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Comment by monocasa | Hacker News Reader

Which is why solidarity strikes have been illegal in the US since 1947's Taft-Hartley Act.

Precisely this.

This is a perfect example of how corporate ownership of the political process has usurped the actual function of government responsible to the poorest people, in favor of taking care of corporate interests

A great example of how oligarchical power is literally built into our legal infrastructure

> corporate ownership of the political process has usurped the actual function of government responsible to the poorest people

This is a curious diagnosis of a late 40s law. Consider why average Americans, including those in the lowest rung, vote against pro-union legislation (or don’t turn out for it), as well as the difference between Swedish and American unions.

Collectivism vs rugged individualism and exceptionalism with a serving of low empathy self interest institutionalized.

Sure. I’m just saying that we can’t throw the brainwashed/corporate corruption card at everything we don’t like.

True, not everything, but the valid challenges (citizens united, excessive spending in politics, and low information/unsophisticated economic participants).

You're literally referring to an era in which anti-Communist propaganda in the US was at its zenith. And where Capitalism was, in this propaganda, written as the natural enemy of Communism.

They didn't vote for it, or against it. In most countries, citizens don't get to vote on individual laws. We vote people into power, who then hopefully don't enact laws that harm us. But as we all know by now, that's never stopped a politician.

> didn't vote for it, or against it

Outside urban centres and select belts of the country, unions poll poorly. A candidate running on pro-union credentials will perform the same as, or underperform, one who is neutral on the issue. Ignoring the trust deficit American unions have with the public is partly why this situation isn’t changing.

> citizens don't get to vote on individual laws

Most American states have referenda. Even in deep blue states, like New York and California, it’s typically a struggle to get pro-union ballot measures through.

Police/firefighter unions seem to do pretty well, regardless of location.

Of course it’s a struggle when millions are spent every year by capital to actively suppress and demonize unions. There is an active propaganda campaign against them.

It’s not just some innate thing that Americans don’t like unions.

A good chunk is the late 40s geopolitical climate. Recalibrating for the cold war was already in progress.

1947 was one of the first red scares, with for instance then SAG president Ronald Reagan signing explicitly anti-communist statements.

Unions are always assault from capital; they just never really recovered in the US from the red scares.

It's not a given that "the actual function of government responsible to the poorest people" should be the true purpose and focus of government.

I would assume that your discontentment is a result of misalignment between what you think is the government's role and what those who make government, think the government's role should be. Which one of you has a more legitimate claim to the truth?

Neither. Both would be attempts at assigning goals to things that aren’t persons. Fallacy of teleological thinking.

A refusal to do business over a controversy has a First amendment claim to assembly and petition. No federal law has any business limiting such a claim outside of literal matters of life and death.

I can see an argument that the Commerce clause grants powers to regulate such claims, but unfortunately federal laws in pursuit of a Constitutional power are still subordinate to Constitutional rights (IMO). It would require a Constitutional amendment to so empower a federal law to override a Constitutional right (again, IMO, as I'm writing to your "legitimacy" question posed to the GP).

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