Re: Game of zeroes.

[Guest guest]

Labor unions are the modern outgrowth of the ancient trade guilds. Guilds were formed as mutual aid societies by various craftsmen in cities or local regions. Their purpose was two fold.

First, the guild offered a system to train new qualified craftsmen and give them the stamp of approval when they were ready to work on their own. These started as apprentices. When they became proficient they were called journeymen and were allowed to work on their own. To reach the pinnacle of the craft and command the highest fees, the craftsman would have to create an exemplary piece of work called a masterpiece. If it was deemed worthy by his colleagues, it was accepted and the craftsman could be called a master of his craft.

Secondly, the guilds worked to protect their members. The main way they did this was to control the labor pool. By keeping the labor pool small, there would not only be more work for the members, but they could also command higher prices. These prices would be met by the consumer because the consumer had no choice but to pay what the guild demanded. If someone new came to the area, they would have to join the guild and follow its rules or find other work. If they set up shop for themselves outside the guild, they could get hauled into court or more simply just beaten up and have their kit destroyed.

Unions operate the same way. On the one hand the unions (electrical, plumbing, medical) provide training and accrediting of members so you can reasonably assume they are competent. But they also restrict the labor pool, which drives up prices. This is the power of the modern strike. If all the available skilled labor walks off, work stops. The company usually gives in because if it doesn't, it goes out of business.

What is odd about unions since the industrial revolution and especially since WWII, is that they have been instrumental in putting their own people out of work. People are fully capable of doing jobs on an auto assembly line. They did so for decades before robots. The problem is that the union priced labor out of the market and made robots more cost effective. GM and Ford are teetering because the union mandated benefits are dragging the companies down, especially now that the market is weak. If the union was smart it would accept cuts to those benefits, but it won't because that would be giving up power to management, so the company might fail and they will all lose jobs. You see the same thing in the aviation industry. The big companies employ maybe a third of the numbers they did in the 1960s. Lots of skilled machinists have lost their jobs. You can track the parallel between union forced pay increases and jobs lost.

Unions have also played a role in many companies moving work overseas. Companies moved away from the unions where not only was base labor cheaper, but there were no unions. You can tell how bad it is because it is cheaper to ship raw materials to Mexico, have them processed and shipped back than to pay union rates. On the other hand, much new industry has moved to right to work state, mostly in the south. Many Japanese automakers have their factories in the South where even though the base pay is on par with the American automakers, they don't have and likely won't face the crushing benefits packages the unions demanded.

A good example of the insanity was told to me by a teacher that had worked in the NYC area. The schools there could only paint their walls to a certain height using the janitors or whatever. Above 8 feet I think she said, union labor painters had to be called in to do the rest. That meant most of the ceilings and top couple of feet of walls were permanent union jobs which cost a lot of money.

I would guess that illegal immigrant labor is also a response to this. I also read somewhere, but I couldn't confirm it, that there were efforts to unionize illegals. They might as well do that. Not only would it bring them out in the open, but it would also force those cheating employers to pay them the prevailing wage.

In a message dated 7/30/2008 9:51:20 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

I have a perfect example downtown Bellevue, WA where there's an irrational concept of entitlement: there's a union thatGet fantasy football with free live scoring. Sign up for FanHouse Fantasy Football today.

[Guest guest]

>

> The bosses would have to take pay cuts also. Otherwise, they will

find

> themselves completely unemployed,

But this never happens. Not even in downturns. here, during the

early 90s depression, bosses giving themselves rises way above

inflation, were a prominent cause of disgust, because in the same

period the Conservative government was denouncing the idea of a

mimimum wage by saying it would cost jobs. They would never

criticise these business high-flyers getting pay rises on a scale of

hundreds of thousands where one manager's rise would affect a

comnpany's finances enough to make it afford less new staff, i.e.

costing jobs, instead it was argued that competitiveness requjired

attracting the best by paying them the best. So that it required

robbing the poor to reward the rich. Then when the Labour government

after 1997 passed a minimum wage it did not put unemployment up at

all, it was in a period when it was falling.

>But it can be offset by

> booting out the 12 million illegal aliens in the US and the many

illegal

> aliens in yours.

Not on, morally, if it results in bringing those sufferings on them

in the places they have to return to. They are not made less human

than us just by what countries they come from. The Nazis selected

that the Poles and Russians would be a workforce confined to an

impoverished region to serve Germany's prosperity without being part

of it. That is the same state of life as is asked of returned

immigrants.

>and a whole array of other recreational

> items and activities. When people stop frilling their money away

on that

> crap, I will believe they are poor.

It's not the entire population who are frilling their money away.

Everyone living in on farms in the southern states or in crumbling

tenements in the Bronx is doing that? In a rich country a lot of

folks can afford to do these activities, more than enough to keep

the activities a thriving part of the economy. In a big country that

still leaves room for a less visible lot of folks who can't do the

activities.

I don't see internet as a recreational activity, when it keeps us in

touch with serious causes, e.g. here. btw I don't have a home web

connection, I can't cope with the risks of hard disks or booting

systems suddenly crashing after you have owned the computer for a

short time.

> It is precisely that attitude though that has caused the economic

> meltdown that we are seeing now. " I want it NOW! " That is what the

> consumer says.

No, it is just that attitude applied to luxuries and the spiral of

acquisitve gain. I can agree with your description of that spiral. I

was expressing the attitude concerning something totally different,

a basic practical commodity that makes my life more efficient.

> Just because someone is born into the world doesn't mean that the

world

> owes them anything.

They never asked to be born. Society has brought them into its midst

and wants obligations from them, to be orderly and not violent and

criminal. It owes care in return for expecting those

obligations. " No man is an island " and " the state does not owe you a

living " contradict each other head-on. The conservative value system

that tries to tell us both those messages at once is a con and won't

wash.

>Like any animal, the human being earns its right to

> survive by determnining its own destiny. Those who cannot do this

die.

" can't " equals " die. " Dangerous message when you want recognition

for a minority. Nature is a horrible dangerous violent disaster

area, as an evolutionist I can say that without any moral dilemma,

and civilisation is entirely about moving away from the " state of

nature " where everything is uncontrolled and unregulated. This is

part of all political philosophies, the unsustainability of your own

needs in just the " state of nature " . Nothing for how intelligent

animals in a civilisation should treat each other, can be concluded

from the state of nature, unless it is paired with saying we should

abandon all laws and public services of any kind and live in violent

gangster anarchy and be left in the gutter if we reach old age. We

find we won't keep any gains we have worked for because the

strongest alpha gangster will just collar the lot by force and soon

turn the chaos into tyranny. Why, how else could he keep any

production processes running thast enable his own subsistence? As

soon as this state of nature option is rejected for how to run

society, for organisational reasons, then the same reasons also

reject it as a view of economics.

> But why should they?

Because they are less fortunate. Even selfishly, we might become so

at any time for any reason.

> And what if the product was never made? You can't miss what you

don't

> have.

Then I would think coats were frustrating annoying things, and the

exasperation of that thought would draw away some of my thinking

energy.

> Did you expect that you could just complain without the people

receiving

> the complaints accepting them without trying to defend themselves?

Not at all. But if injustice I never asked to suffer, gave me cause

to complain, then I count it part of the injustice if it leads to

suffering any further.

> Know what you are willing to risk before you take the risk in

> other words.

Not a situation where I had this choice. besides, should we " know

what we are willing to risk " and therefore decide not to argue

against mean business practises, e.g. by insurance companies or

lawyers, for fear of it affecting our employability? That is

obviously loss of free speech, it is political tyranny exercised

economically. In working out what system we believe we should have,

we are conned out of our own defence against getting kicked around

by the businesses we need to sell us services, unless we decide that

the welfare and anti-discrimination systems must both be strong

enough to make it foolproofly impossible for anyone to suffer

prejudice from employers for resisting ill-treatment in life. The

only way it can be foolproofly impossible, is if folks are not

required to compete for employers' favour and suffer any penalty for

losing in that competition.

> Did it hurt in the interim.

>

> You bet.

Yes but it only hurt emotionally and socially, not threatening your

means to susbsist.

> Maurice, the government is doing what the people want. Otherwise

the

> people would change the government.

Who to? Given too the financial impossibility for any one ordinary

person of starting a new party and getting it noticed.

There is a segment of the population

> out there that wants to freely and legally murder their babies. I

don't

> like this concept. I am morally opposed to it.

But it happens in the state of animal nature. You are at a selection

disadvantage by being in someone's way, a momentary inconvenience to

them. You have failed to work for your survival by selling them the

commodity of a pretty smile. In the unplanned chance world of

nature, the ability and requirement to earn your survival often

don't occur in nice synchrony.

[Guest guest]

" Restaurant work is social. Before AS was recognised, we could have

had terrible problems trying to cope with restaurant work, got

yelled at by the manager for not working prperly, not being polite

enough to the customers, got sacked as a result, then accused of not

wanting to work. "

Part of expecting people to offer us accommodations is recognizing

that there are certain jobs we should not be working at all. If I know

I would fail as a waiter, I should not expect that the restaurant to

try to accommodate me. I should simply not apply to work there.

But I understand your main argument though. It IS good that AS is

recognized and that employers are more inclined to accommodate us when

we need to be accommodated.

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