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> they knew their parents would get them into the union Ironic that union membership would become just another form of heritable wealth.

• shams93 7y ago
  It has in Hollywood especially things like key grip jobs are passed down generation to generation. Having none of this in LA I spent half my working life homeless with a master's degree in Socal the economy is all about what you inherit not what you do the system has treated me Lowe than a dog my entire life despite my skills and education I'm simply someone you hit with cars and leave for dead
  • Scoundreller 7y ago
    Yeah, I’m fine with questioning heritable wealth, but it should be across the board. We shouldn’t chop up the middle class’ heritable tokens while letting the upper class keep theirs. That just makes things worse.
    • Nasrudith 7y ago
      Not all heritability is identical nor are their side effects. A literal caste system is worse than generational wealth transfer. While one may gave an advantage to their off spring the previous effectively restricts others and is way unhealthier for society. Just treating it like factions where just whose team is good for isn't a very healthy approach.
    • austhrow743 7y ago
      We shouldn't avoid chopping up one form of inheritable wealth just because we can't target all of it effectively or all of it at once though. It's a great evil that needs to be stomped on viciously.
  • whiddershins 7y ago
    I’m sorry to hear that you are feeling so upset about this. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t seems that way to most of the people, most of the time. Maybe somehow you can get to a place where your influence on your fate seems more real?
  • jayd16 7y ago
    Hollywood is about who you know. That would be the same without the unions.
    • Gibbon1 7y ago
      Basically every industry is like that. Leads to my comment that at a job you get paid in money, experience, and connections. People fret about being underpaid and don't consider how bad it is being chintzed on the others. Especially the last one.
• closeparen 7y ago
  Is it ironic? Restricting the labor supply is the core of a union's ability to demand higher wages for its members.
  • zozbot234 7y ago
    Even if we were to accept that, there are many ways of "restricting the labor supply"; and nepotism is just about the least efficient you could think of. If you're going to "restrict" access to something, it should be done by rewarding individual merit and competence. (At least that would imply a pretty nice improvement in labor conditions - no more workers being flattened by containers! Which is also the kind of thing unions typically care about.)
    • jcims 7y ago
      > If you're going to "restrict" access to something, it should be done by rewarding individual merit and competence. It should be the case no doubt, but often isn’t because there’s less to leverage. Sometimes you need a favor, you know? But if you give a job to Joe Schmuckus that he could get anywhere, whats the motivation to do you a solid?
    • closeparen 7y ago
      There are at least three propositions in your comment: - Efficiency is implicitly good. - Material rewards can/should be allocated according to some measure of individual merit and competence. - Meritocracy and nepotism are distinct. I tend to agree, but these statements are at least controversial (if not obviously wrong) within the political consciousness that does labor organizing these days. Read Jacobin sometime, you'll see vehement opposition. Internalizing the violent logic of capitalism, etc.
• clairity 7y ago
  it's not wealth, it's advantage. once you get the job handed down to you, you still have to do the work to get the money, unlike wealth. not saying jobs should be doled out that way, but it's quite different to get a chance at future income vs. having it mounded in your lap without lifting a finger.
  • zozbot234 7y ago
    That's just as true with wealth. Sure, you could spend your wealth down, but that's like eating your seed corn; very few actually do that, because it means you're not wealthy anymore afterwards.
    • skybrian 7y ago
      Uh, the money grows by itself if properly invested. Investing in an index fund hardly counts as working.
  • klipt 7y ago
    > it's not wealth, it's advantage. once you get the job handed down to you, you still have to do the work to get the money, unlike wealth. So like a taxi medallion. Which when sold on a free market had (before Uber, in NYC) a market value on the order of a million dollars. That's a pretty huge advantage to pass down.
    • icebraining 7y ago
      No, a taxi medallion could be rented out to drivers. For example, for a period Michael Cohen owned 34 NYC medallions.
      • klipt 7y ago
        Right, but the reason it has value is that it's tied to a high paying job where the supply of labor is limited. (Which is why, as soon as Uber flooded the labor side, the value of taxi medallions plummeted.) If longshoremen were allowed to buy and sell their union memberships (say in the form of "union member medallions") they'd probably have similar value to taxi medallions.
• ZhuanXia 7y ago
  Rents are by their nature exclusionary; it is hardly surprising they became hereditary rights. They are called guilds after all.
• chaostheory 7y ago
  It feels just like rent control. They’re obviously not equivalent, but they’re similar in that you’re just changing the rules for how people are prioritized for access to finite resources; you’re not really increasing availability of said resources
• refurb 7y ago
  It’s not that different than communist systems that result in a class of people who leverage their position to enrich themselves and their families. The problem isn’t the economic system, the problem is human nature.