Journal Bill Dog's Journal: solidarity vs. feeling like you need a shower 32
My dad made an interesting point in the car on the way to lunch today. He wondered how my bro-in-law's folks, who are dedicated Liberals, could buy Toyotas, when they don't use union labor.
It's a bit of a conundrum. If you're a Leftie, you have disdain for anything American. Yet the Japanese automakers dodge unions like Wal*mart.
While it's still a capitalist system, how's a socially conscious person supposed to support the labor movement without also indirectly supporting their (private) employers.
Dude, this is so easy (Score:1)
Unions are supported only to the extent that they produce revenue. Any service past that is pure lip.
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Unions are no different than any other corporation, that's what the shareholders expect... You gotta problem wit dat?
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If a corporation is a gas pedal, a union is a brake.
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Really, labor that makes the "positive" product is a negative? A wasteful expense as opposed to an investment in the means of production? You really have been beaten down to believe that wage/chattel slavery is a bigger plus. Yep, you can't get rich without the whip, can you?
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Ah, well, then, Like I said, the union is just another corporation. They act in exactly the same fashion, with exactly the same goals. If that eludes you, whoa!
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Maybe you should invest. You could make a fast buck. Check out their portfolio, do the math, and good luck.
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Something that can assist in figuring cost/benefit ratios, and to fudge the numbers in case you are using other peoples' money. Either way, don't pick sides, play both. You always come out ahead.
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As is often the case, I have no idea WTF you're talking about. On both of those.
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The Lefties don't actually care about unions!
The only thing the Lefties care about is power. Anything else is so much cake. And the Rule 4 hypocrisy of hammering anybody else for caring about. .
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"The Lefties don't actually care about unions!"
Preposterous poppycock. Traditionally they've wanted the working class to revolt against the ownership class and overthrow the (capitalist) system. Even if most of them today have transferred most of their hopes from that to the devolve-the-system-in-place/incrementalism/death-by-a-thousand-cuts tactic, sustaining that division in people's minds and antagonism between the two serves to oppose and destroy capitalistic success and gets people used to non-merit
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The entire intent of the welfare system since 1931 has been to prevent the working class from actually ever being uncomfortable enough to revolt. Campaign Promises bear no relation to actual truth.
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Yep. And I could just see Franklin D, old Curmudgeon that he was, shouting to the Bonus Army "Get off my lawn!"
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The War on Poverty was towards a different kind of revolt; an incremental one versus one big glorious overthrow. Encourage people to give up hope in the American Dream, in capitalism, and in self-reliance, and to instead get comfortable with reliance on government and redistribution schemes. (I.e. get them comfortable with the ideas of socialism, without calling it by name.)
Get over 50% of the households signed up for some sort of redistribution program and the battle's probably all over except for the sh
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At first it wasn't. At first- the War on Poverty had exactly ONE purpose- get the Bonus Army off of Roosevelt's front lawn.
Everything about it since then has been to prevent the revolt that almost did happen.
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Oh dear! I'm sure the idea of balancing the 'benefits' of austerity vs. the cost of the resulting property damage goes back to ancient times. Well, kinda ancient [ssrn.com]. *Whatever the market will bear*... That is the mantra...
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The Roman Emperors had it right- buy a bunch of state owned bakeries, and give everybody their "Daily Bread" (referenced even in the Lord's Prayer, though Christ had us thanking God for it instead of the Emperor).
Keep the slaves fed, they won't revolt.
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I suppose it's a pretty simple concept that if you look after people, they'll do anything you ask. But, the less empathic among us prefer the simplicity of the whip.
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And that's what went wrong with slavery in the United States. Too much whip, not enough bread. And then 70 years later with capitalism, too much whip, not enough bread.
Today we have too much bread and perhaps not enough whip, but what is there left to do?
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The poor and the working class are to Democrats what the unborn are to Republicans: Great for winning elections, and thus, need to be kept in their current oppression so that they're still oppressed for the next election.
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If you're suggesting that Republicans don't really care about abortion because they haven't tried to just end it all, in case you hadn't noticed, the country is becoming even more hostile to socially Conservative issues.
So what do you do, pick your battles to stay alive to provide some resistance to the Leftward collapse of America, or go for an all-or-nothing fight and risk finishing off the party and its voice?
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A huge part of the reason that America has turned leftwards, is because the Republican party has chosen to prioritize fiscal conservationism over social conservationism. Family no longer comes first for most of the Republican leadership, as shown in their marital woes.
The Democrats were always going to go Left, at least the Republicans *could* have given us another choice.
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So it's the Republicans' fault, for the moral decay of the country, because they didn't fight back hard enough against the perpetuators of moral decay. Nice logic.
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Not fault alone, of course. In many ways, I blame liberals of both stripes- fiscal conservatism these days is strongly libertarian, and thus, liberal.
One said says I want to fuck who I want to and damned the consequences tomorrow, we'll just kill any inconvenient product of sexual abuse. The other side says I want to profit from who I want to and damn the regulations, I am not my brother's financial keeper.
Both are putting radical self interest- liberty ahead of the common good- and liberty is liberalism.
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Profit is not an evil, having a financial keeper is, because of what it does to you. Like your Pope, you talk of things that are just all Leftism (AKA paganism, a subset of Satanism) to me. Exploitation of resources and development does not hurt the poor, it helps them. And the earth is not my sister.
Unions in what context? (Score:2)
Do TFA refer to US labor unions? In Japan there are unions for Toyota employees.
The problem has been that the US labor unions not always have worked with the interest of the employees as a goal but just been a wing of the organized crime, which means that unions in the US are often seen as a problem both by corporations and by employees.
Also consider the fact that as long as the corporations treats the employees well and follows the laws that exists the need for unions is low. So before complaining about us
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"just been a wing of the organized crime,"
I think that was waaay in the past. The problem since then has been that the larger ones at least have been just a wing of the communist movement in the U.S.