4 ms·

How about any public sector union? They do services that have no competition, allowing them to extract taxpayer money with no substitute providers.

myWindoonn 6y ago
Sure. Let's start with the police, and then we'll go after whichever next union is killing people across the country. Edit: Your downvotes only make it more obvious that you don't really have a counterpoint to the police's homicidal tendencies nor their unions' participation in crafting legal protections for their actions.
- dimensi0nal 6y ago
  > whichever next union is killing people across the country teachers' unions causing student suicides by refusing to let schools open like in the rest of the developed world?
  - judge2020 6y ago
    The rest of the developed world doesn't have 100k covid cases a day.
    - spijdar 6y ago
      What's "the rest of the developed world"? France has 21k new covid cases in a day, and a population of 67 million versus a population of 328 million in the US, so the per capita rate is almost identical. Other west European countries at least are similar, usually slightly lower, but not dramatically lower e.g. by orders of magnitude.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      The rest of the developed world isn't in a very different position with respect to covid. The US is around 30 cases/100k/day and the EU is around 20 cases/100k/day https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=United%20Kingdom&show=25-lg&y=both&scale=linear&data=cases-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right-12wk&extra=United%20States%2CEuropean%20Union%2CSwitzerland%2CFrance%2CSpain#countries-normalized https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Yeah let's hate on teachers because.. checks notes... they don't want to die due to a disproportionate amount of them being in covid high risk groups.
    - jacob2484 6y ago
      Even CDC says it's safe to open schools - kids are not a major transmission vector. How come private and Catholic schools are open and there isn't a massive spike in Covid cases? Do you think it's fine for American kids to be even further behind in today's global skill race?
      - namibj 6y ago
        > Even CDC says it's safe to open schools - kids are not a major transmission vector. The last time I heard of a local government opening schools with the "not a major transmission vector" argument was in Berlin, and they had no grasp on infection tracing. Yes, kids tend to be asymptomatic. But asymptomatic carriers are still infectious. > How come private and Catholic schools are open and there isn't a massive spike in Covid cases? Because that's just a small section of the population.
  - trianglem 6y ago
    That’s on par with busting the plumbers union because people die in their bathtubs. It’s a bad faith argument and your bias is showing.
mchusma 6y ago
I agree. I cannot think of a justification for public sector unions. The typical pro-union argument for companies is that they protect workers against abuses by the company. In the public sector, the union is supposed to protect workers from the citizens? I haven't ever heard of a good theoretical argument for them. Would be interested if someone knew of one.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Perhaps public entities should not enter into collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, but freedom of association is guaranteed in the constitution, it's not going to be possible to ban unions in the US.
- salawat 6y ago
  There is no bigger abuser of workers than we the citizens. We don't intend to, but we do generally expect extraordinary results for a pittance investment of resources with all sorts of strings attached. Public sector unions are fine.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    US government spending was $6.5 Trillion last year. I think it's OK to expect extraordinary results for that amount of money.
- astura 6y ago
  I guess (?) that they protect low level civil servants from the whims of politicians and political administrative changes.

myWindoonn 6y ago

Sure. Let's start with the police, and then we'll go after whichever next union is killing people across the country. Edit: Your downvotes only make it more obvious that you don't really have a counterpoint to the police's homicidal tendencies nor their unions' participation in crafting legal protections for their actions.

dimensi0nal 6y ago
> whichever next union is killing people across the country teachers' unions causing student suicides by refusing to let schools open like in the rest of the developed world?
- judge2020 6y ago
  The rest of the developed world doesn't have 100k covid cases a day.
  - spijdar 6y ago
    What's "the rest of the developed world"? France has 21k new covid cases in a day, and a population of 67 million versus a population of 328 million in the US, so the per capita rate is almost identical. Other west European countries at least are similar, usually slightly lower, but not dramatically lower e.g. by orders of magnitude.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    The rest of the developed world isn't in a very different position with respect to covid. The US is around 30 cases/100k/day and the EU is around 20 cases/100k/day https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=United%20Kingdom&show=25-lg&y=both&scale=linear&data=cases-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right-12wk&extra=United%20States%2CEuropean%20Union%2CSwitzerland%2CFrance%2CSpain#countries-normalized https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...
- monocasa 6y ago
  Yeah let's hate on teachers because.. checks notes... they don't want to die due to a disproportionate amount of them being in covid high risk groups.
  - jacob2484 6y ago
    Even CDC says it's safe to open schools - kids are not a major transmission vector. How come private and Catholic schools are open and there isn't a massive spike in Covid cases? Do you think it's fine for American kids to be even further behind in today's global skill race?
    - namibj 6y ago
      > Even CDC says it's safe to open schools - kids are not a major transmission vector. The last time I heard of a local government opening schools with the "not a major transmission vector" argument was in Berlin, and they had no grasp on infection tracing. Yes, kids tend to be asymptomatic. But asymptomatic carriers are still infectious. > How come private and Catholic schools are open and there isn't a massive spike in Covid cases? Because that's just a small section of the population.
- trianglem 6y ago
  That’s on par with busting the plumbers union because people die in their bathtubs. It’s a bad faith argument and your bias is showing.

mchusma 6y ago

I agree. I cannot think of a justification for public sector unions. The typical pro-union argument for companies is that they protect workers against abuses by the company. In the public sector, the union is supposed to protect workers from the citizens? I haven't ever heard of a good theoretical argument for them. Would be interested if someone knew of one.

maxerickson 6y ago
Perhaps public entities should not enter into collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions, but freedom of association is guaranteed in the constitution, it's not going to be possible to ban unions in the US.
salawat 6y ago
There is no bigger abuser of workers than we the citizens. We don't intend to, but we do generally expect extraordinary results for a pittance investment of resources with all sorts of strings attached. Public sector unions are fine.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  US government spending was $6.5 Trillion last year. I think it's OK to expect extraordinary results for that amount of money.
astura 6y ago
I guess (?) that they protect low level civil servants from the whims of politicians and political administrative changes.