: Very true. That is why I am not opposed to labor unions. In some cases they are needed. In all cases they are always needed. Who are the first people you take down if you want to set up a dictatorship?
- The police, gun owners, politicos and trade unionists.
Trade unions are really, really crucial to democracy.
:Hopefully a time will come about when they will be obsolete, when companies have to fight to keep their workers in their company.
I can't see that ever happening the fact is that the interests of working people and capital will never correspond, for instance, labour saving devices should be welcomed by working people because they reduce disagreeable work but instead because they mean unemployment at the hand of cost cutters they never will be.
Saying that, although I appreciate your honesty and cynicism about conventional unions, about unions is like saying hopefully one day the constitution or freedom of speech will be obsolete.
: This is the biggest criticism of automation, however it has never come about. In fact, with increased automation many high skill jobs are created that require a greater degree of education and are not as mind numbing as the jobs that the automation replaced.
Possibly but who can afford that education with the growing trend towards the 'third way' of meger assistance to the poor and big brides for business investment to the likes of McDonalds?
Do you really see the high technology sector employing as many people as heavy industry or the type of people who work in heavy industry? I dont really think so.
: The thing is though, is that without a strong work ethic that money often runs out very quickly.
I have a very real work ethic and I find that capitalism is a real, real insult to it because I exhaust myself and just get asked to work harder, what is the point, the work is in no way rewarding.
:Just take a look at all those musicians who at their heyday were worth many millions of dollars, now many of them are bankrupted. People like Steve Forbes who were sons of tycoons have very good work ethics usually instilled in them by their parents.
Now that's all not true, that's just good business sense, do business personnel really work that hard? Or are they just willing to be more conniving and devious than anyone else?
: You find 'affluenza' as you call it more prevalent among the aristrocracy where they recieve an allowance by the monarch or have a shitload of family inheritances and ties to government--like the house of Lords in England (has Blair disbanded it yet?).
Blair is never ever going to disband the house of lords he is to much of a conservative and he really, really fears that a popularly elected second chamber would oppose his right wing mass privatisations, commodification of health and education and police state criminal justice policies.
Affluenza is essentially a capital induced phenomena because wealth equals power, this is a fact often missed by Americans they think the state or power equals power and business is incorruptable and benevolent, I tell you not for one second is that the case. Look at the McDonalds libel case that lead to the establishment of this site, the corporations and businesses exercise more power than the government!!!
: I think that that is an unfair generalization, just like it would be unfair of me to say that socialism creates a bunch of dependent zoned-out hippies.
The unmolested market, which leads to a molesting oligarchy of capitalists, is central to US conservatism is it not? The state is viewed as a monopoly business for the purposes of policing and, often violent, punishment is it not? Social cohesion and a society at ease with itself and with a 'natural' hierarchy to deliver 'just deserts' has gone completely out of the window.
: People also need to feel that they are contributing positively in some way, a job provides this.
Well that's not always the case, there are underclass elements everywhere that are commited to nothing more than being a menace and couldnt contribute to anything other than selfishness. They would be very easy to spot if there was full employment but in the present situation of mighty international business and very devalued labour it's hard to tell the unlucky in the rat race from the lazy.
:The feeling of accomplishment is the best motivator.
That is a motivator indeed but while a communal or collective dimension to motiviation is subordinated to selfishness or infused with competition that accomplishment will always manifest itself in terms of theft and violence rather than socially useful and dispossed individualism.
: Things might be different where you are, but in the U.S. workplaces are becoming far less authoritarian. Especially in production industries managers have found that the old ways of ruling with an iron fist is not productive and they are empowering the employees and allowing them to take more responsibility.
I've actually studied this trend and it is being implemented in an interesting fashion, EG all who are interested can avail of it the wasters dont really have to take part, but realistically speaking while the lords of the workplace can still hire and fire with ease you are at the behest of their temperament and all 'empowerment' is just measures of tokenism.
: I've read many of my fathers management books that range from organizing a company to keeping labor unions out and they are very similar. They advocate allowing workers to manage themselves and give them more choice in their duties and most of all, educate them. In fact, the labor union book can be summed up in one line: If you don't want your employees forming a union, don't use force. Just don't give them a reason to want to join one. In other words, pay them well, give them benefits, and most of all, communicate with them.
Oh I know all this, I'm qualified to be a manager or human resources consultant, I did that before the degree I'm on now as a kind of know your enamy initiative.
It's very machavellian to try and smash unions when they havent done anything or are commited to peoples best interests, I mean good management should have no reason to be afraid of union organisation.
: : Interesting, against the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, no doubt? What about the invisible leviathan of the capitalist economy? I mean it may not really, really effect you since the owners of the 'new fuedal properties' which are being created through huge scale amalgamations are situated in your country and will be more paternalistic towards their indigenous people but it's civil and social rights death for me and my workplace colleagues.
: I am curious to know how things are their (Ireland?), in the U.S. things are actually not as bad as people paint them to be. There are some troubled industries that still cling to the old practices of top down management, but they are dying away.
Would I be right in saying that you are a libertarian? The 'absolute rules' (limited government and democracy) you outlined and your optimism about the workplace would seem to suggest that. I find a lot of trendy libertarian capitalist ideologues are happier to believe ideology than fact or at least are far less suspiscious of capitalist enterprise than they should be, I mean the suspiscion of government is fine, when it's not paranoia, but government isnt the only source of costly bureaucracy, illegitimate authority, censorship and bullying.
In my experience it is the market that's the problem more than the government because governments are more and more meek and mild happy to preach about modernity and 'our hands are tied by globalism' nonsense.
My workplace is very bad, I work in Dunnes Stores an all Ireland chainstore that is being bought out by WalMart (I'm not comfortable with the already unaccountable business becoming a foreign owned unaccountable business, especially america with it's history of violent military intervention at the very suggestion of liberal, never mind socialist, collectivism)and the whatever job I get after this isnt looking any better.
It's all hierarchical, unaccountable and mean and support ideas, such as yours, which pretend that there is no conflicts of interest and no short-termism and no market failure would only re-enforce the present scenario. It's not even a case of live and let live, your market/state culutre is different lets get on with because your government throught the likes of NAFTA wants to force the world into compliance with it's economic vision of America owns, and therefore, America commands everything.
