The conventional wisdom on labor unions is distilled by Steve Siebold in his criticism of the current Chicago teachers union strike.
Typically, labor unions flourish in adversity, when employers are laying people off and cutting wages in order to try and stay in business. There were numerous strikes in the US in the 1870s. But this was in the Long Depression from 1873 "through the spring of 1879, or 1896, depending on the metrics used." But what caused it? Most probably this, from La Wik.
So when you read hundreds of pages in Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States about the workers fighting this or that employer from railroads to mines to steelworks, you are not really reading about evil robber barons out to stick the workers. You are talking about employers trying to stay in business.
When factory workers are facing wage cuts and job cuts (or when their employers are hiring cheap immigrants, as they did in the 1880s and 1890s) they join unions and demand that the employers keep employing them at the old wage and the old conditions.
It's understandable, and it fits with the basic human instinct to join with your brothers to fight the foe. But in the modern market economy?
OK, so suppose you win the strike? Then you are getting paid higher than the market rate. Now you are dependent on either your employer figuring out how to make you more productive, or you are depending on government to enact some law to forbid your employer from hiring non-union employees, or you are depending on the government to shut down the competition. Or reduce immigration. Or something.
The problem with all these solutions is that eventually they will run out of gas. It could be, as with the auto unions, that you have a half-century of good times. But eventually the Japanese car companies, or something, comes along and puts your above-market wages out to lunch.
And this is why I consider the left a Great Reaction and a crime against humanity. The market economy offers and has delivered on an extraordinary Great Enrichment for the common man. But it asks one thing in return. Instead of the old ways of feudalism where you subordinated yourself to a powerful noble, or politics where you submit yourself it asks you to submit to the verdict of the market. And when your employer is cutting wages, he is almost certainly trying to adjust to the verdict of the market.
The crime of the left is that it has taught people, and continues to teach people, AOC, that the market is a vile robber baron that cheats honest workers out of the proceeds of their toil. Sorry lefties: ain't true. What the market economy offers is successive technological and/or market revolutions in which the emergent phenomenon of prices dictates what enterprises will prosper and what enterprises are going to fail. Every worker, every investor, every consumer must understand that the road to prosperity is to submit to the verdict of the market.
It's a hard lesson, to submit to the impersonal verdict of the market, and submitting to the market when it goes against you is the hardest thing in the world. Only, of course, the prices of the market are not really impersonal but the net effect of millions of buy/sell decisions made individually by humans. If the wages in your industry are going down then that is the verdict of the consumers, that your product is not up to snuff, not today, and probably not tomorrow. It's a signal to get out there and find a new job, get new training, move to another city, right now, before you burn through your savings and/or credit.
This is what we should be teaching in the schools, on TV, in politics, in the university, in intellectual circles, everywhere. But we are not. And that is a crime against humanity.
Of course the most egregious case of this Big Lie is in politics, where every politician running for office, from Trump to Warren, is promising to fight for the voters against... someone. It could be the big banks or the big corporations or the evil Russians or the Japanese imports or corrupt politicians. But the politician is always offering to fight for us.
Hey, maybe that politician will win a battle for us. But not the war. Because the market is the One Ring that rules over all. The market will win in the end.
Look, I'm all in favor of labor unions, especially in the old days when they modeled themselves on the whole subculture of mutual-aid societies, Masons, Elks, and Moose, with their fantastical titles. And yes, the KKK modeled itself on the mutual-aid societies with fantastical titles like Kleagle and Grand Exalted Wizard.
But wise rulers would write laws that, while understanding the natural instincts of humans to band together against existential perils, people in the present age have to submit to the market. So labor unions should not have special legal exemptions that lead their leaders and members into economic box canyons that have a rock wall at the end.
And really, what would you prefer? To submit to a slave owner? To submit to a feudal lord? To submit to a damn politician? A robber baron? A union leader? Or to the market?
Now, the trouble with the market is that it isn't perfect. As the joke goes (that I attribute to John Kenneth Galbraith but was maybe said by Paul Samuelson) the stock market has predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions. Har Har!
But that is the point of the market. The emergent phenomenon of prices is always trying to see through the murk of the present into the future. Eventually, it will be right.
And we -- the wise, the educated, the evolved -- need to teach the people how to live with the market, and not to fight it.
There was a time when employers abused their power and unions leveled the playing field. They gave the little guy a voice, and it worked.What really happened is supply and demand. When employers were looking for workers they bid up wages. Workers love that. When their business started to falter they tried to cut costs, including wages. Workers hate that.
Typically, labor unions flourish in adversity, when employers are laying people off and cutting wages in order to try and stay in business. There were numerous strikes in the US in the 1870s. But this was in the Long Depression from 1873 "through the spring of 1879, or 1896, depending on the metrics used." But what caused it? Most probably this, from La Wik.
The primary cause of the price depression in the United States was the tight monetary policy that the United States followed to get back to the gold standard after the Civil War.When you have "deflation" debtors get sent to the wall: in other words little people. In other words factory workers.
So when you read hundreds of pages in Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States about the workers fighting this or that employer from railroads to mines to steelworks, you are not really reading about evil robber barons out to stick the workers. You are talking about employers trying to stay in business.
When factory workers are facing wage cuts and job cuts (or when their employers are hiring cheap immigrants, as they did in the 1880s and 1890s) they join unions and demand that the employers keep employing them at the old wage and the old conditions.
It's understandable, and it fits with the basic human instinct to join with your brothers to fight the foe. But in the modern market economy?
OK, so suppose you win the strike? Then you are getting paid higher than the market rate. Now you are dependent on either your employer figuring out how to make you more productive, or you are depending on government to enact some law to forbid your employer from hiring non-union employees, or you are depending on the government to shut down the competition. Or reduce immigration. Or something.
The problem with all these solutions is that eventually they will run out of gas. It could be, as with the auto unions, that you have a half-century of good times. But eventually the Japanese car companies, or something, comes along and puts your above-market wages out to lunch.
And this is why I consider the left a Great Reaction and a crime against humanity. The market economy offers and has delivered on an extraordinary Great Enrichment for the common man. But it asks one thing in return. Instead of the old ways of feudalism where you subordinated yourself to a powerful noble, or politics where you submit yourself it asks you to submit to the verdict of the market. And when your employer is cutting wages, he is almost certainly trying to adjust to the verdict of the market.
The crime of the left is that it has taught people, and continues to teach people, AOC, that the market is a vile robber baron that cheats honest workers out of the proceeds of their toil. Sorry lefties: ain't true. What the market economy offers is successive technological and/or market revolutions in which the emergent phenomenon of prices dictates what enterprises will prosper and what enterprises are going to fail. Every worker, every investor, every consumer must understand that the road to prosperity is to submit to the verdict of the market.
It's a hard lesson, to submit to the impersonal verdict of the market, and submitting to the market when it goes against you is the hardest thing in the world. Only, of course, the prices of the market are not really impersonal but the net effect of millions of buy/sell decisions made individually by humans. If the wages in your industry are going down then that is the verdict of the consumers, that your product is not up to snuff, not today, and probably not tomorrow. It's a signal to get out there and find a new job, get new training, move to another city, right now, before you burn through your savings and/or credit.
This is what we should be teaching in the schools, on TV, in politics, in the university, in intellectual circles, everywhere. But we are not. And that is a crime against humanity.
Of course the most egregious case of this Big Lie is in politics, where every politician running for office, from Trump to Warren, is promising to fight for the voters against... someone. It could be the big banks or the big corporations or the evil Russians or the Japanese imports or corrupt politicians. But the politician is always offering to fight for us.
Hey, maybe that politician will win a battle for us. But not the war. Because the market is the One Ring that rules over all. The market will win in the end.
Look, I'm all in favor of labor unions, especially in the old days when they modeled themselves on the whole subculture of mutual-aid societies, Masons, Elks, and Moose, with their fantastical titles. And yes, the KKK modeled itself on the mutual-aid societies with fantastical titles like Kleagle and Grand Exalted Wizard.
But wise rulers would write laws that, while understanding the natural instincts of humans to band together against existential perils, people in the present age have to submit to the market. So labor unions should not have special legal exemptions that lead their leaders and members into economic box canyons that have a rock wall at the end.
And really, what would you prefer? To submit to a slave owner? To submit to a feudal lord? To submit to a damn politician? A robber baron? A union leader? Or to the market?
Now, the trouble with the market is that it isn't perfect. As the joke goes (that I attribute to John Kenneth Galbraith but was maybe said by Paul Samuelson) the stock market has predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions. Har Har!
But that is the point of the market. The emergent phenomenon of prices is always trying to see through the murk of the present into the future. Eventually, it will be right.
And we -- the wise, the educated, the evolved -- need to teach the people how to live with the market, and not to fight it.
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