We are all Slave now.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

Freeriders are the opposite of delusional. They are very rational.

Point.

[Hank Chinaski]

weird- ferrets posted this AM, and that is the last post I see, but the summary say ggg just posted, and I can't see it- NVM now it is up.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

weird- ferrets posted this AM, and that is the last post I see, but the summary say ggg just posted, and I can't see it- NVM now it is up.

I feel like my post must have been a disappointment to you after all that anticipation. It did appear the board had a little too much celebration on the 4th, and I trust RT gave it a jumpstart.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

Thread One: Unions.

In the summer of 1965, I came home from my freshman year in college. No summer job prospect. My parents dropped me off one morning in a small manufacturing/warehouse district on Long Island, told me to knock on doors and ask for a job. They said they would pick me up when I called from a phone booth (Phone booth?) with a job. On the 4th place I asked, I was told I could be a substitute for packers and order-pullers in a warehouse for glass containers. Each regular employee would take two weeks off in the summer, and I would do his job for those two weeks. I got to know those no-collar guys pretty well. World War II vets. They gave me a lot of crap about being a college boy. I went back to school in September.

Summer of 1966, I went back and worked at the same place.

The Teamsters organized the warehouse in the winter of 1966. The men I worked with raised my situation with the Teamsters, of their own volition, and asked that the business be allowed to hire one, and only one, student, as a summer replacement during the period from Memorial Day through Labor Day. That student would NOT have to pay union dues.

I worked there each summer until 1968. I'll never cross a union picket line, anywhere, ever.

Thread Two: Cars.

I am not a car guy. But I got very lucky with gently used hand-me-downs, and on a couple of occasions, a used car steal. A '59 Oldsmobile in 1969, which then went to my younger brother, and '62 T-Bird (a swing away steering wheel!) in 71. This was a golden era in American tuna boats.

I then went trough a lifetime of "compromise cars", of American manufacture with varying, and generally deteriorating, quality. Example: I confess to having owned two Dodge Caravans.

When it came to buying a car for my daughter, in 1994 I bought her a gray market European model 1976 Mercedes 280 the size of a garbage truck. The car was the same age as my daughter. She used and abused it for six years. My mechanic, a friend, literally waved me off as it billowed plumes of white smoke from the exhaust. I loved that old beast.

In 2012, I bought a six year old Mercedes SLK that my children will pry from my cold dead hands, or until I can no longer clamber out of it, whichever comes first.

As a matter of principle, I won't cross a picket line. But I've seen some secondary boycott situations that have made me think twice about the policy.

Part of why unions got so jammed over especially the 70s and 80s was that they played too heavily on blind loyalty and didn't always deal with realities. A lot of times they went down flaming in glorious but losing battles. We have to figure out how to rebuild them, because we miss them badly already and will miss them worse in the not too distant future.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

Freeriders are the opposite of delusional. They are very rational.

This.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

Thread One: Unions.

In the summer of 1965, I came home from my freshman year in college. No summer job prospect. My parents dropped me off one morning in a small manufacturing/warehouse district on Long Island, told me to knock on doors and ask for a job. They said they would pick me up when I called from a phone booth (Phone booth?) with a job. On the 4th place I asked, I was told I could be a substitute for packers and order-pullers in a warehouse for glass containers. Each regular employee would take two weeks off in the summer, and I would do his job for those two weeks. I got to know those no-collar guys pretty well. World War II vets. They gave me a lot of crap about being a college boy. I went back to school in September.

Summer of 1966, I went back and worked at the same place.

The Teamsters organized the warehouse in the winter of 1966. The men I worked with raised my situation with the Teamsters, of their own volition, and asked that the business be allowed to hire one, and only one, student, as a summer replacement during the period from Memorial Day through Labor Day. That student would NOT have to pay union dues.

I worked there each summer until 1968. I'll never cross a union picket line, anywhere, ever.

my fam was working class. I surely understand w/o unions we wouldn’t be where we are- I wouldn’t have gone to college as one example. And the UAW created a Michigan where basically unskilled labor could buy a home and a vacation lake home- and many many people did. All positive. As GGG says they just didn’t see they had to change once the stranglehold died.

I have a cousin who had a sweet union newspaper job. He was a print press operator. Every fourth Sunday the paper had to pay him triple time as the emergency guy. He slept on a cot. The 4 people in his position switched off Sundays. Beautiful contract. But people quit buying newspapers. The paper wanted to eliminate 5 jobs- typesetters- they were not going to be needed. No compromise- strike instead. He now works as a short order cook.

Still I would never cross a line. But, tbh, Saigon something or other at 90th and Amsterdamhad a strike going on AND had the best Viet pork chop on the UWS. The picket line wasn’t there that often and we would go if no picketers. Felt bad when the court sided with the strikers and it shut down. Felt bad for many contradictory reasons.

[ferrets_bueller]

The concept of some form of an international labor union for unskilled workers isn't viable. Too many workers willing to work at subsistence wages because the alternative is not to subsist.

And if by chance a stable rising class of unskilled labor takes a foothold and union formation is viable, those jobs can be shipped to....now what is the word I'm looking for??....oh, yes... a shithole country. The ability to shift production anywhere to on the globe isn't going away.

Too many forms of governments around the world vehemently oppose the concept of labor unions. In states where the government is the final arbiter of what organizations are permitted...China and Russia being examples...the government claims to speak for labor, and an independent labor movement is viewed as a threat. In hard left socialist states, .... what's left of them... the same is true. Go ahead and start a union in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the like. Those countries will squash an independent labor movement like a cockroach.

Labor unions now seem to work best in democratic, mixed socialist/capitalist societies where there are other factors that bind the country together. One of those factors, like it or not, is often ethnic homogenesis...or tribalism, if you will. I'm not saying that is necessarily a good thing, but it appears to me to be true.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

The concept of some form of an international labor union for unskilled workers isn't viable. Too many workers willing to work at subsistence wages because the alternative is not to subsist.

And if by chance a stable rising class of unskilled labor takes a foothold and union formation is viable, those jobs can be shipped to....now what is the word I'm looking for??....oh, yes... a shithole country. The ability to shift production anywhere to on the globe isn't going away.

Too many forms of governments around the world vehemently oppose the concept of labor unions. In states where the government is the final arbiter of what organizations are permitted...China and Russia being examples...the government claims to speak for labor, and an independent labor movement is viewed as a threat. In hard left socialist states, .... what's left of them... the same is true. Go ahead and start a union in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the like. Those countries will squash an independent labor movement like a cockroach.

Labor unions now seem to work best in democratic, mixed socialist/capitalist societies where there are other factors that bind the country together. One of those factors, like it or not, is often ethnic homogenesis...or tribalism, if you will. I'm not saying that is necessarily a good thing, but it appears to me to be true.

It doesn't have to be one union, and it could be other protections, from minimum wage to government supervised and set wages.

The key is that there is absolutely nothing that makes an hour of work in the Philippines worth less than an hour of work in China, and an hour of work in China worth about the same as an hour of work in Mississippi, and an hour of work in Mississippi worth half what an hour of work in Massachusetts is worth.

The only differences are macroeconomic and political ones: Mississippi has chosen to be a low wage economy with minimal protections for workers; Shanghai has chosen to be a higher wage economy, and the Philippines really don't have much of a choice because they're stuck with a colonial legacy that limits their options.

But working protection for unions into trade agreements, for example, helps move toward the even playing field, and we don't have any choice anyway, it is just a matter of how long it takes to get there.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Confession:

I think I understand the strange joy the MAGAts get from "owning the libs" when I see Dershowitz whining about the Off-coastal elites shunning him.

[ferrets_bueller]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

The key is that there is absolutely nothing that makes an hour of work in the Philippines worth less than an hour of work in China, and an hour of work in China worth about the same as an hour of work in Mississippi, and an hour of work in Mississippi worth half what an hour of work in Massachusetts is worth.

There is a difference. "Worth" isn't the issue. That difference is the bedrock of economics: supply and demand. In the low level economies, the labor supply of fungible "work units" is plentiful. If you don't show up for work, there are a slew of your peers who would work for a wage sufficient to buy food for that day. And the supply chain for the finished products can be falsified to show that each pair of pants was sewn and assembled by happy workers who sing during their tea and yoga breaks, instead of by child workers who are abused.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

There is a difference. "Worth" isn't the issue. That difference is the bedrock of economics: supply and demand. In the low level economies, the labor supply of fungible "work units" is plentiful. If you don't show up for work, there are a slew of your peers who would work for a wage sufficient to buy food for that day. And the supply chain for the finished products can be falsified to show that each pair of pants was sewn and assembled by happy workers who sing during their tea and yoga breaks, instead of by child workers who are abused.

The determination of demand, however, is based in part on the level of the wage base.

Ultimately, we will head for a unified global labor market. We are already approaching a world in which the disparities within countries based on the urban / rural divide are often more significant than the barriers among countries' core urban areas.

I suspect what we are seeing now is the dying spasms of the old "first world" economies as they transition to a new order. The real question is going to be what that order looks like, and I think Trump's answer is "China".

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

The determination of demand, however, is based in part on the level of the wage base.

Ultimately, we will head for a unified global labor market. We are already approaching a world in which the disparities within countries based on the urban / rural divide are often more significant than the barriers among countries' core urban areas.

I suspect what we are seeing now is the dying spasms of the old "first world" economies as they transition to a new order. The real question is going to be what that order looks like, and I think Trump's answer is "China".

Trump and other recent political trends are reversing the trend towards a unified global labor market.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Trump and other recent political trends are reversing the trend towards a unified global labor market.

I have no doubt that is the goal.

But usually arguing with markets is little better than pissing into the wind.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

There is a difference. "Worth" isn't the issue. That difference is the bedrock of economics: supply and demand. In the low level economies, the labor supply of fungible "work units" is plentiful. If you don't show up for work, there are a slew of your peers who would work for a wage sufficient to buy food for that day. And the supply chain for the finished products can be falsified to show that each pair of pants was sewn and assembled by happy workers who sing during their tea and yoga breaks, instead of by child workers who are abused.

One of the joys of reading either Adam Smith or Karl Marx is the color they add when using the broad brush of history. They were more about where we are going than where we are. That's the focus labor unions lost.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I have no doubt that is the goal.

But usually arguing with markets is little better than pissing into the wind.

Markets are not naturally occurring phenomena. They function according to their structures, which are the results of political choices.