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Comment by 4er_transform | Hacker News Reader

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You're entirely relying on a false dichotomy and an unsupported causal chain, assuming (without evidence!) that unions inherently reduce efficiency, slow growth, and lower living standards. The fact is that there's evidence that unions can correct power imbalances, raise wages, reduce inequality, and even support long-term productivity and social stability

Unions are everywhere and always a market distortion. Using political power to pull wealth into your union that would otherwise spread to the rest of society via competition (in labor and capital markets) is bad.

The only good unions are the ones that serve geopolitical interests of states that are positive for humanity. A steel workers union is subsidized by the rest of society, but if it keeps steel production in the US, making the US more formidable and able to project humanity-advancing policy, then it is good.

Unions freeze market forces, which raises wages, but those raised wages come directly from other parts of the economy and do so inefficiently (cost more than a dollar elsewhere to increase the wages by a dollar). This is because it distorts comparative advantages. Inequality can be reduced by unions, but only in short term. By freezing market forces in this pocket you are creating inefficiencies, which come at a cost over time (like competitive and bad actors becoming dominant).

Wages and inequality was better in the 1950s/60s US despite of unions. The US was 50% of the global economy, had dollar dominance, just about the only industrial base intact, a skilled workforce with a clear competitive advantage. These are what made wages high and inequality low.

Take the long-term perspective and center humanity rather than picking winners and losers. Unions are an emotionally charged topic because labor groups reap power from them and business groups lose power from them. This is noise. We should make decisions like this based on what serves humanity’s long term interests, and unions (and business cartels/lobbies) hold humanity back.

> The fact is that there's evidence that unions can correct power imbalances, raise wages, reduce inequality, and even support long-term productivity and social stability

I suppose there was a time when American manufacturing had a big power/equality/productivity and social stability imbalance over Chinese manufacturing and the US unions did play a role in correcting that and promoting Chinese wealth and power. So in principle I agree. I'm just less sure that AWS employees are going to benefit from doing the same thing in software.

  > Preventing efficiency in markets slows growth, which slows the progression of living standards.

graph me unionization levels, market efficiency and standards of living (for the bottom 80%) and tell me what is correlated with what

If I did, would it change your mind?

Unionism is capitalism. If you are a W2 employee in the United States, you are in a contractual relationship in which you have very limited leverage to negotiate and limited protections.

Humans organize together in many different ways for many different reasons. Your own assertion belies that — if my negotiating my terms of working for someone is crime against humanity, why should the guy controlling the capital have that right?

The dude for whom I work is worth $10-15B. What should he make for the benefit of humanity and efficiency? He negotiated a deal with the board for his comp.

Who cares about capitalism? It’s a label. What matters is eliminating rent-seeking behavior. Unions are rent-seeking. Business cartels/groups are also rent seeking. Abolish them all

Unions are just businesses that sell labor. There’s nothing wrong with getting a bunch of people to cooperate on selling labor, any more than there is with getting a bunch of people together to cooperate on selling bananas.

Unions are rent-seeking behavior and that’s the problem. Voluntary unions are one thing, but the way unions are build today is requiring labor to participate and for businesses to buy from the union.

Rent-seeking behavior of any kind holds humanity back.

Markets are anti-human. Any economic system not designed for the well-being of human beings is anti-human. "Living standards" is a concept the owning class uses to justify their obscene wealth and promulgation of a system solely focused on profit.

What is well-being to you?

You’re right: all things should serve humanity, including markets.

Rent-seeking behavior of any kind, including unions, including business engaged in rent-seeking, are anti-human.

Well-being needs to be properly understood though. Well-being is the state of being most sustainably and perfectly aligned with forwarding humanity.

That means valuable work that contributes to the progression of humanity, the circumstances that make reproduction viable and abundant, the resources to support cultivating oneself and others to your and their maximum potential serving humanity.

It doesn’t mean the ability to spend your days on the couch, or sitting on the beach, or devoting all your time to a hobby that does nothing to serve humanity.

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