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Comment by claudeganon | Hacker News Reader

I think it has to be framed against the baseline of pervasive anti-union ideology in the US. When people have been inculcated all their lives with the idea that labor organizing is bad, they’re all just temporarily embarrassed corporate execs, it doesn’t take too much to push them back towards this baseline. Or at least enough to quash the union.

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I’ve spent 30 years in the US, many of those in red states, and I’ve heard the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” canard way more often than I’ve heard anti-union rhetoric. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anti- (private sector) union rhetoric.

Have you considered that maybe peoples’ reactions are based on bad experiences with unions? In particular, public sector unions. Even liberal areas are pretty anti-union, and with things like the DC and NYC Subways falling apart despite massive funding, who can blame them? With police unions protecting crooked cops and teachers unions protecting bad teachers, who can blame them?

(I think it’s also fair to say that the sheer rapaciousness of American public sector unions is the result of an anti-union war that has otherwise receded from the public consciousness. They fight everything tooth and nail, even reasonable reforms, because they’re the outnumbered survivors of anti-union movements.)

"I’ve spent 30 years in the US, many of those in red states, and I’ve heard the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” canard way more often than I’ve heard anti-union rhetoric. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anti-(private sector) union rhetoric."

That's because union organizing campaigns are so rare. Usually, the organizers get fired. WalMart has closed entire stores that voted for a union.

Some anti-union resources for employers.[1][2][3] [3] advertises a "95% win rate".

[1] http://www.unionproof.com/ [2] https://lrionline.com/fighting-a-union-3/ [3] https://anh.com/

I heard anti-union rhetoric in college when people were wondering why it cost so much to set up A/V in a lecture hall. If you haven't heard any, I'm not sure whether to tell you that you've lived a sheltered life or you've so internalized the anti-union rhetoric (like your comment, right here!) that it doesn't register when you hear it.

Also, I'm very confused about your "liberal areas" comment. My impression as a regular NYC subway rider is that the subway doesn't have massive funding, and what little funding it has is being spent poorly because of decisions by politicians, not because any union has asked for anything or is getting paid too much. I've heard a lot of anger at service cuts, at our governor, at the recent fare enforcement crackdown. I've heard zero anger about the salaries paid to unionized employees.

(I have, in fairness, heard the fairly inside-baseball complaint that the unions are pushing back against extending one-person operation to more train lines, for fears of more job cuts. I don't know anyone who thinks that's the biggest problem facing the subway, and I think the vast majority of the ridership, even the politically-active ridership with opinions about the merits of unions, has very little idea that this debate even exists.)

I do agree that people in liberal areas are unhappy about police unions. I think that's its own, special thing (among other things, in NYC the Second Amendment applies more to cops and retired cops than it does to civilians), and I don't get the sense that people are unhappy about teachers' unions in the same way.

The NYT, a fairly left-leaning paper in a left-leaning city, wrote about how the union is causing cost explosion building the second avenue subway. As to the funding—New York’s MTA has a significantly larger budget than London’s very similar system. London, meanwhile, covers 100% of its operating costs from fares, while New York covers just half.

However London's underground system also has unions, so if the suggestion is that it's more efficient than New York, the implication is that it's unlikely to be the presence of a union causing the issues.

European unions in general actually work, for some reason unknown to me. I've never seen, in the modern era, a union in the US do anything but harm its members in general.

You are probably correct, it’s not unions per se, it’s that particular union. I doubt that the US public would make such a distinction.

> The NYT, a fairly left-leaning paper in a left-leaning city

I think American "left" and the Left everywhere else are entirely different things. As a leftie in the UK, I do not recognise the NYT as left at all.

The New York Times is decidedly not left-leaning on economic issues.

The rhetoric goes that the union is enforcing expensive outdated work to be kept to keeps their members employed. However I don’t buy that rhetoric. If that is the case, it is not the union’s fault, but the governments fault for hiring a corrupt contractor.

So if an employee steals from their employer, is it the employers fault for hiring them?

Unions always enforce expensive, outdated work. The taxi cab unions fought Uber and Lyft, a vastly superior taxi system, all to prop up an existing outdated system.

"* The taxi cab unions fought Uber and Lyft, a vastly superior taxi system...*"

Vastly superior for who?

Uber and Lyft are vastly superior than the existing taxi system and better for everyone. It got rid of the medallian system that prevented many people from driving a cab and used technology to make it very convenient to find a ride at any time.

Good things won't last forever. The taxi cab unions are already fighting these companies back in many cities.

They kind of remind me of the record industry and file sharing in the 90s: fighting technology, so they can keep their outdated and expensive system in place.

Most unions are like this. As another example, they will fight automation and force companies to hire multiple, overpaid workers, for a job that can be done by a single person. This only holds companies back and puts them at a disadvantage.

subway doesn't have massive funding

If I remember correctly, NYC Subway budget is about 10bn.

London tube is about 2bn.

It's not a money problem.

1. That doesn't seem right to me? http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Prelim-Budget-July-Fin... says the MTA budget is $16.6B, of which $8.7B is to NYCT (subway + bus + Staten Island Railroad). http://content.tfl.gov.uk/transport-for-london-budget-2018-1... says the TfL budget is £9.8B (about $12.2B), of which the Underground alone has a budget of £2.5B (about $3.1B), buses are almost as much, and then there's the Overground and a few others. I don't think the distinction in budget is anywhere near 5 to 1.

2. My argument is not so much whether it has massive funding or not, my argument is that riders have the impression that it has insufficient funding - i.e., riders do not have the impression that the problem with the subway is union salaries and benefits. I'm (obviously) happy to get into transit geekery, but this discussion is about whether people have a positive or negative view of unions.

Ever since The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track in the World, the view of NYC's unions isn't really that positive. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyre...

Trillions of dollars change hands every day in New York. How much should the infrastructure for a place like that cost?

The same as in any other major city?

Are you aware that costs of everything can vary wildly between major cities?

I mean I think most of us are much happier with the Second Avenue Subway existing at too high a cost than not existing, and I think we primarily blame government for dragging their feet, there's no evidence they were ready to build it at a normal cost but prudently pushing back on greedy unions.

Wow, just like housing, right?

Can you cite your sources? I don't think you're comparing like to like.

These costs also need to be normalized for ridership figures (NYC has higher ridership). And don't forget that most of the figures you're going to see for NYC are for the entire MTA, which runs a lot more than just the subway.

And it's important to distinguish the cost per ride vs the subsidy per ride. Fare revenue shouldn't count "against" a transit system.

For some figures, the total budget of the London Underground is £10.3B (inclusive of fares): http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-budget-2019-20.pdf [pg 10]

The total budget of the MTA (inclusive of fares) is $16.3B: http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Prelim-Budget-July-Fin... [pg 14]

Normalize those figures to dollar amounts and account for ridership, and it appears that the MTA is cheaper per ride than TfL.

Yup, the same exact document, page 78.

10.3bn number is for TFL combined, which includes buses, DLR, overground, tram and other.

I used to regularly see one MTA employee hosing down the platform while 3-4 others watched. I always assumed that that was the result of a union negotiation, since it was pretty consistent, but could be wrong.

Unions for employees paid by taxpayers are not comparable to unions in non taxpayer funded organizations.

There’s a serious problem with incentives in the taxpayer funded space due to every union member voting in political elections, whereas the non union public is not involved, resulting in the politicians and unions being able to strike deals and no one really representing taxpayers.

As part of a company all of whose employees were fired as a result of trying to unionize, last year, your experiences are pretty limited.

I’ve heard anti union rhetoric several times a year for 15 or so years and I don’t even watch the news.

> they’re all just temporarily embarrassed corporate execs

I've always found this condemnation odd given how often it's actually true.

If you break down salaries by demographics, one of the biggest correlations with salary is age. Senior positions pay more than junior ones. It's an extremely common career path to start off in an entry level job and ultimately end up in management by the end of your career.

So the reason people think they'll be making more money in ten years is that most of them will be. You may not be Warren Buffet but you could easily be the manager of your branch office and making two or three times your current entry-level compensation.

How does it work for a 10 people team for instance ?

One of them will be a team leader at some point. A second one might follow and become a team leader while the firth one goes higher.

Will they go up one more level ? let’s say yes. That makes e of them climbing the ladder.

Will there be a fourth ? probably not. That leaves 6 people not going up, and only earning marginally more. That’s less than half will see significant change in their 10 yers next.

> How does it work for a 10 people team for instance ?

Large organization graphs are shaped like pyramids, but the thing about a pyramid is that the combination of the top and the middle is as big as the bottom. The organizations large enough for unions to come into play have multiple layers of middle management.

But let's suppose the company is less than 50% managers. That still doesn't mean the typical person won't ever be a manager, it only means they're an employee for more time than they are a manager.

Also remember that small businesses employ the most people and don't have that sort of tree structure. In that case you typically have the owner and the apprentice who is expected to buy out the owner when they retire and ten person teams are not a thing. And you will often have some workers in larger organizations who don't move into management in the same company they started in but who do leave to strike out on their own, i.e. become a founder/manager of a new small business once they have sufficient industry experience.

This seems okay to me. What’s wrong with this? Not everyone deserves further compensation. And others value the work of these employees only so much, so rewards have to be distributed either those bounds.

Extremely common from the perspective of HN commentators but not actually extremely common in reality.

Most people do not have a managerial position their entire lives - period.

Actually extremely common in reality. If you're a landscaper, you don't typically go from there to being the CEO of Facebook, but after a few years you may end up in a supervisory position managing other workers. Or you save up enough money for a down payment on some equipment to start your own landscaping company.

There are indeed people who stay in dead end jobs indefinitely, but such people are not the majority of people.

The most common jobs in the US are largely, indeed, roles that would call “dead-end jobs”:

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/area_emp_chart/area_emp_char...

What makes you think most of those have no career path? The number one, Retail Salespersons, have the obvious path into becoming sales managers for the local office, then the region etc. Even fast food workers can become the store manager.

And those jobs often have less competition for those management positions because they're so often held by college students who go on to jobs in the industry they've studied rather than competing with other salespersons or fast food workers for the office manager position.

What percentage of your life have you been being inculcated with the idea that your political opponents believe themselves to be temporarily embarrassed millionaires?

Opponents?

My political opponents are actual, non-embarrassed millionaires and billionaires from families of millionaires and billionaires.

My political allies are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, from the folks accepting below-market salaries to work at a potential unicorn to the folks buying literal lotto tickets at the corner store. A few of them are no longer temporarily embarrassed, having joined the right startup, which only goes to demonstrate that the worldview is correct. Things worked out for them without unionizing, clearly things will work out for me too one day.

It sounds like you're counting your opponents as politicians and allies as the people whom you personally associate with politically.

If you were referring to only politicians, they're basically all millionaires.

That seems like a decent definition, if oversimplified. What's wrong with it?

(And I think you'll find that I disproportionately support the non-millionare politicians.)

I know people personally on both the right and the left that aren't millionaires but (nearly) all of the public and influential political actors I know are at least millionaires, regardless of affiliation.

You're counting your opponents as the second group and your allies as the first group. Someone on your opposing side could make the _exact_ argument by reversing the groups. It's telling that your statement does nothing to show what your actual politics are.

The people I support politically are generally wealthy. I am also fairly confident that the ones who aren't probably will be if they are in politics long enough and not necessarily through corrupt means. Anyone of that stature can, at the very least, sell quite a few books on their name alone for instance. It goes hand in hand that influential people can more easily amass wealth.

Sure, politicians can become wealthy after holding office. I'm more talking about where people were situated before they entered politics, and in particular the people who are not politicians - donors, influencers (for lack of a better term), etc.

And I think my politics are more accurately represented by normal people vs. career politicians than by donkey mascot vs. elephant mascot. I vote Democrat as a matter of lesser-of-two-evils, but I yearn desperately for a world in which no one who's involved in any way with DCCC can have influence in politics ever again. If you find me someone who votes Republican who says the like AOC and hate Trump, I'd probably agree with them on a lot of things.

Your politics are mostly irrelevant although it does help with examples...

What you said paints your political allies as people you know personally who are essentially "down on their luck" people who are trying to make it while your political opponents are millionaires the likes of Mitch McConnell or a Lindsay Graham.

Someone with the opposite political leanings as you could say that their political allies are the steel workers in Pittsburgh and the auto workers in Detroit who's job were lost to globalization and free trade (and they vote Republican as a lesser of two evils) while their political opponents are millionaires like Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein.

You're using two different categories of people as allies and opponents.

If you cast your argument using the same categories, it doesn't make sense. Your allies, Pelosi and Feinstein are just as wealthy as your opponents, McConnell and Graham. Or inversely, your allies, the folks buying lotto tickets accepting below market salaries who just haven't joined the right startup are just as poor as your opponents, the factory workers and coal miners who've lost their jobs to globalization and technology.

I think you're trying to say your allies are both groups from the second example and your opponents are both groups from the first example but that doesn't really work because you're actively supporting half of each and actively working against the other half. You've chosen a side that you believe will help both sides, even though they are your opponents but I don't think that's a unique position to your side.

is this not just survivorship bias? What about the countless of people who did not make it into a successful startup, or all those people who bought lottery tickets without winning anything?

becoming a millionaire is statistically highly unlikely, and why would such an unlikely event warrant anti-union sentiment?

There are 14 million millionaire households in the US, about 11% of all households. You are more likely to be part of a millionaire household than be left handed. A million dollars is not a lot of money in 2019.

Yes, but if you aren't a millionaire now, you are unlikely to become one.

Less unlikely than 3 decades ago, but the chance of a (lower) middle class person becoming a millionaire, and especially a liquid (non-retirement+primary home) millionaire, which is the kind of thing we think of when we say millionaire, is exceedingly low.

Yeah, my point is that this isn't actually a rational way to think. That is what the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" concept is about. For the vast majority of those people, it isn't temporary at all.

The “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” is a trope of the left. It constructs a strawman argument of how people on the right think to discount the reasons they actually vote against entitlements and anti-business legislature.

I know of nobody on the right that has voted with that mindset.

The only convincing alternative that I've heard from someone in that world is that conservatives are so afraid of getting screwed over by the rich and powerful that they'll do whatever they can to placate them while scraping to themselves what they need to survive. A, "Pray I don't alter it any further," situation.

Of course, this "TEM" thing is partly a face-saving move for our white, right neighbors by progressives who don't want to point to the racism/classism and a willingness to accept Pyhric victories that really drives a lot of anti-union sentiment. Why, not wanting the "undeserving" to receive undo benefits is the crux of several arguments on this very page.

No offense, but you’ve clearly never talked to a conservative to ask them why they support policies good for business. It has nothing to do with being afraid of rich people.

I have, and that is what he said. I'll be happy to hear another basis for anti-union sentiment that is not inclusive of being afraid of the rich or spiteful of some perceived outgroup. I'd actually wager that that covers the bases.

That's a Steinbeck quote[1]. It's surely being used, just as it was originally, as a fun way to describe the somewhat banal point that people in demographics relevant to organized labor often hold opinions about public policy that are contrary to their personal interest. It's not a literal statement about what's in a republican voter's head.

That said: how many posters here consider themselves just One Great Idea away from being the next Zuckerberg, and thus tend to view discussions on, I dunno, work/life balance or engineers' unions from an employer's perspective instead of their own? Seems like more than a few to me.

[1] OK, I checked wikipedia, turns out that the original phrase was "temporarily embarrassed capitalists", but this is the variant that stuck.

I know, that it's a well known quote is essentially my point. They frame their personal politics as some well-earned enlightenment, far from the ignorant anti-union baseline, while quoting a Nobel prize winning author whose works most people are forced to read as teenagers.

So your main objection is that the quote betrays its speaker as uppity?

No, it betrays that they're, at best, equally guilty of sitting on a pro-union baseline themselves.

They're not equal if the baselines built on greater or lesser degrees of correctness or ignorance.

That quote isn't being used how it was originally intended. It's referring to capitalists that fell on hard times, so they started supporting communism because they believed that they'd have everything they need. They're called "temporarily embarassed capitalists" because they only support communism if it benefits them and they don't have to work hard for it, not because they actually believe in it.

But the view you’re espousing is basically propaganda as well. Corporate execs + all of the management layers below them are frequently promoted from within.

Viewing employment as a collaborative endeavor rather than a hostile negotiation goes a long ways towards improving both sides.

Finally, part of the issue is that basically none of the innovative companies in the US are union shops. Because of the ham-fisted salary control most US unions are known for, they are just seen as a way to get a company to pay more than the market price for a skill by forming a cartel.

> When people have been inculcated all their lives with the idea that labor organizing is bad, they’re all just temporarily embarrassed corporate execs, it doesn’t take too much to push them back towards this baseline.

Okay, everyone, think carefully about what the trite "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" quote implies. The underlying meaning is "These people are too ignorant/foolish/some other pejorative to recognize that they are not, in fact, 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires', LOL." It also has a implication of "I, however, do recognize this because I am wiser/smarter/etc. than them and I know what's good for them better than they do themselves."

If the people who repeat these kinds of things think that ordinary folk are not bright enough to pick up on these subtexts and resent the hell out of them for it, maybe they are not a tenth as smart as they think they are. Maybe it's time to stop parroting Wright's stupid quote and stop looking down on these people if you all actually want to, like, win elections or something.

I'm fine with unions if they are voluntary, but not if I'm forced to join, forced to strike, forced to pay dues even if I'm not involved, and forced to not seek employment at a place under strike through threats of violence.

Just to clarify, are you saying, "I would like the collective to bargain on my behalf, but I just don't want to be part of that collective"?

Isn't mandatory membership a simple corollary of unionization efforts?

I'm not in favor of mandatory membership, but on the other hand if someone chooses not to be a member and is subsequently mistreated by management, there's no reason for the union to assist them and they shouldn't receive any benefits established through collective bargaining agreements.

> they shouldn't receive any benefits established through collective bargaining agreements.

Why not? I can just demand that my contract looks the same as the unions, anything wrong with that?

You can demand all you want, and your manager can respond with 'LOL no you're not worth that much'.

Then if you think you are worth that much, you can call their bluff and go somewhere else. And what happens in the union scenario? The manager hires an unproductive person for exactly the same wages?

Maybe you can, maybe you can't. If you don't want to support the people you work with then they have little motivation to support you in return if you find yourself treated poorly by the firm or a bad manager. I suggest you revisit the context in which the question was asked in the first place.

What would you do if you don't get your demands? Strike as an individual?

> I would like the collective to bargain on my behalf

No, What I would like is that other people are free to collectively bargain on their own behalf, and their own behalf alone, and I am free to bargain individually for myself, without their "help" or obligations.

I would say that there is a pervasive anti-free-market ideology in the US. Otherwise there's no way the laws that blatantly violate people's contract rights in order to empower union action would be tolerated by society.

One can be pro-organizing but not pro-union.

Not sure how you square those two. Could you elaborate? Any less durable form of organizing seems likely to have its work undone by the very well-organized and durable cadre of owners/management

To characterize unions-- especially contemporary unions in the United States-- as limited strictly to collective action functions, is factually incomplete and wrong. That unions perform other functions and aim to protect workers in other ways beyond collective action should be a totally uncontroversial statement.

Although unions proximately came into existence for the purpose of taking collective action against oppressive employers, it's equally true, and at least as important, to understand that they came into existence in order to fill a regulatory vacuum in labor law.

This should prompt some important questions:

1. Should the job of protecting workers from employers properly belong to any entity other than the government?

2. Is filling the regulatory vacuum with regulation theoretically or empirically insufficient to protect workers?

3. Are unions the only means of collective action?

4. Are the functions that unions serve beyond coordinating collective action actually necessary in order to protect workers? Would they still be necessary even if labor law was sufficiently well regulated?

My position is this: We should dramatically expand and increase labor regulation and enforcement actions, and we should allow employees to take collective action. Then we should ask ourselves whether unions are still necessary.

California already has laws that protect employees. Google and other tech companies are abusing loop holes in these laws by calling would-be employees "contractors" to get out of paying them benefits and providing job security.

Many professions that tend to be highly individualistic and require complex mastery have historically been represented by a Guild. While Guilds these days are sometimes a specialized form of union, the distinctions are often significant. A couple examples that come to mind are the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Writers Guild of America.

Well, at least in the case of SAG and the WGA, those are essentially just white-collar unions. Neither of those groups would describe themselves as pro-organizing, but opposed to unions.

Have you ever worked in a company where a significant number of people had morale-oriented complaints? IME it does not have an effect.

>One can be pro-organizing but not pro-union.

Agree 100%.

Im the United States most local and state ballots have measures on them generated by petition drives. Get X number of registered voters to sign a petition and it is on the ballot.

I always signs these when the someone approaches me. I may not agree with the cause or be a proponent of the goal, but the group organizing should have the right to appear on the ballot and have citizens votes on it.

Few if any are trying to eliminate the ability to have ballot initiatives, whereas plenty of moneyed individuals are trying to eliminate unions.

I don't think it's a fair comparison.

I think you may have taken my comment out of context. I was replying to the OP when they said:

"One can be pro-organizing but not pro-union."

My understanding is the OP Was looking at it through the lens of a worker.

My comparison was meant to say I support someone's initiative to have something put up for a vote, but that doesn't mean I will vote for it. I could have been plainer in the explanation.

Do Google and other big companies make the same distinction between labor organizing and unions? Or do they quash it just the same?

One should be both, with a careful eye towards aggressive governance and transparency of your union. No different than if you have equity ownership in a startup, the only difference is that you’re selling your time collectively instead of a product.

Unions are just corporations for labor sales. If you don’t like your management, replace them with your vote.

> Unions are just corporations for labor.

Not necessarily, some are democratic, like some in Sweden. The IWW is an example of an alternative to the centralized unions [1].

1. https://www.iww.org/about/official/OBU

My point is that unions only suck if you let them suck. The devil is in the implementation details, and the effort put forth by members.

> My point is that unions only suck if you let them suck. The devil is in the implementation details, and the effort put forth by members.

But that's the problem. The employee faces the same asymmetry when dealing with the union as dealing with the employer -- a single individual has difficulty driving a change in organizational behavior.

It's harder for an individual to fix a bad union than to leave the company for one without that union, so that's what many people will do. Which makes it even harder for anyone to do it your way, because many of the people who agree that there is a problem will have left.

> It's harder for an individual to fix a bad union than to leave the company for one without that union

Is that accurate?

Maybe? But it's like saying that it's harder to fix a bad country than to leave for another country, so its accuracy is possibly less important than its rationality.

It's a lot easier to switch employers than switch countries. Most people in fact do switch employers multiple times throughout their lives, whereas most people don't ever move to a different country from where they were born.

That's especially true when there are other jobs in the same industry and the same city but at a different company.

That depends on which country you are born into. There are several million South American immigrants living undocumented in the US who would beg to differ with that statement. Likewise, there are many expats who've chosen staying with a company over staying in their country. Finding an employer that treats you well may be harder than finding a country that treats you well in many instances.

Certainly.

Corporations are democratic too. Board meetings are all about voting.

Emoloyees aren't part of the corporation any more than the widgets they make are.

> Emoloyees aren't part of the corporation any more than the widgets they make are.

Which is why they're not democratic, opposed to say cooperatives.

Unions are monopolies on labor. Any competition could help to damp their excesses.

Count me in. Inculcated into the backwards ideas that free markets are good and monopolies are their enemy.

Or the unions are composed of reprehensible bigots who support the Vietnam war and are bad on race

The unions are democratic institutions that represent the self-organization of working people. If the current leadership of a union is bad (and in many cases it is) it should be campaigned against, voted out, and replaced. Giving up on the idea of a union because you don't like who's been elected to run it is self-defeating.

> unions are democratic institutions

Not necessarily, some are quite centralized. For example, LO in Sweden. The US has plenty of examples. Look at Harlan County for an extreme example.

One of the major differences between US unions and the rest of the world is a ~50 year old legal hangover related to racism. US unions used to be allowed to moderate their support for members (as in “Joe Bag-O-Donuts is a detriment to the company and should never have been hired”). Unfortunately, many unions used that discretionary capacity to refuse to support their African-American members. It went all the way to the USSC, but the upshot is that US unions are required to have a more antagonistic relationship with management because they can’t endorse throwing out dues paying members.

I'm curious, which case are you referring to?

Ok, now what if that is not possible, and the rest of the workers have extremely bad positions, and it is not possible to convince them to change their mind?

Do you understand now why decentralization of power can have its uses?

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