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The American economy is both weak and strong — or so say articles like these that consistently try to convince us. Even the slightest mobilization of workers w

The American economy is both weak and strong — or so say articles like these that consistently try to convince us. Even the slightest mobilization of workers within a single company within a single sector can bring the greatest economy in the world TM instantly to its knees. I’m either getting sick of living in such a brittle system that is constantly at peril from people wanting to join or stay in the middle class, or I’m getting sick of these articles implying that this is the best we can do and there’s not better options. Too much cognitive dissonance to be believable.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... Brittle systems were built because they enriched and benefited certain folks (paperclip maximizer but for profits). To build better systems, existing systems will have to be "refactored." With structural demographics constraining labor supply for the next decade, this is an opportune time for Labor to use the power that it has to reverse its 40 year power decline. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-... https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-labor-market-bends-toward-scarcity-the-fed-cant-change-that-51670019273 https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-labor-market-bends-towa...
nine_zeros 3y ago
American economy has become too concentrated to a handful of companies. That makes America a fragile economy. In a REAL capitalistic economy, a small shipping provider would have raised the capital immediately to capitalize on the strikes, advertised their services to UPSs customers and eaten the company away. This would have put pressure on the company execs to negotiate fast, give in to worker demands (which are reasonable) just to not lose out on future earnings. If the execs succeeded, UPS would continue to live. If execs failed, the competitor would replace them. That would have been capitalism but America is far too protective of large corporations.
- heavenlyblue 3y ago
  > In a REAL capitalistic economy, a small shipping provider would have raised the capital immediately to capitalize on the strikes, advertised their services to UPSs customers and eaten the company away. In a REAL capitalistic economy, a large shipping provider would intimidate their own employees by means of having their own army.
  - EliRivers 3y ago
    And it would all work out, because the army would actually be composed of the striking workers, hired on short-contracts to intimidate themselves, and any strike-breakers would also be striking workers hired at greater pay; where else are you going to find people with exactly the right knowledge and experience, AND available suddenly? :)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - failuser 3y ago
      Not really. The army is the part of the workforce they actually take good care of. It might be contracted from a PMC, or even the state because under REAL capitalism the state exists to keep the capital happy.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      Wasn't there a part of Catch 22, where the entrepreneur character outsourced the German bombing of some US air base to that very same US air base's bombers? Sounds about like that. In non-fiction there are just more steps in between to hide it.
- rocket_surgeron 3y ago
  >In a REAL capitalistic economy, a small shipping provider would have raised the capital immediately to capitalize on the strikes, advertised their services to UPSs customers and eaten the company away. In the real world it takes weeks if not months to purchase a delivery vehicle. There are no delivery van lots that you go to in order to browse a wide variety of Morgan Olson and Utilimaster vans and then plop down a million dollars for 20 of them, not that 20 of them would allow you to run a parcel shipping service. You need thousands. Which means a production run at a manufacturer who is already booked through next year. Hell, it would take weeks just to figure out WHERE to advertise much less actually inking deals, unless you like throwing money away. It doesn't matter if you apparate a trillion dollars, time is immovable. It took a decade of conceptualizing and two years of actualizing to start FedEx. If a rationally-acting rational actor rationalizes ten quadrillion dollars of gold into his pocket, it doesn't matter one fucking bit. They can't buy the facilities, systems, equipment, and experience needed to do shit. They can't use their iron capitalist will to pour concrete faster. This is one, of many, fundamental blind spot concerning reality that capitalists or pseudo-capitalists used to working in the fake online venture capitalist world have.
ilyt 3y ago
When government cares about corporation shareholders well-being more than their own people that happens.
fundad 3y ago
Do you measure strength in money or resilience?
failuser 3y ago
Those are metaphors. Hard, but brittle like over heat-treated steel might be a better metaphor. US makes it workers work very hard, but it will explode if too many workers will refuse to put up with the pressure.
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
Or, more reasonably, CNN is just a garbage news source.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... Brittle systems were built because they enriched and benefited certain folks (paperclip maximizer but for profits). To build better systems, existing systems will have to be "refactored." With structural demographics constraining labor supply for the next decade, this is an opportune time for Labor to use the power that it has to reverse its 40 year power decline. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-... https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-labor-market-bends-toward-scarcity-the-fed-cant-change-that-51670019273 https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-labor-market-bends-towa...

nine_zeros 3y ago

American economy has become too concentrated to a handful of companies. That makes America a fragile economy. In a REAL capitalistic economy, a small shipping provider would have raised the capital immediately to capitalize on the strikes, advertised their services to UPSs customers and eaten the company away. This would have put pressure on the company execs to negotiate fast, give in to worker demands (which are reasonable) just to not lose out on future earnings. If the execs succeeded, UPS would continue to live. If execs failed, the competitor would replace them. That would have been capitalism but America is far too protective of large corporations.

heavenlyblue 3y ago
> In a REAL capitalistic economy, a small shipping provider would have raised the capital immediately to capitalize on the strikes, advertised their services to UPSs customers and eaten the company away. In a REAL capitalistic economy, a large shipping provider would intimidate their own employees by means of having their own army.
- EliRivers 3y ago
  And it would all work out, because the army would actually be composed of the striking workers, hired on short-contracts to intimidate themselves, and any strike-breakers would also be striking workers hired at greater pay; where else are you going to find people with exactly the right knowledge and experience, AND available suddenly? :)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - failuser 3y ago
    Not really. The army is the part of the workforce they actually take good care of. It might be contracted from a PMC, or even the state because under REAL capitalism the state exists to keep the capital happy.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Wasn't there a part of Catch 22, where the entrepreneur character outsourced the German bombing of some US air base to that very same US air base's bombers? Sounds about like that. In non-fiction there are just more steps in between to hide it.
rocket_surgeron 3y ago
>In a REAL capitalistic economy, a small shipping provider would have raised the capital immediately to capitalize on the strikes, advertised their services to UPSs customers and eaten the company away. In the real world it takes weeks if not months to purchase a delivery vehicle. There are no delivery van lots that you go to in order to browse a wide variety of Morgan Olson and Utilimaster vans and then plop down a million dollars for 20 of them, not that 20 of them would allow you to run a parcel shipping service. You need thousands. Which means a production run at a manufacturer who is already booked through next year. Hell, it would take weeks just to figure out WHERE to advertise much less actually inking deals, unless you like throwing money away. It doesn't matter if you apparate a trillion dollars, time is immovable. It took a decade of conceptualizing and two years of actualizing to start FedEx. If a rationally-acting rational actor rationalizes ten quadrillion dollars of gold into his pocket, it doesn't matter one fucking bit. They can't buy the facilities, systems, equipment, and experience needed to do shit. They can't use their iron capitalist will to pour concrete faster. This is one, of many, fundamental blind spot concerning reality that capitalists or pseudo-capitalists used to working in the fake online venture capitalist world have.

ilyt 3y ago

When government cares about corporation shareholders well-being more than their own people that happens.

fundad 3y ago

Do you measure strength in money or resilience?

failuser 3y ago

Those are metaphors. Hard, but brittle like over heat-treated steel might be a better metaphor. US makes it workers work very hard, but it will explode if too many workers will refuse to put up with the pressure.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago

Or, more reasonably, CNN is just a garbage news source.