Seems like discussions about unions never get more nuanced than: "unions are good" or "unions are bad". I wish such topics could be more about learning from the pros and cons of different systems and figuring out new solutions.
You probably have seen the dotcom crash yourself - there were a lot of developers feeling lucky to even have a job. There probably will be another IT bubble burst, and a lot of people will regret they did not form a union when they had at least some say in the matter.
(Ironically, the intensely anti-union environment actually makes for worse unions. When you're struggling to survive it's hard to be on your A game)
Neoliberalism seeks to roll back the welfare state, deregulate industry, and - above all else - crush unions. It's an ideology created and propagated by and for the billionaire class, who resented the limits imposed on their power in the mid-20th century, and it captured both political parties by the 1980s.
A couple good articles on the subject, looking at it from both a Republican and Democratic perspective: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-... http://theweek.com/articles/725419/decline-fall-neoliberalis...
From what I read, unions eg in Germany are more realistic and also get much better results. But they're often accused of being too "business friendly".
"The U.S. is different from Europe and other industrial countries in this respect. The U.S. is, to a very unusual extent, a business-run society. There are all kinds of reasons for that — it has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here. There are a lot of reasons. But the fact of the matter is that the U.S. is run by an unusually class-conscious, dedicated business class that has a very violent labor history, much worse than in Europe. The attack on unions has been far more extreme here, and it has been much more successful. Also, the business propaganda has been far more successful. Anti-union propaganda has been considerably more successful here than in Europe, even among working people who would benefit [from] unions. In fact, a rather striking aspect of business propaganda in the United States is the demonization of government, starting after the Second World War.
The Second World War ended with a radicalization of the population in the United States and everywhere else, and called for all kinds of things like popular takeovers, government intervention, and worker takeovers of factories. Business propagated a tremendous propaganda offensive. The scale surprised me when I read the scholarship — it’s enormous, and it’s been very effective. There were two major targets: one is unions, the other is democracy. Well, [to them] democracy means getting people to regard government as an alien force that’s robbing them and oppressing them, not as their government. In a democracy it would be your government. For example, in a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you’re getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on. In the United States, it’s a day of mourning because this alien force — the government — is coming to rob you of your hard-earned money. That’s the general attitude, and it’s a tremendous victory for the opponents of democracy, and, of course, any privileged sector is going to hate democracy. You can see it in the healthcare debate.
The majority of the population thinks that if the government runs healthcare, they’re going to take away your freedom. At the same time, the public favors a national healthcare program. The contradiction is somehow unresolved. In the case of the business propaganda, it’s particularly ironic because while business wants the population to hate the government, they want the population to love the government. Namely, they’re in favor of a very powerful state which works in their interest. So you have to love that government, but hate the government that might work in your interest and that you could control. That’s an interesting propaganda task, but it’s been carried out very well. You can see it in the worship of Reagan, which portrays him as somebody who saved us from government. Actually he was an apostle of big government. Government grew under Reagan. He was the strongest opponent of free markets in the post-war history among presidents. But it doesn’t matter what the reality is; they concocted an image that you worship. It’s hard to achieve that, especially in a free society, but it’s been done, and that’s the kind of thing that activists in the IWW have to work against, right on the shop floor. It’s not so simple, but it’s been done before."
I'm aware of no country democratic or not where paying taxes is a "day of celebration". I have never seen anyone celebrating paying taxes. To believe that in other countries people love taxes and government, and the USA is uniquely special in this being not the case, makes me wonder to what extent Chomsky really understood the world at all.
Nor does Chomsky appear to understand conservative philosophy. He simply divides the world, Marx-style, into "workers" and "business owners" and then assumes business owners must hate democracy because taxes. The actual divide is between conservative and leftist, and conservatives like their government small and local i.e. the opposite of Federal. Many business owners happen to be conservative but so do many workers, as the number of Trump voters in former rust belt states will attest.
Chomsky can't even stay consistent on what this strawman of "business owners" actually want - he starts out by claiming they hate democracy (=government) and then later claims they both hate and love government at the same time.
Not surprisingly after inventing a non-existent class of people with non-existent beliefs, he then struggles to understand them. And this guy is supposed to be some great intellectual. Sad. Thomas Sowell has far greater understanding of the political philosophies and views that divide the people.
> I have never seen anyone celebrating paying taxes.
He doesn't claim that people do that, he says people should do that (if there is a reason).
> The actual divide is between conservative and leftist
I think you're wrong. There is left/right divide and liberal/conservative divide. The latter deals with the size and definition of the ingroup, the former with the inequalities within the ingroup.
> claiming they hate democracy (=government)
Democracy is not the same thing as government.
> For example, in a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you’re getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on. In the United States, it’s a day of mourning
... he claims that people celebrate taxes "in a democracy". So either he thought there are no democracies anywhere or he thought that in other countries which are democracies, people do in fact celebrate their tax day. Neither possibility seems rooted in reality.
Yes, that's kind of correct. In the original meaning of the word, government of the people. That means, for example, because U.S. doesn't have universal healthcare despite some 85% people wanting it, that the U.S. is not really a democracy (in fact there was an interesting paper about that who really decides things in the U.S.). I don't think he thinks that there is a true democracy anywhere.
And again, he is not saying "people celebrate taxes" but rather "people should celebrate taxes". I don't think people will for various reasons, despite the fact that I somewhat agree with him even on this point.
Addendum: Despite the popular idea that people generally hate taxes, there has been several successful referendums in Switzerland (and also I think elsewhere) that actually approved increase in taxes. So you can consider that as a sort of "celebration".
Switzerland has referendums on everything, so yes they have raised taxes sometimes, but they also have very local government and their canton's have spent years engaged in vicious tax competition that at times got so intense some of the local governments started losing money...
Democracy isn't a clearly defined concept, there are competing theories. Namely the madisonian and the jeffersonian, more recently the battle between deweyite and the Walter Lippmann variety.
I mean aristotle was basically right, he saw the solution was a social democracy and a welfare state
And you can easily measure it, you just ask honest questions what people want, and compare it to what the government gives them. Having referendums doesn't completely imply democracy, although it is quite close in free societies like Switzerland.
I think this is sometimes confusing, because people who are really pro-democratic (in the above sense), like Chomsky or me, hold two moral stances at once, and those stances can be contradictory. Kinda like "doublethink" but well-intentioned.
The first stance is the prodemocratic stance, that the society should decide things in democratic manner. The second stance is a personal moral view. So for example, I can be personally for more taxation (2nd stance), but I have to accept the will of the democratic majority, which is for less taxation (1st stance). The reason why these are not really in contradiction is because they operate on different levels.
What people (and that includes, I think, you) find confusing about this, is the fact that sometimes we have to defend democratic will of the majority even if it contradicts our own personal moral stance (in other words, we can hope to convince others to eventually accept our position in majority, but we cannot force our minority opinion on them). For people, who think their moral stance trumps everybody else's, this is irrational nonsense.
So in this interpretation, presumably Chomsky has his own opinion about taxes, but it may differ from the democratic view of the majority of voters, which may well result in tax competition and such.
Today, in many places, unions have developed into primarily civil servant organizations.
they are just worshippers of the state capitalist system, ideological managers keeping the party line "top of mind"
Considering how frequently politicians change positions, that would make hypocrites of us all. Instead, I'll support Trump for the things he does well, and I'll disagree with the things he doesn't, same as I would for anyone else.
You should read his work on Marx and Lenin.
The divide between left and right is a propaganda technique used to limit the acceptable range of discussion anyways (see the propaganda model/Manufacturing Consent)
Yes, government = democracy (except when it's authoritarian, or most of the population is effectively excluded from participation because it's run by an oligopoly, pls give example of a case where government isn't coercive towards a majority of it's population)
I have read a lot of Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman, they are good salesmen. Friedman is actually a liberal, supported a basic income, land value tax, etc. It's just the people in the american libertarian movement are horrible
Have you ever actually read any of the classical economists? Say Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, it was a class analysis
If you're from Europe you should know about the greek debt crisis, but you just blame them for being lazy so we should destroy their GDP by imposing austerity and perpetual loans they can't repay.
Business owners care about profit over people, that is their stated objective, their institutional role. In the US, it would be illegal for them to do otherwise. If the CEO decided to leave, someone else would just take his place
People in Europe don't care about what happens one border away. The events in Greece, Italy, Ireland and Spain generated very little sympathy in the rest of Europe. I sometimes get the impression very few people care about what happens one city away.
That's one thing that always amazes me about America. Every tragedy, or big event generates big reactions across the US. New Yorkers care about San Franciscans, Alaskans care about Texans. We could use some of that in Europe.
I find it incredible that there is no massive protests in Holland about what their Finance Minister is doing to Greek pensioners. There is no real argument made in the press about Greeks being lazy, as far as I can tell. They just don't care, and therefore it can't cost a dime. Even if that means tens of thousands of people's lives are destroyed. Not a peep.
Europe survives because it's providing such a sweet deal for it's politicians, and because it makes a certain kind of economic sense. Normal people, in Holland and elsewhere, are dead against it. And the EU knows this: the EU was already strongly opposed to any election or referendum about the EU (because they lost EVERY election they ever ran about the EU, they are aware of this, that's why you have Macron declare that he must prevent at all costs a referendum about the EU in France). The EU is not democratic, and it can't be : it would be voted out of existence in any fair election almost anywhere in it's borders.
Ironically the EU's leaders, who proclaim themselves democrats, are preventing referenda and elections exactly because they know they'd lose them.
Of course it'll be it's undoing, as exactly that is being used as an excuse for extreme centralization of power (since the parliament, in a fair vote, would get voted out of existence, all the commission has to do to get whatever it wants is to threaten to organize it. And of course, the commissars are exactly the people who have the power to do exactly that. But there needs to be a show for "democracy" so the parliament exists). It's a matter of time until one or the other opposing interest actually gets another referendum through. For instance, Le Pen got as far as she did, further than the extreme right ever got, by promising just that. So did five star, according to the press. Sooner or later the dam will break.
Note that most referenda, according to the rules, required approval in all member states. Note how there's essentially 3 cases :
* a few member states voted, but much fewer than there actually are
* a few member states vote, and after one defeat, suddenly the votes stop
* a vote fails, and then the vote question is changed, and another vote organised on the same issue (ie. redo elections until desired result is achieved. Note that there is always much lower turnout the second and third time)
In the vast majority of cases the will of voters was overturned and the EU forced on people.
There is one big exception: Switzerland, where generally the results of referenda have been upheld. Needless to say, as a result, Switzerland is not a member state.
If the voters will was respected, France, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Spain would not be member states. Many evolutions in the EU would also not have happened, like the EU constitution.
Recently French president Macron surprised by stating publicly on UK radio that if a referendum on EU membership would be held in France today, he was fairly certain the answer would be that voters would want to leave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlHfNiZf-9o
I feel like that message understated things. If you listen, you can clearly hear that Macron matter-of-fact stated that the UK will remain despite the vote.