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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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The United Auto Workers have gone on strike: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-auto-union-strike-three-detroit-three-factories-2023-09-15/

What happens if Ford and GM simply say: "okay, you're fired"? This seems to have quite a few benefits, mostly that they can get rid of union workers and remove the threat of another strike.

I'll admit that unions sortof confuse me. I didn't grow up around them and have always wondered the mechanism by which everybody gets to quit their job but then demand extra money to come back. Are the people running factory machines inside of Ford and GM (or starbucks, or a hollywood writers room) really that highly skilled?

It should be noted that Tesla is not unionized, and will not be a part of this strike. Do you guys think there is a chance that the government tries to force Tesla to stop making cars during the strike to make things more fair?

I'll be honest about my feelings towards unions: I don't get it at all, and I think I'm missing something. I do think that workers should have an adversarial relationship with their employer, but it seems to me like unions have all but destroyed the american auto industry. I think you'd be insane to not just fire anybody who joins a union on the spot. I don't get how places can "vote to unionize". Why does the employer not simply fire the people doing the organizing? Sure you can all vote to make a starbucks union, but...I just won't hire anybody in your union.

Are the people running factory machines inside of Ford and GM (or starbucks, or a hollywood writers room) really that highly skilled?

Switching costs are high, unions will generally make attempts to increase the difficulty of procuring 'scab'/temporary replacement labor and historically there was less ability to just move a factory international or procure international workers.

Do agree that the Writers' strike seems pretty fangless when it's not only a job with a fairly arbitrary marker of skill/ability to function, but it's also one that's an actual desired, targeted role for a lot of people without a real credentialist barrier to entry. Writer compensation should, logistically, have a pretty severe pareto principle.

Screenwriting is much harder than it looks. As evidence, I present all the garbage shows people love to hate. In recent years alone we’ve had incredibly high-profile properties with massive budgets that fail to include a coherent plot.

Worse, reusing quality writing is a death sentence. Prior to recorded audio and especially video, it was much safer. Today, if you want to see Shakespeare, you can watch a filmed performance, read the original text, or attend a live showing. A producer who wants to leverage that writing and credibility has to have their own spin.

Say you want to make a new TV episode. You copy a classic formula, you’re a hack. You spin an existing one, still a hack. You go original, well, you’re probably not as original as you think. If you really are, though…you’re gambling. High profile projects don’t like gambling.

There’s certainly skill involved in writing, but the barriers beyond skill are pathetically low and frankly there are millions of people trying to get in. Every 14 year old girl with a laptop is an “aspiring author” and there’s a lot of amateurs doing fan fiction (look up some fan-made Trek shows, but for acting and production values, they’re probably nearly on par with the pros at this point) it’s a skilled trade, but it’s not wizardry and not impossible to learn. What keeps people out of Hollywood is more the difficulty of getting your SAG card, not any real skills gap.

You could make this same argument about, I don’t know, carpentry. Most anyone can learn it, lots of amateurs try, and the work of the best craftsmen is quite impressive. It’s even got a bit of cultural cachet, at least among men over 30. So why aren’t those men breaking into the carpentry industry and depressing wages?

It’s not because they can’t get a carpentry guild card. It’s because the demand for artisanal carpenters is actually pretty small. Carving table legs as a hobby is fine. Quitting your day job to focus on it is stupid.

14yo fanfiction authors don’t usually end up with movie deals or even a steady job writing. Too much risk of ending up homeless in LA. Conversely, for a studio, hiring a total unknown is more risk than they’d like. What are the odds that you get something competent, vs. Empress Theresa?

People would probably risk homelessness for carpentry if there were highly paid star carpenters.

There totally should be highly paid star carpenters.

Technically the biggest celebrity in human history is a star carpenter!

Sure Harrison Ford is well known but I think you overstate it.