9 ms·

>I can negotiate my own salary, hours, and working conditions. You can, and the company can choose to not hire you. There is a huge power imbalance between emp

>I can negotiate my own salary, hours, and working conditions. You can, and the company can choose to not hire you. There is a huge power imbalance between employers and employees. Right now, this is muted because the job market is so tight. This will not be true forever. > Just because it's something you personally find advantageous doesn't mean others feel the same way, and no one should ever be forced into it. As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time.

icelancer 8y ago
> As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time. Of course we do. Doesn't make it a good idea all the time.
ohmygodness 8y ago
As a society, we're torturing and witch hunting for greater good all the time! -Medieval Inquisitor
- lenticular 8y ago
  That's a really odd comparison to make. Let's stick to facts and not bizarre strawmen.
  - scrumbledober 8y ago
    it's honestly hard to get away from strawmen when the "for the greater good" argument is brought out against individual determinism.
    - lenticular 8y ago
      The poster I was responding to was actually asserting that unions are bad because he would be forced to pay the dues, which you also seem to be asserting here. An argument that unions are bad because closed shops violate an individual's autonomy is completely incoherent if one also holds a belief that sometimes coercion is justified. This particular logical fallacy is commonly used by libertarians to dismiss policy proposals out of hand, in my experience. To see why this belief is fallacious, abstract the proposition "Unions violate individual autonomy, therefore unions are bad" to "P violates individual autonomy, therefore P is bad." Replace P with criminal penalties, taxation, etc, and it is immediately obvious that this belief is logically incoherent if one also holds the belief that civilization is preferable to the state of nature. Logical consistency matters. You can't make rational decisions without it. Either you believe that sometimes coercion is morally justified to achieve other ends, or you cannot have a consistent belief that any societal organization is morally correct. We can debate the pros and cons of unions, and yes, there are cons. But it makes no sense to dismiss it out of hand due to an incoherent moral belief. You can coherently believe that coercion in and of itself is a bad thing, and I agree. That must be weighed against the benefits of said coercion when making such decisions. For example, most people don't like to go to prison, so I think there should be a really good reason to violate someone's autonomy in such a massive way. Thus, I only support prison for serious crimes that I really don't want people to do. Taxation is also coercion. I don't like paying my taxes, but I support coercive measures to make sure everyone does because I like having a government.
jasode 8y ago
>This will not be true forever. I noticed you've emphasized this twice. You have to admit that this pro-active idea of "join a union before you _really_ need the union" is not that compelling of a sales pitch to a lot of developers who already have good paying jobs. It's human nature. >I never understand employees who don't want to unionize. Do you really want to understand? I think the reasons are obvious: most programmers don't see any economic benefits to paying ~$500 (or whatever amount) annual union dues for very little gain. If you can prove to developers that paying $X would return tangible benefits in excess of those fees, there would be an unstoppable movement. The proof isn't there yet. As many programmers have testified, they already get excellent pay, benefits, work hours, etc without union representation. Yes, of course some programmers are suffering in terrible jobs but not enough of them (yet) outnumber the people who don't want to pay for a union. I can easily understand why some programmers want a union. But it's a mystery why union supporters also can't see why some don't want it.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  Try this: Join a union so your kid doesn't have to direly need a union. If you don't have kids, substitute an imaginary version of you who's growing up and falling in love with the same craft you did, except right now.
  - sosborn 8y ago
    I believe that the existence of unions is necessary. Without any unions worker rights would degrade pretty significantly. I also strongly believe that unions aren't the right answer in most situations. One example - teachers. In the public sector, teachers are unionized yet underpaid, and in general terms, have unfavorable work conditions. In the private sector, teachers get paid much better and have the freedom to actually run their classroom in the way they see fit. The union isn't the cause of this disparity, but it clearly doesn't overcome it.
    - pflats 8y ago
      >In the private sector, teachers get paid much better and have the freedom to actually run their classroom in the way they see fit. While this might be true wherever you are from, it is definitely not universal. Every US state I have lived in has been the opposite. At a private school, the advantages to teachers are the student base is self-selected and can be expelled, and the school can teach things a public school cannot (often religious). At a public school, pay, benefits, and job protections are much better. Being able to "run your classroom the way they see fit" is a school-by-school work culture thing, but a teacher with more job protections would always have more leeway in how they ran their classroom. A teacher working at-will could never truly run their classroom the way they saw fit, because "do X or you're fired" is always a possible ultimatum.
Rooster61 8y ago
> for a greater good This is an assumption, and a logical fallacy. The whole problem of doing something "for the greater good" is that no one on Earth can definitively define what is good and what is not. Trying to do so is the bottomless rabbit hole we call ethics. OP is correctly pointing out that your view of unionizing being advantageous is subjective.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  Your comment seems dismissive of the notion of ethical behavior. We can argue the finer points, but we can agree for example killing let’s say innocent people is bad. Feeding hungry people is good. The point of collective power is not to agree on everything, but to find enough in common agreement to organize around it. As a collective you can better negotiate for your common interests.
  - Rooster61 8y ago
    > We can argue the finer points, but we can agree for example killing let’s say innocent people is bad. Feeding hungry people is good. This is simply moral relativism. That argument holds up only under specific, ad-hoc circumstances. A group of people can very easily come to a conclusion that an action should be taken because they agree on it, and find out later that the consequences of that action were detrimental.
    - lenticular 8y ago
      Yes, decisions must be made under uncertainty, because we don't ever know the exact outcome. Sometimes, even when acting rationally using available evidence, a decision winds up having negative consequences. Them's the breaks in our uncertain reality. If a group of people collectively make a decision that is not consistent with evidence and their ethical system, then they are not making decisions correctly. I don't think anyone here is debating that decisions can be incorrect.
- lenticular 8y ago
  >This is an assumption, and a logical fallacy. No it's not. The poster was seemingly espousing a belief that because he didn't want a union, it is morally wrong to force one on him. That is inconsistent with a belief in the benefits that government coercion can sometimes be a good idea. A union could conceivably be a bad thing or a good thing, but to dismiss it with a rights-based argument simply doesn't make sense. > The whole problem of doing something "for the greater good" is that no one on Earth can definitively define what is good and what is not. All endeavors may fail. We make decisions based on probability of outcomes. This is the same for both individual and collective decisions. If we cannot make collective decisions under uncertainty, then there is no point to any government whatsoever. Also, if we cannot come up with a baseline of ethics to evaluate possible outcomes, then we can't make any collective decision either.
gdix 8y ago
> As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time. Is it hard to see why an individual might be against that?
- tivert 8y ago
  >> As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time. > Is it hard to see why an individual might be against that? It's not hard to see, but individuals who prioritize their own desires over the greater good of their community are often (rightly) regarded as selfish. It is hard to have much empathy for someone who has their selfishness thwarted.
  - gdix 8y ago
    Fair point, but applied to the original comment, is "not wanting to join a union" so selfish that one can't even understand how someone would have that position? I'd consider anyone who thinks so to be thoroughly ideologically possessed.

icelancer 8y ago

> As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time. Of course we do. Doesn't make it a good idea all the time.

ohmygodness 8y ago

As a society, we're torturing and witch hunting for greater good all the time! -Medieval Inquisitor

lenticular 8y ago
That's a really odd comparison to make. Let's stick to facts and not bizarre strawmen.
- scrumbledober 8y ago
  it's honestly hard to get away from strawmen when the "for the greater good" argument is brought out against individual determinism.
  - lenticular 8y ago
    The poster I was responding to was actually asserting that unions are bad because he would be forced to pay the dues, which you also seem to be asserting here. An argument that unions are bad because closed shops violate an individual's autonomy is completely incoherent if one also holds a belief that sometimes coercion is justified. This particular logical fallacy is commonly used by libertarians to dismiss policy proposals out of hand, in my experience. To see why this belief is fallacious, abstract the proposition "Unions violate individual autonomy, therefore unions are bad" to "P violates individual autonomy, therefore P is bad." Replace P with criminal penalties, taxation, etc, and it is immediately obvious that this belief is logically incoherent if one also holds the belief that civilization is preferable to the state of nature. Logical consistency matters. You can't make rational decisions without it. Either you believe that sometimes coercion is morally justified to achieve other ends, or you cannot have a consistent belief that any societal organization is morally correct. We can debate the pros and cons of unions, and yes, there are cons. But it makes no sense to dismiss it out of hand due to an incoherent moral belief. You can coherently believe that coercion in and of itself is a bad thing, and I agree. That must be weighed against the benefits of said coercion when making such decisions. For example, most people don't like to go to prison, so I think there should be a really good reason to violate someone's autonomy in such a massive way. Thus, I only support prison for serious crimes that I really don't want people to do. Taxation is also coercion. I don't like paying my taxes, but I support coercive measures to make sure everyone does because I like having a government.

jasode 8y ago

>This will not be true forever. I noticed you've emphasized this twice. You have to admit that this pro-active idea of "join a union before you _really_ need the union" is not that compelling of a sales pitch to a lot of developers who already have good paying jobs. It's human nature. >I never understand employees who don't want to unionize. Do you really want to understand? I think the reasons are obvious: most programmers don't see any economic benefits to paying ~$500 (or whatever amount) annual union dues for very little gain. If you can prove to developers that paying $X would return tangible benefits in excess of those fees, there would be an unstoppable movement. The proof isn't there yet. As many programmers have testified, they already get excellent pay, benefits, work hours, etc without union representation. Yes, of course some programmers are suffering in terrible jobs but not enough of them (yet) outnumber the people who don't want to pay for a union. I can easily understand why some programmers want a union. But it's a mystery why union supporters also can't see why some don't want it.

egypturnash 8y ago
Try this: Join a union so your kid doesn't have to direly need a union. If you don't have kids, substitute an imaginary version of you who's growing up and falling in love with the same craft you did, except right now.
- sosborn 8y ago
  I believe that the existence of unions is necessary. Without any unions worker rights would degrade pretty significantly. I also strongly believe that unions aren't the right answer in most situations. One example - teachers. In the public sector, teachers are unionized yet underpaid, and in general terms, have unfavorable work conditions. In the private sector, teachers get paid much better and have the freedom to actually run their classroom in the way they see fit. The union isn't the cause of this disparity, but it clearly doesn't overcome it.
  - pflats 8y ago
    >In the private sector, teachers get paid much better and have the freedom to actually run their classroom in the way they see fit. While this might be true wherever you are from, it is definitely not universal. Every US state I have lived in has been the opposite. At a private school, the advantages to teachers are the student base is self-selected and can be expelled, and the school can teach things a public school cannot (often religious). At a public school, pay, benefits, and job protections are much better. Being able to "run your classroom the way they see fit" is a school-by-school work culture thing, but a teacher with more job protections would always have more leeway in how they ran their classroom. A teacher working at-will could never truly run their classroom the way they saw fit, because "do X or you're fired" is always a possible ultimatum.

Rooster61 8y ago

> for a greater good This is an assumption, and a logical fallacy. The whole problem of doing something "for the greater good" is that no one on Earth can definitively define what is good and what is not. Trying to do so is the bottomless rabbit hole we call ethics. OP is correctly pointing out that your view of unionizing being advantageous is subjective.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
Your comment seems dismissive of the notion of ethical behavior. We can argue the finer points, but we can agree for example killing let’s say innocent people is bad. Feeding hungry people is good. The point of collective power is not to agree on everything, but to find enough in common agreement to organize around it. As a collective you can better negotiate for your common interests.
- Rooster61 8y ago
  > We can argue the finer points, but we can agree for example killing let’s say innocent people is bad. Feeding hungry people is good. This is simply moral relativism. That argument holds up only under specific, ad-hoc circumstances. A group of people can very easily come to a conclusion that an action should be taken because they agree on it, and find out later that the consequences of that action were detrimental.
  - lenticular 8y ago
    Yes, decisions must be made under uncertainty, because we don't ever know the exact outcome. Sometimes, even when acting rationally using available evidence, a decision winds up having negative consequences. Them's the breaks in our uncertain reality. If a group of people collectively make a decision that is not consistent with evidence and their ethical system, then they are not making decisions correctly. I don't think anyone here is debating that decisions can be incorrect.
lenticular 8y ago
>This is an assumption, and a logical fallacy. No it's not. The poster was seemingly espousing a belief that because he didn't want a union, it is morally wrong to force one on him. That is inconsistent with a belief in the benefits that government coercion can sometimes be a good idea. A union could conceivably be a bad thing or a good thing, but to dismiss it with a rights-based argument simply doesn't make sense. > The whole problem of doing something "for the greater good" is that no one on Earth can definitively define what is good and what is not. All endeavors may fail. We make decisions based on probability of outcomes. This is the same for both individual and collective decisions. If we cannot make collective decisions under uncertainty, then there is no point to any government whatsoever. Also, if we cannot come up with a baseline of ethics to evaluate possible outcomes, then we can't make any collective decision either.

gdix 8y ago

> As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time. Is it hard to see why an individual might be against that?

tivert 8y ago
>> As a society, we make decisions against the will of individuals for a greater good all the time. > Is it hard to see why an individual might be against that? It's not hard to see, but individuals who prioritize their own desires over the greater good of their community are often (rightly) regarded as selfish. It is hard to have much empathy for someone who has their selfishness thwarted.
- gdix 8y ago
  Fair point, but applied to the original comment, is "not wanting to join a union" so selfish that one can't even understand how someone would have that position? I'd consider anyone who thinks so to be thoroughly ideologically possessed.