in your career that your "natural bargaining power" will erode and you will be in a position where the lack of any bargaining power will benefit the corporation disproportionately. I think it is great that this hasn't happened to you yet but it would be unwise to assume it will never happen.
- xvector 8y ago
  > If you want to compare unions to corporations, consider this: What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage? By pooling their bargaining power, they can achieve a far better result! And this would be totally fine if we valued corporate rights over individual rights. But as a society, we value individual rights over corporate rights, which is why we allow for unions but not corporate collusion. Any individual cannot stand up to a corporation, but a union of individuals certainly can, supporting the subjective values of our society.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > And this would be totally fine if we valued corporate rights over individual rights. But as a society, we value individual rights over corporate rights, which is why we allow for unions but not corporate collusion. Unions are corporations. They are corporations which claim to represent their members' interests, but under US law, they are not obligated to. (And fittingly, there is actually plenty of evidence to suggest that many do not, which is one of the reasons for decline in both overall union membership and the decline in support for unions among union members).
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  This is of course illegal I wonder how it came to be illegal. Did legislative bodies pass laws to protect workers solely out of the pure and spontaneous goodness of the legislators' hearts? Or did they pass these laws because people organized and agitated and worked to get these laws passed? If only there were some sort of books of history we could go look this stuff up in to find out. And I think you'll find corporations have problems and excesses, too, but you seem perfectly willing to tolerate those. As to the rest, see the other replies: "I have and have always had good bargaining power" does not imply "I will always have good bargaining power". In fact, the belief that how things are now is how they always must be is one of the most basic economic mistakes a person can make.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > I wonder how it came to be illegal. Did legislative bodies pass laws to protect workers solely out of the pure and spontaneous goodness of the legislators' hearts? Or did they pass these laws because people organized and agitated and worked to get these laws passed? Wait, are you really going to try and give unions credit for antitrust laws (ie, the laws that OP is referring to)? The first antitrust laws outlawed collusion, which also had the effect of outlawing a lot of common union activities as well. Labor unions fought to exempt themselves from antitrust laws.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      I'm going to give the progressive movements of the turn of the 19th/20th century a lot of credit for antitrust and worker-protection laws. I'm also going to ignore anyone whose response is to try to nitpick and split out individual acts and try to attribute them to completely contextless utterly independent forces that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything else happening at the time in any way.
      - chimeracoder 8y ago
        > I'm going to give the progressive movements of the turn of the 19th/20th century a lot of credit for antitrust and worker-protection laws. I'm also going to ignore anyone whose response is to try to nitpick and split out individual acts and try to attribute them to completely contextless utterly independent forces that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything else happening at the time in any way. Nobody's saying that these were "utterly independent forces". I'm pointing out that the relationship between them was the exact opposite of what you claimed. Labor unions opposed antitrust laws which outlawed the sorts of behavior OP described; they certainly weren't responsible for it like you tried to claim. It sounds like you're interested in ignoring the actual details of the history which disprove your point, in order to paint a certain narrative. In that case, there's probably not much point in discussing further, because that's not what a good-faith discussion looks like.

rcoveson 8y ago

Corporations pool resources to make things or offer services. Unions are just bargaining devices that attempt to tip the scales. If you want to compare unions to corporations, consider this: What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage? By pooling their bargaining power, they can achieve a far better result! This is of course illegal (at least I'm pretty sure it is), but even if it weren't, it would be easy for startups to take advantage of: Suddenly, there's a surplus of tech workers looking hard for different work. Unions have the same problem: Some people might be happy to work for wages that the union considers unfair, causing the union to collapse. Unless, that is, there were some law requiring the businesses to only hire from the unions. I'm extremely happy to be employed in a field where I have natural bargaining power that doesn't need to be augmented by legislation. The day programmers unionize is a sad day indeed: It's just a few years before the whole profession is automated or outsourced away.

ChuckMcM 8y ago
Interesting question: What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage? Rather than use a hypothetical, lets use a couple of actual things that have happened; "all the local tech companies got together and:" * agreed not to offer jobs to the other's workers * agreed to get H1B visas rather than pay hire wages * converted previous employee jobs into contracting These are all things that have happened which could not be counter acted by disorganized labor pools. So when you say "I'm extremely happy to be employed in a field where I have natural bargaining power that doesn't need to be augmented by legislation." I expect you will find at some point in your career that your "natural bargaining power" will erode and you will be in a position where the lack of any bargaining power will benefit the corporation disproportionately. I think it is great that this hasn't happened to you yet but it would be unwise to assume it will never happen.
xvector 8y ago
> If you want to compare unions to corporations, consider this: What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage? By pooling their bargaining power, they can achieve a far better result! And this would be totally fine if we valued corporate rights over individual rights. But as a society, we value individual rights over corporate rights, which is why we allow for unions but not corporate collusion. Any individual cannot stand up to a corporation, but a union of individuals certainly can, supporting the subjective values of our society.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > And this would be totally fine if we valued corporate rights over individual rights. But as a society, we value individual rights over corporate rights, which is why we allow for unions but not corporate collusion. Unions are corporations. They are corporations which claim to represent their members' interests, but under US law, they are not obligated to. (And fittingly, there is actually plenty of evidence to suggest that many do not, which is one of the reasons for decline in both overall union membership and the decline in support for unions among union members).
ubernostrum 8y ago
This is of course illegal I wonder how it came to be illegal. Did legislative bodies pass laws to protect workers solely out of the pure and spontaneous goodness of the legislators' hearts? Or did they pass these laws because people organized and agitated and worked to get these laws passed? If only there were some sort of books of history we could go look this stuff up in to find out. And I think you'll find corporations have problems and excesses, too, but you seem perfectly willing to tolerate those. As to the rest, see the other replies: "I have and have always had good bargaining power" does not imply "I will always have good bargaining power". In fact, the belief that how things are now is how they always must be is one of the most basic economic mistakes a person can make.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > I wonder how it came to be illegal. Did legislative bodies pass laws to protect workers solely out of the pure and spontaneous goodness of the legislators' hearts? Or did they pass these laws because people organized and agitated and worked to get these laws passed? Wait, are you really going to try and give unions credit for antitrust laws (ie, the laws that OP is referring to)? The first antitrust laws outlawed collusion, which also had the effect of outlawing a lot of common union activities as well. Labor unions fought to exempt themselves from antitrust laws.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    I'm going to give the progressive movements of the turn of the 19th/20th century a lot of credit for antitrust and worker-protection laws. I'm also going to ignore anyone whose response is to try to nitpick and split out individual acts and try to attribute them to completely contextless utterly independent forces that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything else happening at the time in any way.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > I'm going to give the progressive movements of the turn of the 19th/20th century a lot of credit for antitrust and worker-protection laws. I'm also going to ignore anyone whose response is to try to nitpick and split out individual acts and try to attribute them to completely contextless utterly independent forces that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything else happening at the time in any way. Nobody's saying that these were "utterly independent forces". I'm pointing out that the relationship between them was the exact opposite of what you claimed. Labor unions opposed antitrust laws which outlawed the sorts of behavior OP described; they certainly weren't responsible for it like you tried to claim. It sounds like you're interested in ignoring the actual details of the history which disprove your point, in order to paint a certain narrative. In that case, there's probably not much point in discussing further, because that's not what a good-faith discussion looks like.