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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28079 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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And when the bottleneck goes the other way companies can push down wages and so on. It's just swings and roundabouts. Each side can use the power they have when they have it. Why should it be any other way? There is no moral requirement for workers to make things easier for companies or indeed vice versa. The adversarial approach sometimes puts out of work a lot of people and sometimes causes companies to sink. and that is entirely ok. It's part of the emergent processes for finding the balance points between capital and labor. At a societal level it works. Each side has their own levers to pull, at different times. Expecting them not to do that is a fundamental error. Your employer is not your friend, and your employee is not your friend. You are engaged in a transactional agreement, nothing more.

And when the bottleneck goes the other way companies can push down wages and so on. It's just swings and roundabouts.

When a union refuses to work unless excess pay is provided, men with guns will harm the employer if they seek alternate arrangements with willing third parties.

When an employer refuses to pay enough to employees, nothing happens if the employee seeks alternative arrangements with willing third parties.

This is not an emergent process. It's explicit coercive action by the government to favor one side over the other.

As mentioned elsewhere though government is also an emergent process. Every human society develops it and its coercion. There is nothing unnatural about it. Its a fundamental part of human society.

Markets are protected by men with guns and also coerced by those men with guns. You must take the rough with the smooth.

My mistake, I thought you were attempting to make a statement more substantive than a purely descriptive "workers have lots of power due to threats of violence".

No one disputes that, so I'm not sure why you are devoting so much verbiage to repeating it.

Because people don't seem to realise that is the fundamental underpinning of civilization. If they recognize that then all talk of what markets deserve and unions being government coercion, is simply special pleading.

If the fundamentals of markets also rely on violence then that particular critique of unions specifically is not a good argument.

I'm confused. You seem to be trying to get from "union labor has allies willing to use violence" to "this is good" without advancing any argument why. Instead, you are just repeating truisms that no one disagrees with as if they make your case.

Your last sentence is an odd non-sequitur since free market types don't object to using violence against others who initiate violence.

In this very thread we have arguments that unions are bad because their restrictions are based in law and thus enforced by the threat of government violence whereas in contrast the market does not rely on threats of violence. I am pointing out the underpinning of markets is also supported by the same threat of government violence and therefore this argument is not a strong one.

The violence may be good or bad, that isn't my point, merely that if both sides are reliant on it, it isn't a justification for markets being good, or unions being bad, or indeed vice versa, because it applies to both of them.

I am making a narrow rebuttal to this particular reasoning that is apparent above. If you said capitalism is bad because it relies on government violence to enforce private property laws, and therefore we should pick communism, a rebuttal might be, that communism also relies on threats of government violence and therefore this particular argument is not a good one. It doesn't say whether communism or capitalism is better, merely pointing out the specific justification being used is erroneous.

Again, the distinction they make is initiation of violence, which you seem to be trying hard to ignore.

Perhaps you are not understanding, in each case the government will initiate violence. If companies break anti-union laws or if thieves steal property from a company or whatever. We're talking about the back up of government sanctioned violence via law enforcement here, and how both union and markets rely upon that to exist.

Whether it's enforcing IP laws, private property laws so that companies products cannot simply be taken with no comeback and so on, the government will initiate violence (through law enforcement). Sure it might start with fines and so on, but all government action is ultimately backed by state sanctioned violence.

That is the violence both unions and markets are built upon.

Whether or not such moral requirements exist, maintaining a high-trust society requires the shared fiction that they do. If you think everyone around you is a crook, crooking them back is the only way to get your due. If everyone thinks that way, they really are surrounded by crooks.

"Take what you can, give nothing back," is a code for pirates.

There are different levels of "high" in "high-trust society". There's the level where you can leave a stack of firewood, a cash box, and a "$5 per bundle" sign by a road, and trust that when you get back the accounting will all match up because nobody would steal. And then there's the second level, where you trust that if the accounting doesn't match up it's okay, because you know the person who took more than a mutually agreed transaction allowed really needed the excess that badly.

That first level of trust is the one where there are no crooks, the one you need enough of to keep civilization from falling apart, because society needs far more voluntary positive-sum transactions than it can afford to perfectly guard.

The second level might be a beautiful place to live, but I'm not convinced "anybody engaging in a transaction might be expected to become an unexpected charity donor" is even an improvement over a welfare state that spreads those costs around. The deadweight loss of an N% tax isn't as bad as the deadweight loss of an M% chance of a (100N/M)% tax with no greater benefits.

Or: you can leave a stack of firewood and a cash box and turn a profit. Some people will steal firewood, but they won't (usually) go as far as stealing the box or your entire supply of firewood.

I am increasingly coming to a conclusion that trust can only exist between those of equal power.

Who said anything about not giving anything back though? Sure when labor has more power, capital is paying more than it would like but it is still trading money for labor in a positive sum fashion overall. Because if all companies fail then labor also fails. Each side has constraints. Its more take what you can and give something back with the something and what you can varying within stable constraints at a societal level.

You make a good point. Strictly speaking an economic analysis of this stuff should be culture-free, with no implicit notion that the employers are conscientious, bright and noble and their employees are parasitic drag-em-downs. They are just two groups of actors engaged in contractual dispute/process. Whatever emerges from that just is the market. There's no reason why a victorious union should not be thought of as the clever, superior stock of human capital.

But the US-style Daniel Plainview conservativism always leaks its way in.

Unions aren’t market forced and are protected by the government. Market forces would be the company paying the marginal wage to get to equilibrium for the workers they need which is often fairly high.

If unions can be influential enough to get government protection, then that is something the market must take into account.

The market only exists in this form itself because of government protection so complaining unions get it too is just special pleading.

In other words there are other factors than market forces to be accounted for. They are neither more nor less legitimate than the market itself.

Markets are natural. They come up organically. People who specialize in one thing want to trade with people who specialize elsewhere.

The only thing govs do for markers is prevent crime.

And give a resolution process for fraud,and theft and IP infractions. And ensure they abide by rules that the public want enforced, and build the roads the product moves on, and educate the workers the company employs and so on and so on.

A modern market is not the same as two farmers haggling over how many chickens per bushel of wheat. It is, like it or not reliant on the government.

A market can exist without government but it wouldn't be this market with all the advantages that entails. You must take the rough with the smooth.

Ya so we agree to pay taxes. But end of day the market is still free people agreeing to transactions. That’s not true with unions

Also the issues you described don’t apply to Ford. Whose making a fraudulent ford.

I’m all game for attacking tech firms who the issues you describe apply to.

But it is free people voting for politicians who enact pro union laws. Just as legitimate as the market itself.

Unions are as much market forces as the entire edifice of corporations and business, which are also protected by government.

This idea that all the weird and specific permutations of business ownership is natural oh but unions are artificial and imposed by government is wrong.

So if it weren’t explicitly illegal to fire workers for trying to form a Union, retaliate against those who do or replace striking workers with no requirements on taking back strikers, would unions exist?

Companies existed well before governments mandated the form. There were businesses in every civilization that ever existed. They are perfectly natural and able to exist without a state to protect them.

The Union is weird in that they are fully created and defended by government laws with few versions of them existing in places that don’t have those carve outs. Guilds existed in the dark ages, but that’s really as close as you get.

The first recorded strike action was of construction workers on a pharaoh’s tomb, IIRC. Something tells me that Bronze Age god kings did not have laws against firing workers for organizing.

So if it weren’t explicitly illegal to fire workers for trying to form a Union, retaliate against those who do or replace striking workers with no requirements on taking back strikers, would unions exist?

Do you think unions simply spontaneously popped to being after it became illegal to fire workers?

If I've understood correctly, basic union protections became a thing in the United States with Wagner Act in 1935, and unions (AFL, IWW etc.) obviously existed before that already.

The Union is weird in that they are fully created and defended by government laws with few versions of them existing in places that don’t have those carve outs

Unions are not created by the government. Workers must vote to unionize a workplace. Unions existed back when unionizing was illegal, and laws simply protect the right to unionize.

Well, yes, and if the government hadn’t created those laws unions would not exist. Even the right to hold an election in the workplace, during work hours is given to the unions by the government. What other activities and social obligations does your boss have to give you time during the workday for, or force employers to provide time and space for? You cannot even force employers to allow regular voting on their campus during work hours, but they’re forced by law to allow the union vote.

Where would employers prefer the election take place? At the union hall, where a majority is guaranteed to vote to form a union? Isn't it to the benefit of employers to hold the election on site, during working hours?

Anarchism has never worked, what are you speaking about when you say "able to exist without a state to protect them"?

Anyway that is not really relevant. The fact is that companies get some advantages from modern states. They are more prosperous when the state protects them. So they have to accept the downsides that come with this prosperity.

One could imagine in certain circumstances a non government backed union. But it would be very different.

I think some states have unions in the trades where you can hire a union electrician or a non union electrician. Since there is still free trade the union can’t withhold service to boost wages.

But in that situation the union can provide things like training, quality checks, various insurance etc and to employers during maybe a few week project they can just asks the union for people and not have to have full time electricians on staff or deal with training, insurance, quality, etc.

Yep. Effectively guilds. There can be benefits. The problem arises when government puts a huge thumb on the scale.

What power for a bottleneck do automakers have?

I sort of agree apple and google etc control some bottlenecks but I also support antitrust pursuits against them.

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