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Comment by js8 | Hacker News Reader

"Law enforcement unions are one of the few American institutions with completely bipartisan protection. Democrats don't go after them because Democrats are pro-union. Republicans don't go after them because Republicans are pro-police."

Perhaps your "democracy" needs more than 2 parties.

"What happens if police officers and prison guards go on strike?"

The American culture is very antagonistic. In democratic societies, which are less antagonistic, this would become a matter of new public consensus much sooner before they would go on actual strike (there are many forms of strike and some of them do not involve stopping all work, for example, work-to-rule).

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"The American culture is very antagonistic. In democratic societies, which are less antagonistic, this would become a matter of new public consensus much sooner before they would go on actual strike"

Like France?

I think France is kind of odd because yes, they do strike a lot, but usually the public approval of the striking is quite high. So it is less antagonistic in this sense.

I live in Europan country with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartism, and that's one option how to make things less antagonistic. There is lot of negotiations going on before the strike happens, and it mostly gets averted.

In France most of the strikes come from the public sector. And I'm pretty sure the public approval for the strikes depends if it affects them: if you'd poll people living in Paris about the current public transportation strike, I don't think you'd see a lot of support.

You are correct that the US needs a multi-party system. The lack of recognition/appreciation of the extent that the two-party system shapes and constrains every single public discourse such as this one is frankly amazing.

The current dynamic is akin to children playing one feuding parent against the other in a broken overly-adversarial marriage. You need a minimum of about 4-5 independent voices in order to facilitate civil public discourse.

> You need a minimum of about 4-5 independent voices in order to facilitate civil public discourse.

Has this been demonstrated through mathematical/statistical models?

Our politics are antagonistic, and that makes everything harder for sure. For that matter, so are our police!

But the US has relatively few strikes despite being so 'antagonistic'.

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