5 ms·

> very strong union sector Why is this not free market? Employees are part of the market as well. At some point you may argue that the unions form a cartel ma

by lixtra 6y ago

> very strong union sector Why is this not free market? Employees are part of the market as well. At some point you may argue that the unions form a cartel maybe. But that is another sign of a free (from state) market

Barrin92 6y ago
for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding. The Nordic countries aren't "free market" by any American definition of the term. They're corporatist/tripartite economies. This has just become a fashionable talking point among the mentioned 'liberaltarians', like the Niskanen Center, who invented the term to my knowledge. I think it's mostly a PR campaign because if you frame social democracy as being free-market it just sounds nicer to the center of the American political spectrum. A lot of of labour protection that you don't find in the US nonetheless exists, like 1 year+ of paid maternity leave, usually at least 5 weeks of paid vacation per year, ~35-40 hour work weeks and so on. When people talk about free market aspects they usually mention school vouchers and such and selectively pick a few things where the government is more hands off. As the article mentions Uber/ridesharing as a yardstick, take note that Uber withdrew from the Danish market in 2017 after facing regulation, in Norway only Uber Lux is still active after facing fines, and the same happened in Finland. In Sweden Uber still operates in three cities but all drivers require taxi licenses.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  > for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding. To me, this sound like a guarantee of greater worker freedom than anything else. Somehow economic “freedom” in the US seems to equate to corporate structures where CEOs and other managers have immense power over the lives of hundreds or thousands of workers (including their ability to get healthcare), with almost no counterbalancing force. Implementing this kind of rule seems a pretty sane check on that level of authoritarianism, no? Beyond a certain level, the workers actually have to be given a say themselves?
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  In preschool calling something "very bad" is a good point that can even win the whole discussion. It's the same thing you are doing with curse words like "corporatist" and "social". Or using "free market" as an ultimate blessing. By itself, it just doesn't look convincing on this site. Maybe dig a level deeper?
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    "Corporatist" a curse word? It's literally what this social arrangement is known as. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
  - zaroth 6y ago
    You’ve done nothing here but what you accuse OP of doing, except bullying OP by comparing their post to a preschool argument.
    - kubanczyk 6y ago
      Apologies for that p-bomb, I agree it was unwarranted.
grasshopperpurp 6y ago
I think we've been trained to fixate on labels, because it limits our tools to solve problems, and the people in power don't want us solving these kinds of problems. Depending on which labels you (general you) ascribe to yourself, most ideas are DOA, because they don't fit in your identity box. Who cares if it's free market or not? A strong union presence is significantly more effective than a minimum wage. One amounts to a voice and the other amounts to table scraps. We typically associate unions as anti-free market, because the Right is pro free market and anti union, and the Left is pro regulation and pro union. I'm not talking Republicans and Democrats but Right and Left, to be clear. I have some hope that people are tired of boxing themselves in, that they're realizing we need real solutions to real problems. It doesn't help when we gotcha each other with different political ideologies when they step outside of their boxes. If someone on the Right wants to argue that unions are Free Market, and that makes it palatable to them, high fives all around.
- incompatible 6y ago
  I don't think I've ever seen anything resembling a free market in labour, and I doubt that it would be tolerated. It would be a market where wage rates could go up or down depending on economic conditions. In reality, people get very unhappy if wages go down and companies are more likely to cut costs by sacking staff. It would be a market where if you were unemployed, but qualified, you could approach a company and offer to do a job a bit cheaper than an existing employee, and expect that the employer would sack that employee and take you on instead. Further, why do the most unpleasant, and not necessarily easy, jobs often pay the worst wages? Why do chief executives and other managers get paid so much, often without showing any particular competence? Society has a whole set of expectations about how much certain professions "deserve" to be paid, which can't be explained by any kind of market.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > In reality, people get very unhappy if wages go down Part of the intent behind an employment contract is that the employee will mostly not have to bear risk in the business itself, or in market conditions. That's a legitimate demand, but it does imply that you'll be paid quite a bit less for your effort than if you really were bearing that risk of having your earnings fall due to no fault of your own - let alone being outright sacked because someone else has volunteered to do the same job for cheaper. I think leaving these broad social insurance considerations to wholly private contracting between employees and businesses is a very bad deal for workers, and also explains why e.g. the least pleasant jobs can pay so little. A UBI-like arrangement would allow us to get a lot closer to the "truly" free market in labor you posit here.
gfunk911 6y ago
Because in America, public sector unions are the dominant unions, or at least the most visible, and those are very different. Agree strongly for private sector unions.

by lixtra 6y ago

Barrin92 6y ago

for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding. The Nordic countries aren't "free market" by any American definition of the term. They're corporatist/tripartite economies. This has just become a fashionable talking point among the mentioned 'liberaltarians', like the Niskanen Center, who invented the term to my knowledge. I think it's mostly a PR campaign because if you frame social democracy as being free-market it just sounds nicer to the center of the American political spectrum. A lot of of labour protection that you don't find in the US nonetheless exists, like 1 year+ of paid maternity leave, usually at least 5 weeks of paid vacation per year, ~35-40 hour work weeks and so on. When people talk about free market aspects they usually mention school vouchers and such and selectively pick a few things where the government is more hands off. As the article mentions Uber/ridesharing as a yardstick, take note that Uber withdrew from the Danish market in 2017 after facing regulation, in Norway only Uber Lux is still active after facing fines, and the same happened in Finland. In Sweden Uber still operates in three cities but all drivers require taxi licenses.

claudeganon 6y ago
> for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding. To me, this sound like a guarantee of greater worker freedom than anything else. Somehow economic “freedom” in the US seems to equate to corporate structures where CEOs and other managers have immense power over the lives of hundreds or thousands of workers (including their ability to get healthcare), with almost no counterbalancing force. Implementing this kind of rule seems a pretty sane check on that level of authoritarianism, no? Beyond a certain level, the workers actually have to be given a say themselves?
kubanczyk 6y ago
In preschool calling something "very bad" is a good point that can even win the whole discussion. It's the same thing you are doing with curse words like "corporatist" and "social". Or using "free market" as an ultimate blessing. By itself, it just doesn't look convincing on this site. Maybe dig a level deeper?
- zozbot234 6y ago
  "Corporatist" a curse word? It's literally what this social arrangement is known as. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
- zaroth 6y ago
  You’ve done nothing here but what you accuse OP of doing, except bullying OP by comparing their post to a preschool argument.
  - kubanczyk 6y ago
    Apologies for that p-bomb, I agree it was unwarranted.

grasshopperpurp 6y ago

I think we've been trained to fixate on labels, because it limits our tools to solve problems, and the people in power don't want us solving these kinds of problems. Depending on which labels you (general you) ascribe to yourself, most ideas are DOA, because they don't fit in your identity box. Who cares if it's free market or not? A strong union presence is significantly more effective than a minimum wage. One amounts to a voice and the other amounts to table scraps. We typically associate unions as anti-free market, because the Right is pro free market and anti union, and the Left is pro regulation and pro union. I'm not talking Republicans and Democrats but Right and Left, to be clear. I have some hope that people are tired of boxing themselves in, that they're realizing we need real solutions to real problems. It doesn't help when we gotcha each other with different political ideologies when they step outside of their boxes. If someone on the Right wants to argue that unions are Free Market, and that makes it palatable to them, high fives all around.

incompatible 6y ago
I don't think I've ever seen anything resembling a free market in labour, and I doubt that it would be tolerated. It would be a market where wage rates could go up or down depending on economic conditions. In reality, people get very unhappy if wages go down and companies are more likely to cut costs by sacking staff. It would be a market where if you were unemployed, but qualified, you could approach a company and offer to do a job a bit cheaper than an existing employee, and expect that the employer would sack that employee and take you on instead. Further, why do the most unpleasant, and not necessarily easy, jobs often pay the worst wages? Why do chief executives and other managers get paid so much, often without showing any particular competence? Society has a whole set of expectations about how much certain professions "deserve" to be paid, which can't be explained by any kind of market.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > In reality, people get very unhappy if wages go down Part of the intent behind an employment contract is that the employee will mostly not have to bear risk in the business itself, or in market conditions. That's a legitimate demand, but it does imply that you'll be paid quite a bit less for your effort than if you really were bearing that risk of having your earnings fall due to no fault of your own - let alone being outright sacked because someone else has volunteered to do the same job for cheaper. I think leaving these broad social insurance considerations to wholly private contracting between employees and businesses is a very bad deal for workers, and also explains why e.g. the least pleasant jobs can pay so little. A UBI-like arrangement would allow us to get a lot closer to the "truly" free market in labor you posit here.

gfunk911 6y ago

Because in America, public sector unions are the dominant unions, or at least the most visible, and those are very different. Agree strongly for private sector unions.