The Capitalist System

[Minor Axis]

First of all I put a smiley after my "how do you feel about unions statement" so it was supposed to be funny. I know you don't support unions, not really, and you don't consider them part of your vision of a true capitalism economy. "They are a gun that should only be pulled out in the most dire of circumstances" is your summary of unions.

Since this thread started, the tone of your comments has been reduce government interferance in business and it will all straighten itself out. I countered that with greed the way it is, it won't straighten itself out (without a fight on the part of employees). Now this statement comes from a union centric employee, who realizes that without a contract rules that effect my quality of living can be changed over night and without a contract, there is nothing I can do about it, except gather up a group of people and go on strike. And if my group is not unionized, without a contract I can be fired. Putting the union away is simply not a viable alternative. There is a power struggle between the employer and the employees. It's there whether you admit it or not. Today that struggle consists of executives maneuvering to take away as much as they can from employees. In your non-government interference scenario this would not change. Once a group of employees has gained concessions, by the way concessions they paid for, it is not in their best interests to simply don't throw away the contract, something you are advocating.

Now since you took the time to round up all of these quotes, I honor you by responding to most of them.

A union is great weapons when at war with an employer. When war is no longer necessary, you don't throw the weapon away, but you do put it back in storage.

the employees don't need a union to get fair treatment.

It is possible, but the odds are against it when you use the employers definition of fair. Something along the lines of "I'm sorry our executives make too much money to allow you this $.50 cents an hour pay increase."

Actually I agree with you that unions arise as needed.

I agree.

Historically, yes. Today treatment is better because of union actions of the past. The threat of unions keep things honest today. There's no need to unionize unless there's a need to unionize, and so long as an employer makes sure that conditions stay good enough, employees won't unionize.

I agree with this statement, however maybe you don't understand that creating a union is a long time intensive process. It does not happen in a week. Employers can dangle good deals in front of employees, but they are subject to change at any time, and when push comes to shove, they disappear over night. The contract a union requires, protects the employees in an At Will State.

the right to unionize does not necessitate actually unionizing. Let's not forget that as powerful and effective as unions can be, union organizers have a tendency to fuck up a good thing by continually trying to justify their paycheck and pushing things too far.

No more so than the employer.

A union is like a gun. Very useful in the right circumstances, but very harmful if overused or abused. It would be great if you could lock unions away in a safe until they were needed again. Unfortunately they involve people who are compelled to show that they deserve their position ... kinda like congressmen. They start changing shit just to show that they can, and end up screwing things up.

Another gun analogy. :smiley24:

Of course the British gov't won't allow market forces to work because it would be portrayed as cowardly inaction by political enemies. That's how unions get politicians by the short hairs. People will pay anything rather than experience an unknown pain.

That happens just like businesses do. It's not good, but it's a fact of life. People maneuver for advantage.

Untrue. It wasn't a socialist government that force fair labor practices, it was the action of citizens themselves organizing into unions. Where the unions went too far was when they started paying for legislation. That was unnecessary and harmful.

Depends on what the legislation is, work conditions, OSHA, minimum pay rates are all good.

We definitely owe better working conditions to unions and the changes they brought about, but they went too far when they started buying politicians and purchasing socialist laws. Unions proved that they can control corporate abuses without the gov't.

Is this a statement in support of unions? Your tone tends to be sometimes they are needed, but mostly they fuck it up so it's hard to tell.

It wasn't until the people revolted (formed unions and protested) that things changed.

I admit this is a positive statement. I'd like to remind you that the forming of unions was a long bloody process.

That's where you need employees forming unions and looking out for themselves. Government just fucks things up and tries to make one size fit all.

But you must have government support to have a union. If the government outlawed unions it would be dire for employees. As it is, unions are at their lowest levels of membership in decades and guess what, so are wages and imagine executive pay is at it's highest.

Today's Minneapolis Star Tribune headline: Millions (44m) sink into poverty. Yes we can take out government interference, let things settle for 100 years and maybe it will get better, but why wait so long to find out?

 

[Accountable]

First of all I put a smiley after my "how do you feel about unions statement" so it was supposed to be funny. I know you don't support unions, not really, and you don't consider them part of your vision of a true capitalism economy. "They are a gun that should only be pulled out in the most dire of circumstances" is your summary of unions.

You're right. I ignored your smiley & should have recognized it for what it was. I apologize. Somebody told me I seem to be more stressed than usual. Maybe they're right. I think I'll try to take a break for awhile ... though I can't promise anything. I'm addicted.

 

[Keight]

This is exactly why i rarely debate, you people gotta settle down :24:

 

[Tim]

Accountable, here is your problem when it comes to your view of unions and their function.

This is not bashing you or your views, it's nothing more than me trying to give you another perspective to consider.

Unions are not only there to keep wages fair or fight for the employee. It's actually much more than that.
Let's take the construction industry here in Philadelphia. If you want to work in Philly on any large project, you will most likely need to be in a union. Now I'm sure your first thought would be that the unions strong arm the contractors so they must use unionized labor... well that isn't the case. It's actually a case of economics and smart business to have union labor on these large projects. Let me run down a list of all of the benefits the owner, architects and general contractors get out of unionized labor.
1. All union workers were professionally trained in their field (it's a requirement by the union and the training is done on the unions dime)
2. Time is money and union labor will guarantee completion dates are met or exceeded on extremely tight schedules.
3. Manpower is extremely flexible. If you need 200 carpenters on Wednesday, 25 on Thursday and 350 on Friday, that's no problem. It's nothing more than a phone call to the hall. You CANNOT do that with nonunion companies, you are stuck with a fixed number of workers.
4. As a contractor, we only need to pay one flat rate to any union worker we use for the day. There is no need to worry about taxes, health insurance, medicare, unemployment compensation insurance, workman comp, etc. This greatly reduces our paperwork and book keeping since we bring guys on as on needed basis.
5. We can request workers at any skill level. If we only need a pair of hands to help, then we request an apprentice at a greatly reduced rate vs a journeyman who can be left alone to do anything we ask.
6. If we have a slow week, we can send everyone home and have zero overhead in regards to payroll or taxes. When things pick up again, we bring them back. Try doing that with nonunion labor. You couldn't, you would need to keep them on the books at great expense to the bottom line of the company.
7. I could go on and on with the benefits....

My whole point is that unions are not as most people paint them as. And No, I am not in a union. I am in management and the union provides me with an extremely flexible workforce so I can complete my jobs.

 

[Peter Parka]

Capitalism is good for advancement, socialism is good for a better personal "getting along" thing. Both are required for a good country and the more these two social ideas come together to try and make a good society rather than squabbling with each other, the better.

 

[Minor Axis]

You're right. I ignored your smiley & should have recognized it for what it was. I apologize. Somebody told me I seem to be more stressed than usual. Maybe they're right. I think I'll try to take a break for awhile ... though I can't promise anything. I'm addicted.

I hope you find that Zen place and don't stay away too long.

Capitalism is good for advancement, socialism is good for a better personal "getting along" thing. Both are required for a good country and the more these two social ideas come together to try and make a good society rather than squabbling with each other, the better.

Morality and no corruption is important to any economic system however morality is really important to capitalism or you need heavy regulations to keep the greedy bastards in check. My life has been spent in a so called capitalist system and it's treated me well. Is that because I saw the goal for a job to be a relatively well paying job and had the focus to get there? Maybe.

But most of my arguments in these forums have to do with philosophy. Honestly a rapid switch to n0-shit socialism would scare me. If I had started a company or was the CEO raking in 10M per year, I might be arguing differently, but I really see no need for any one to make more than something around 2 million a year absolute tops. There is no justification no matter how brilliant you are. It boils down to "us" or "me".

Based on what is going on in the U.S. socialism seems like a possible option, but in the end you'd still need honest people in charge to make it work. There is no guarantee of that at all.