5 ms·
Unions are insurance against capitalist hubris.
by mkr-hn 5y ago
Unions are insurance against capitalist hubris.
- eru 5y agoCompetition is insurance against that, too. Alas, unions can have their own principal-agent problems and bureaucracy and hubris.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoalas, competition can have its own problems too. In complicated situations it may be that you want more than one insurance against bad things happening.
- eru 5y agoI'm happy for people to join unions, if they want to. I'd just be against being forced to join unions, or against giving unions any special legal privileges. (Eg one such privilege would be not enforcing contract clauses about employees giving up their right to strike in exchange for some pre-agreed compensation.)
- bigbillheck 5y agoCompetition usually turns into collusion and consolidation.
- pydry 5y agoI find it weird that nobody is seeing this in tech. The automovotive market used to have garage based startups a long time ago. It used to have fierce competition and workers could get pay raises without unions. Then gradually everything fell under 3 big companies, workers fought the concentration of market power by unionizing (and lost) and for decades there was just the big 3. It's not even a question of if or even who tech will consolidate under any more - it will be someone who is currwently a household name. It is when. It's coming.
- Frondo 5y agoIndeed, even in our beloved tech industry, the biggest employers have absolutely colluded to keep workers' wages down: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-google-settle-antitrust-lawsuit-hiring-collusion https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo... And still people trust management...
- eru 5y agoYou can distrust both management and unions.
- rmbyrro 5y agoNo, it's the same hubris: politics over personal human connection, concentration of power, collective mass over the individual, corruption on all levels.