3 ms·

What is this "free market" you describe? Am I free to occupy any building I like, or does your "free" market include a concept of a "property" and entire govern

What is this "free market" you describe? Am I free to occupy any building I like, or does your "free" market include a concept of a "property" and entire government bureaucracies and men with guns to enforce such concepts? Does your "free market" make a distinction between "I expect this property to still be mine tomorrow" and "I expect this job to still be mine tomorrow"? Does you "free market" allow for individuals to "organize" as a "corporation" and does the "corporation" provide legal immunities for civil liabilities and personal debts (that "personal property" concept). If so does your "free market" allow for other individuals to "organize" as a "union" - and does that "union" provide various legal guarantees and immunities etc. "Free market" people love the corporation but hate the union. One is a legal fiction for rich people and one is a legal fiction for poor people.

thinkerswell 3y ago
Go watch a few Milton Friedman videos and you’ll have answers to those questions, though you may not like the answers.
- civilitty 3y ago
  A lobotomy works just as well.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
>Free market" people love the corporation but hate the union. One is a legal fiction for rich people and one is a legal fiction for poor people. Neither should have special legal privileges beyond those guaranteed to individuals. This would go a long way to resolving the issues with both.
epivosism 3y ago
By definition unions have local monopolies and can't be attacked. In a well-run truly free economy, corporations don't have that. my view of the power distributions and their results * company town, one company enslaving all workers <=== bad * town with many companies, competing for workers. incentivizes all to good behavior <=== good * town with many companies, each with a union that locks down behavior and can't be attacked <=== somewhat bad, blocks change, can be taken over by corrupt unions, but can also give benefits. as in your comment, though, people become extremely dogmatic about this and it becomes rational to be "union forever right or wrong" rather than actually thinking about the best way to organize things. i.e. police unions being insanely defensive and stubborn, and not enforcing any quality controls on cops. * one/zero companies, one national union - i.e. CCP. When put into place, doesn't work, and when not well-controlled devolves to basically worker enslavement. Most of the history of modern China, and lots of historical USSR were like this. At other times they simulated stage 2 where there was competition on both worker and employer sides, and they had good results (80s-90s) To your point about house ownership being protected by law, but job ownership not being, I think it's a matter of contracts. Selling someone and helping them own it forever is fairly trivial since it's independent (the house can decay and nobody has to pay for it, water may run out etc). But providing a job forever is another story since it clearly requires continued input of a certain quality from the worker, as well as an assumption about stability of the company, part of the economy. So it's quite easy to enforce property ownership since there are basically no guarantees (air quality, noise, availability of food, etc etc may all die out but the person still owns the land). But for a job there's no way that anyone can ensure that it will always be profitable or useful to pay a person (who ages) to do a thing.
- elygre 3y ago
  > By definition unions have local monopolies and can't be attacked. I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “local monopolies”, so this comment may be a bit off base: My Norwegian employer (<1000 employees) deals with four different unions and a bunch of un-unionized people. (All with no problem)
  - epivosism 3y ago
    Ah thanks. My basic knowledge of the US was that most workplaces have a single union, and that in many cases membership is very high. IE police, teachers, doctors, lawyers, auto workers. But looking it up now it's not as clear. Yes the case you mention of multiple unions and also individuals seems possibly more balanced! Thanks. I'd like to see a comparative analysis of how the legal and social infrastructure for unions differs in outcomes between all the different ways it has been done across countries, industries, and time.
    - epivosism 3y ago
      For example, the current UAW strike seems very damaging. They're attacking the very nature of the auto companies and saying they don't even have the right to make money or try to profit, and demanding huge wage increases and further union expansion to include the battery plant. Meanwhile the companies are losing 30k+ per EV sold and are only about 10% of Tesla's size, and Tesla has something like an 18% profit margin even after price reductions. The unions might win locally but put the companies out of business in five or ten years by slowing them down. So, this structure of a single union led by a guy who's already independently wealthy and old and for whom the long term survival of the union doesn't matter monetarily, and the fact that the companies simply have to deal with him, and for electoral reasons both Biden and Trump showed up on the picket lines... I would quit if I were an exec there. Feels like they'll be driven out of business and bailed out either publicly or secretly within ten years. Market tracking this: https://manifold.markets/Ernie/will-ford-gm-or-stellantis-be-baile?r=RXJuaWU https://manifold.markets/Ernie/will-ford-gm-or-stellantis-be...
- bmicraft 3y ago
Fischgericht 3y ago
A believe people in the US are so Anti-Union because the way Unions are designed by law is completely broken. I remember well that we once had a booth at a trade show in Las Vegas. It was strictly forbidden for us to take our exhibits to our booths ourselves, because the process of "take something onto the exhibition floors" was union-protected. So we had to wait half an hour to get a task done that would have taken myself 30 seconds. I believe that unions are needed, and am strictly pro-Union. I believe that Unions serve the goal of being a counter-weight when a huge employer has lots of negotiation power. But what I have seen in the US - and to a certain extend in Germany, too - is that certain UNIONS have grown to big, powerful and bureaucratic, and have become a huge force of power themselves, no longer serving the workers, but being self-serving mostly, and bringing employers to the brink of collapse. In Germany we have two competing unions for rail workers. One is huge, corrupt and self-serving, and no where connected to the actual pain points rail workers have. But luckily there is second, much smaller rail Union, where the Union boss used to be a train driver and still is very much in touch of the base, and therefore does not pick fights with employers "because they can", but to actually work on pain points the workers have. Which is really important because Germany has a huge shortage on rail workers, and urgently needs to attract new labor in that sector. It's a bit weird that the rail companies are not working on fixing the shortages in labor, and the government isn't either, but that it's a union that is fighting for making life of the customers bearable again. Back to the US: I believe the whole discussion of being pro-Union or pro-free-market is a red herring. The unions themselves need to be reformed and strengthened, but in a way that they serve society. In general I believe unions should be smaller and leaner organizations.

thinkerswell 3y ago

Go watch a few Milton Friedman videos and you’ll have answers to those questions, though you may not like the answers.

civilitty 3y ago
A lobotomy works just as well.

s1artibartfast 3y ago

>Free market" people love the corporation but hate the union. One is a legal fiction for rich people and one is a legal fiction for poor people. Neither should have special legal privileges beyond those guaranteed to individuals. This would go a long way to resolving the issues with both.

epivosism 3y ago

By definition unions have local monopolies and can't be attacked. In a well-run truly free economy, corporations don't have that. my view of the power distributions and their results * company town, one company enslaving all workers <=== bad * town with many companies, competing for workers. incentivizes all to good behavior <=== good * town with many companies, each with a union that locks down behavior and can't be attacked <=== somewhat bad, blocks change, can be taken over by corrupt unions, but can also give benefits. as in your comment, though, people become extremely dogmatic about this and it becomes rational to be "union forever right or wrong" rather than actually thinking about the best way to organize things. i.e. police unions being insanely defensive and stubborn, and not enforcing any quality controls on cops. * one/zero companies, one national union - i.e. CCP. When put into place, doesn't work, and when not well-controlled devolves to basically worker enslavement. Most of the history of modern China, and lots of historical USSR were like this. At other times they simulated stage 2 where there was competition on both worker and employer sides, and they had good results (80s-90s) To your point about house ownership being protected by law, but job ownership not being, I think it's a matter of contracts. Selling someone and helping them own it forever is fairly trivial since it's independent (the house can decay and nobody has to pay for it, water may run out etc). But providing a job forever is another story since it clearly requires continued input of a certain quality from the worker, as well as an assumption about stability of the company, part of the economy. So it's quite easy to enforce property ownership since there are basically no guarantees (air quality, noise, availability of food, etc etc may all die out but the person still owns the land). But for a job there's no way that anyone can ensure that it will always be profitable or useful to pay a person (who ages) to do a thing.

elygre 3y ago
> By definition unions have local monopolies and can't be attacked. I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “local monopolies”, so this comment may be a bit off base: My Norwegian employer (<1000 employees) deals with four different unions and a bunch of un-unionized people. (All with no problem)
- epivosism 3y ago
  Ah thanks. My basic knowledge of the US was that most workplaces have a single union, and that in many cases membership is very high. IE police, teachers, doctors, lawyers, auto workers. But looking it up now it's not as clear. Yes the case you mention of multiple unions and also individuals seems possibly more balanced! Thanks. I'd like to see a comparative analysis of how the legal and social infrastructure for unions differs in outcomes between all the different ways it has been done across countries, industries, and time.
  - epivosism 3y ago
    For example, the current UAW strike seems very damaging. They're attacking the very nature of the auto companies and saying they don't even have the right to make money or try to profit, and demanding huge wage increases and further union expansion to include the battery plant. Meanwhile the companies are losing 30k+ per EV sold and are only about 10% of Tesla's size, and Tesla has something like an 18% profit margin even after price reductions. The unions might win locally but put the companies out of business in five or ten years by slowing them down. So, this structure of a single union led by a guy who's already independently wealthy and old and for whom the long term survival of the union doesn't matter monetarily, and the fact that the companies simply have to deal with him, and for electoral reasons both Biden and Trump showed up on the picket lines... I would quit if I were an exec there. Feels like they'll be driven out of business and bailed out either publicly or secretly within ten years. Market tracking this: https://manifold.markets/Ernie/will-ford-gm-or-stellantis-be-baile?r=RXJuaWU https://manifold.markets/Ernie/will-ford-gm-or-stellantis-be...
bmicraft 3y ago

Fischgericht 3y ago

A believe people in the US are so Anti-Union because the way Unions are designed by law is completely broken. I remember well that we once had a booth at a trade show in Las Vegas. It was strictly forbidden for us to take our exhibits to our booths ourselves, because the process of "take something onto the exhibition floors" was union-protected. So we had to wait half an hour to get a task done that would have taken myself 30 seconds. I believe that unions are needed, and am strictly pro-Union. I believe that Unions serve the goal of being a counter-weight when a huge employer has lots of negotiation power. But what I have seen in the US - and to a certain extend in Germany, too - is that certain UNIONS have grown to big, powerful and bureaucratic, and have become a huge force of power themselves, no longer serving the workers, but being self-serving mostly, and bringing employers to the brink of collapse. In Germany we have two competing unions for rail workers. One is huge, corrupt and self-serving, and no where connected to the actual pain points rail workers have. But luckily there is second, much smaller rail Union, where the Union boss used to be a train driver and still is very much in touch of the base, and therefore does not pick fights with employers "because they can", but to actually work on pain points the workers have. Which is really important because Germany has a huge shortage on rail workers, and urgently needs to attract new labor in that sector. It's a bit weird that the rail companies are not working on fixing the shortages in labor, and the government isn't either, but that it's a union that is fighting for making life of the customers bearable again. Back to the US: I believe the whole discussion of being pro-Union or pro-free-market is a red herring. The unions themselves need to be reformed and strengthened, but in a way that they serve society. In general I believe unions should be smaller and leaner organizations.