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>“However, what I would argue, on balance, in a free-market environment where ultimately clients decide whether you live or die, you don’t survive for 167 years
by DoctorOetker 8y ago
>“However, what I would argue, on balance, in a free-market environment where ultimately clients decide whether you live or die, you don’t survive for 167 years if you don’t operate with a high ethical standard.”
What is this quote supposed to mean?
"you" refers to the Pinkertons obviously, but are they insinuating that clients without muscle would kill the muscle? or just stop using the company if they behave too ethical? he's justifying unethical behaviour ... by calling it highly ethical in a free market environment?!
- atombender 8y ago"Live or die" as in whether the company survives. They're not talking about clients literally killing them. They're saying the company has survived all these years in the free-market environment because of their high ethical standards.
- DoctorOetker 8y agothat's also how I read it, but that doesn't mean it makes sense: if they had in that time and place set a high ethical standard of not participating in strikebreaking, they might indeed not have survived as a company, so their survival was the result of their lower ethical standards...
- wmf 8y agoMaybe they're libertarians so they think strikes are unethical.
- benj111 8y agoWouldn't libertarians support your right to strike?
- hutzlibu 8y agoDepends. Libertarians believe in free individuals making contracts. So unless the right to strike is somewhere included (here in germany it is through laws on a higher level) they would not, as strike is a breach of contract otherwise.
- benj111 8y agoWhy would the right to strike have to be in the contract? The contract just doesn't have to ban strikes, surely? Libertarians default to liberty, unless opted out of, that's my understanding at least.
- hutzlibu 8y agoYou make a contract which says you work for money. If you strike, you do not work - you therefore break contract. "libertarians default to liberty" True. The liberty of individual. For example to make contracts - or to brake them. But the idea is, that society can only work if people do not break their contracts. Otherwise whats the point in them?
- benj111 8y agoSurely then it depends upon the reason for the strike? If the strike is over layoffs, wage cuts, unsafe work practices. They're all potential contract breaches.
- hutzlibu 8y ago"Surely then it depends upon the reason for the strike?" For sure. If the other side breachs contract then, then strike is a very good way to fight that. Like work safe issues. But layoffs for example ... are not really a breach of contract. (unless of course their contract was fir a longer time)
- benj111 8y agoSo we are back to the beginning again. Libertarians aren't ideologically against strikes.
- damjafriska 8y agoIt means the article was the end result of a chain of actions that started with the hiring of a PR firm....
- eli_gottlieb 8y agoIt means the Pinkertons make absolutely no apology for being hired thugs who use violence to suppress workers' rights, and are trying to reframe the issue to some frame in which workers don't have those rights in the first place.