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The point which i don’t think was articulated well by the GP is that depsite these objections to corporate power nobody (ok,few people) in HN threads ever seems

by airza 5y ago

The point which i don’t think was articulated well by the GP is that depsite these objections to corporate power nobody (ok,few people) in HN threads ever seems to endorse getting rid of corporations.

Jensson 5y ago
Corporations creates enormous amounts of value, as far as we know modern society cannot function without those structures. Unions however are optional, even if they help they still aren't nearly as important as corporations. Edit: For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Not a single one. So as far as we know it doesn't work. It can work in theory, but it has never worked in practice. There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example, and USA is a better place to live than most countries. Unions can help, but countries that focused on strengthening unions and banning corporations did much worse than for example USA. Strengthening corporations and weakening unions however might have had some small negative effects but nearly not at the same level.
- freen 5y ago
  I take it you work 7 days a week, no vacation, no lunch break, in incredibly unsafe conditions? No? Do you consider the fact that very few people have working conditions like those outlined above an enormously valuable thing for society? Great. Then you agree that Unions have created enormous amounts of value as well.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Those were thanks to labor movements, not unions. They are not the same thing, labor movements happens thanks to Democracy. Democracy is crucial, I agree, it lets groups organize, protest and fix problems with how society works. But what we call unions today are not that. I'm all for labor engaging in politics, but they can do that without paying union dues for working at a company. The problem USA's workers face today isn't lack of unions, it is lack of proper representation in their democracy.
    - DetroitThrow 5y ago
      >Those were thanks to labor movements, not unions. Ahahaha, do you also think that voting rights and anti-segregation laws were due to the 'civil rights movement', and not civil rights activists such as MLK jr or civil rights organizations such as the NAACP?
      - Jensson 5y ago
        Labor movements are made up of people, yes. Not sure how that is related to unions. Labor organized in every single democracy regardless if there were unions or not. Labor movements tend to create unions, so unions are often a result of labor movements and not the source of labor movements.
        DetroitThrow 5y ago
        >Labor movements are made up of people, yes. And so if the people in these movements made smaller organizations to advance the goals of the movement at their workplace, in their local communities, and the national level... we might even credit those organizations, yes? Just like we do with the civil rights movement? >Labor organized in every single democracy regardless if there were unions or not. Some economies skipped steam power too, but every early industrial economy had labor unions predate modern labor standards.
        Jensson 5y ago
        Not a single one of those unions had legal backing though, they were just political movements and people working together. Not sure why you say they have anything to do with the theatre that are modern unions. Rather the concept of modern unions limits worker power, since it created a lot of laws preventing workers to organize as they wish and instead have to fit the very narrow framework that are modern unions. Workers had more power back then when they were free to organize without the limitations of modern unions. For example, why even have a vote? Why have enforced term limits for unions that you can't kick them out before the limit is up? Why no bargaining as a group without a vote?
- woodruffw 5y ago
  What, pray tell, are those corporations made of?
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Corporations are a structure of workers. Both the structure and the workers are essential. Workers without structure doesn't produce much value leading to a poor society. Politically created structure leads to bad outcomes so also leads to a poor society. Capitalist created structure creates a lot of value and leads to rich societies. There might be alternatives, but so far capitalism is the only known way to create such structures at scale.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      I don't understand the argument in this response: unions exist within capitalist systems, and are an integral part of our capitalist system. Our concept of a "union" does not apply to non-capitalist systems. Extolling the virtues of capitalism is, at the absolute best, completely orthogonal to the legitimacy and value of unionization. Likewise, unions aren't "politically created structure": they're not created in a top-down manner by the state. They're a form of collective organization and bargaining, the sort that is singularly responsible for the quality of life and workplace protections that we all take for granted.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        > Likewise, unions aren't "politically created structure": they're not created in a top-down manner by the state. Then why are you so upset that people don't want to create the "politically created structure" version of unions? Why not just organize as workers and call yourself a union? Can even create a workers party, like they have in basically every other single other developed country, and then that workers party can stand up for your rights. But that workers party isn't a union. Basically every single developed country except USA has labor parties. Democrats aren't a labor party, they are a party of mostly lawyers.
        5y ago
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  > There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example, and USA is a better place to live than most countries. The US is arguably pretty subpar in terms of quality of life compared to other developed nations (little vacation, really expensive school system, poor health system for the masses leading to a lower life expectancy, high criminality rate, etc.). Of course, not all of it is due to unions, but they are all the consequences of policies being “pro business” instead of “pro people”.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    I didn't argue otherwise. USA is however not subpar compared to any country hostile to corporations, which is the important part. A country being hostile to unions isn't nearly as bad as a country being hostile to corporations.
    - d4mi3n 5y ago
      > A country being hostile to unions isn't nearly as bad as a country being hostile to corporations. This is a very subjective conclusion that is likely very dependent on what economic class you fall into. Many folks on HN (myself included) fall into the category white collar or professional workers. For many other parts of the labor market, you're literally trading sweat and toil for money. Add to this that labor intensive jobs tend to lead to a lot of physical wear and tear with less medical benefits than white collar professionals typically receive, then just by quality of life and welfare alone most people doing physical labor would come to opposite conclusions re: pro union vs pro cooperation economic/governmental policies.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        Not sure you understand, but every single developed nation has pro-corporation policies. Some of them also have pro-worker policies. But none of them are hostile towards corporations like for example Soviet or old China was. There are plenty of billionaires in Scandinavia etc.
- burkaman 5y ago
  > There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example No there aren't. USA is not an example, every significant aspect of modern employment in the US has been shaped by unions.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    That is a lie, labor movements shaped those long before there were a legal concept of unions. Unions != labor movements. Unions are often a result of labor movements, but they are not the same thing. For example, the 8-hour work week was demanded by labor movements who weren't organized as modern unions are organized. Edit: Labor movements often called themselves unions though, but that was just a group of people getting together to protest and demand rights and has nothing to do with how modern unions works.
    - mendigou 5y ago
      I'm not from the US so I'm probably misunderstanding this whole conversation. What's the difference between "a group of people getting together to protest and demand rights" and a union apart from the union being a legal entity? What you wrote in your edit is what a Union means in Europe, it's just formalized as an entity.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        Would you say that a labor party is a union? I wouldn't. A labor party is a labor movement though. If you call labor parties unions and say we should be thankful to them, then I agree, but that is totally different from workplace unions.
        mendigou 5y ago
        I guess my question is: how are those two different?
    - burkaman 5y ago
      I would say that an organized group of workers that calls itself a union and advocates on behalf of those workers for labor rights is a union, and I think most people and dictionaries would agree with me. If that's not what you meant by the word "union", I think the burden is on you to provide an alternate definition for this discussion. For example: "an organization of workers formed to protect the rights and interests of its members" - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/union https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/union
- croes 5y ago
  Unions in Scandinavia are pretty strong, doesn't look worse than the USA.
  - devilbunny 5y ago
    They're also embedded in very different societies and legal structures. Unions don't have to be bad. I'd just argue that the labor law system in the US is pure awful.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    I never said that unions makes things worse. I am saying that corporations are more important than unions. Scandinavia's economy is still run by corporations and has among the highest concentration of billionaires in the world.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? "running a majority of the economy" doesn't seem to necessarily be the relevant metric to be optimizing for. But I'll cede that many of the largest countries in the world do not have solid union rights.
- javajosh 5y ago
  > how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Playing devil's advocate, what you say is probably true on the supply side. However, the other side, consumer demand, is mostly driven by people unaffiliated with corps. That is, families arguably drive the majority of the economy. (That said this argument feels more than a little pedantic, but it must be made!)
- 8note 5y ago
  Isn't it by force of the US nuclear arsenal that modern societies must have corporations? You can do something else, but Americans will always try to assassinate you, and make sure you don't have access to resources There's reasons other than being an absolute requirement for why everyone's currently using something
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    The US will not try to assassinate people for lacking corporate governance.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  The purpose of Unions is a check on corporate and government power. Just like the US has three branches of government there are really four fundamental organizations in society: government, corporations, religion and unions. They work best by keeping each other in check. Right now unions have been decimated and corporations have bought out the government and religion. Unions aren't optional, we're just slowly and corrosively finding out why, despite their flaws, they need to exist (and they don't work if people aren't involved in them).
geodel 5y ago
As important HN may be it is big world out there, so why wouldn't someone simply try eliminating at least a single corporation of medium size (200-1000 people) with plain union organization for employment. I am sure it wouldn't need HN approval.
notahacker 5y ago
On the other hand, we rarely see HN threads about contractors in which corporations are argued to be a panacea for problems faced by busy well paid contract developers, and anybody suggesting any potential downsides of contractors moving onto payroll is assumed to be a dupe of propaganda pushed by Big Tim Ferriss. (We can take that comparison further: people on HN sometimes do suggest that Uber drivers might be better off if they could only be hired as salaried employees but almost never say that about highly paid freelance developers. It's pretty similar when we're looking at the respective cost/benefit of collective bargaining arrangements for local bus drivers vs highly skilled developers earning two orders of magnitude more than bus drivers in an job market that offers practically unrivalled opportunities for people with their skillset.)
IncRnd 5y ago
That's probably a point that wasn't being made, since it wasn't mentioned. Neither was getting rid of unions ever mentioned.
nostrademons 5y ago
Not so much on HN (perhaps because its a forum sponsored by a VC and filled with people that either own their own business or hope to one day), but one of the fastest growing subreddits - r/antiwork - is dedicated to precisely that premise.

by airza 5y ago

Jensson 5y ago

Corporations creates enormous amounts of value, as far as we know modern society cannot function without those structures. Unions however are optional, even if they help they still aren't nearly as important as corporations. Edit: For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Not a single one. So as far as we know it doesn't work. It can work in theory, but it has never worked in practice. There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example, and USA is a better place to live than most countries. Unions can help, but countries that focused on strengthening unions and banning corporations did much worse than for example USA. Strengthening corporations and weakening unions however might have had some small negative effects but nearly not at the same level.

freen 5y ago
I take it you work 7 days a week, no vacation, no lunch break, in incredibly unsafe conditions? No? Do you consider the fact that very few people have working conditions like those outlined above an enormously valuable thing for society? Great. Then you agree that Unions have created enormous amounts of value as well.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Those were thanks to labor movements, not unions. They are not the same thing, labor movements happens thanks to Democracy. Democracy is crucial, I agree, it lets groups organize, protest and fix problems with how society works. But what we call unions today are not that. I'm all for labor engaging in politics, but they can do that without paying union dues for working at a company. The problem USA's workers face today isn't lack of unions, it is lack of proper representation in their democracy.
  - DetroitThrow 5y ago
    >Those were thanks to labor movements, not unions. Ahahaha, do you also think that voting rights and anti-segregation laws were due to the 'civil rights movement', and not civil rights activists such as MLK jr or civil rights organizations such as the NAACP?
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Labor movements are made up of people, yes. Not sure how that is related to unions. Labor organized in every single democracy regardless if there were unions or not. Labor movements tend to create unions, so unions are often a result of labor movements and not the source of labor movements.
      - DetroitThrow 5y ago
        >Labor movements are made up of people, yes. And so if the people in these movements made smaller organizations to advance the goals of the movement at their workplace, in their local communities, and the national level... we might even credit those organizations, yes? Just like we do with the civil rights movement? >Labor organized in every single democracy regardless if there were unions or not. Some economies skipped steam power too, but every early industrial economy had labor unions predate modern labor standards.
        Jensson 5y ago
        Not a single one of those unions had legal backing though, they were just political movements and people working together. Not sure why you say they have anything to do with the theatre that are modern unions. Rather the concept of modern unions limits worker power, since it created a lot of laws preventing workers to organize as they wish and instead have to fit the very narrow framework that are modern unions. Workers had more power back then when they were free to organize without the limitations of modern unions. For example, why even have a vote? Why have enforced term limits for unions that you can't kick them out before the limit is up? Why no bargaining as a group without a vote?
woodruffw 5y ago
What, pray tell, are those corporations made of?
- Jensson 5y ago
  Corporations are a structure of workers. Both the structure and the workers are essential. Workers without structure doesn't produce much value leading to a poor society. Politically created structure leads to bad outcomes so also leads to a poor society. Capitalist created structure creates a lot of value and leads to rich societies. There might be alternatives, but so far capitalism is the only known way to create such structures at scale.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    I don't understand the argument in this response: unions exist within capitalist systems, and are an integral part of our capitalist system. Our concept of a "union" does not apply to non-capitalist systems. Extolling the virtues of capitalism is, at the absolute best, completely orthogonal to the legitimacy and value of unionization. Likewise, unions aren't "politically created structure": they're not created in a top-down manner by the state. They're a form of collective organization and bargaining, the sort that is singularly responsible for the quality of life and workplace protections that we all take for granted.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      > Likewise, unions aren't "politically created structure": they're not created in a top-down manner by the state. Then why are you so upset that people don't want to create the "politically created structure" version of unions? Why not just organize as workers and call yourself a union? Can even create a workers party, like they have in basically every other single other developed country, and then that workers party can stand up for your rights. But that workers party isn't a union. Basically every single developed country except USA has labor parties. Democrats aren't a labor party, they are a party of mostly lawyers.
      - 5y ago
littlestymaar 5y ago
> There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example, and USA is a better place to live than most countries. The US is arguably pretty subpar in terms of quality of life compared to other developed nations (little vacation, really expensive school system, poor health system for the masses leading to a lower life expectancy, high criminality rate, etc.). Of course, not all of it is due to unions, but they are all the consequences of policies being “pro business” instead of “pro people”.
- Jensson 5y ago
  I didn't argue otherwise. USA is however not subpar compared to any country hostile to corporations, which is the important part. A country being hostile to unions isn't nearly as bad as a country being hostile to corporations.
  - d4mi3n 5y ago
    > A country being hostile to unions isn't nearly as bad as a country being hostile to corporations. This is a very subjective conclusion that is likely very dependent on what economic class you fall into. Many folks on HN (myself included) fall into the category white collar or professional workers. For many other parts of the labor market, you're literally trading sweat and toil for money. Add to this that labor intensive jobs tend to lead to a lot of physical wear and tear with less medical benefits than white collar professionals typically receive, then just by quality of life and welfare alone most people doing physical labor would come to opposite conclusions re: pro union vs pro cooperation economic/governmental policies.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Not sure you understand, but every single developed nation has pro-corporation policies. Some of them also have pro-worker policies. But none of them are hostile towards corporations like for example Soviet or old China was. There are plenty of billionaires in Scandinavia etc.
burkaman 5y ago
> There are however many examples of modern economies with very little union influence, USA is an example No there aren't. USA is not an example, every significant aspect of modern employment in the US has been shaped by unions.
- Jensson 5y ago
  That is a lie, labor movements shaped those long before there were a legal concept of unions. Unions != labor movements. Unions are often a result of labor movements, but they are not the same thing. For example, the 8-hour work week was demanded by labor movements who weren't organized as modern unions are organized. Edit: Labor movements often called themselves unions though, but that was just a group of people getting together to protest and demand rights and has nothing to do with how modern unions works.
  - mendigou 5y ago
    I'm not from the US so I'm probably misunderstanding this whole conversation. What's the difference between "a group of people getting together to protest and demand rights" and a union apart from the union being a legal entity? What you wrote in your edit is what a Union means in Europe, it's just formalized as an entity.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Would you say that a labor party is a union? I wouldn't. A labor party is a labor movement though. If you call labor parties unions and say we should be thankful to them, then I agree, but that is totally different from workplace unions.
      - mendigou 5y ago
        I guess my question is: how are those two different?
  - burkaman 5y ago
    I would say that an organized group of workers that calls itself a union and advocates on behalf of those workers for labor rights is a union, and I think most people and dictionaries would agree with me. If that's not what you meant by the word "union", I think the burden is on you to provide an alternate definition for this discussion. For example: "an organization of workers formed to protect the rights and interests of its members" - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/union https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/union
croes 5y ago
Unions in Scandinavia are pretty strong, doesn't look worse than the USA.
- devilbunny 5y ago
  They're also embedded in very different societies and legal structures. Unions don't have to be bad. I'd just argue that the labor law system in the US is pure awful.
- Jensson 5y ago
  I never said that unions makes things worse. I am saying that corporations are more important than unions. Scandinavia's economy is still run by corporations and has among the highest concentration of billionaires in the world.
whimsicalism 5y ago
> For those who disagree, how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? "running a majority of the economy" doesn't seem to necessarily be the relevant metric to be optimizing for. But I'll cede that many of the largest countries in the world do not have solid union rights.
javajosh 5y ago
> how many modern societies are there without corporations running a majority of the economy? Playing devil's advocate, what you say is probably true on the supply side. However, the other side, consumer demand, is mostly driven by people unaffiliated with corps. That is, families arguably drive the majority of the economy. (That said this argument feels more than a little pedantic, but it must be made!)
8note 5y ago
Isn't it by force of the US nuclear arsenal that modern societies must have corporations? You can do something else, but Americans will always try to assassinate you, and make sure you don't have access to resources There's reasons other than being an absolute requirement for why everyone's currently using something
- IncRnd 5y ago
  The US will not try to assassinate people for lacking corporate governance.
lamontcg 5y ago
The purpose of Unions is a check on corporate and government power. Just like the US has three branches of government there are really four fundamental organizations in society: government, corporations, religion and unions. They work best by keeping each other in check. Right now unions have been decimated and corporations have bought out the government and religion. Unions aren't optional, we're just slowly and corrosively finding out why, despite their flaws, they need to exist (and they don't work if people aren't involved in them).

geodel 5y ago

As important HN may be it is big world out there, so why wouldn't someone simply try eliminating at least a single corporation of medium size (200-1000 people) with plain union organization for employment. I am sure it wouldn't need HN approval.

notahacker 5y ago

On the other hand, we rarely see HN threads about contractors in which corporations are argued to be a panacea for problems faced by busy well paid contract developers, and anybody suggesting any potential downsides of contractors moving onto payroll is assumed to be a dupe of propaganda pushed by Big Tim Ferriss. (We can take that comparison further: people on HN sometimes do suggest that Uber drivers might be better off if they could only be hired as salaried employees but almost never say that about highly paid freelance developers. It's pretty similar when we're looking at the respective cost/benefit of collective bargaining arrangements for local bus drivers vs highly skilled developers earning two orders of magnitude more than bus drivers in an job market that offers practically unrivalled opportunities for people with their skillset.)

IncRnd 5y ago

That's probably a point that wasn't being made, since it wasn't mentioned. Neither was getting rid of unions ever mentioned.

nostrademons 5y ago

Not so much on HN (perhaps because its a forum sponsored by a VC and filled with people that either own their own business or hope to one day), but one of the fastest growing subreddits - r/antiwork - is dedicated to precisely that premise.