I meant me and him, not 'we' in the larger sense of everyone reading Slashdot.
Libertarianism is, by and large, the free enterprise of Ayn Rand. Which is influenced by Anarcho-capitalism, which comes from the Austrian school of Rothbard and Mises, which was influenced by the Boston anarchists before that.
They believe that the market is the most effective and only fair mediator. Marx's problem with that was that there were no negative feedback loops in the market, only positive, leading to a runaway class division and a new oligarchy. Which we have. The early socialist-anarchists said that there were runaway feedback loops in Marx's system too. You'll notice that the early anarchists in Russia were among the first up against the wall. Or with an icepick through their head, like Trotsky.
So, you essentially put three kinds of anarchism on one side, and Marxism on the other. You know what Marxism was, right? A transitional form between what and what? Do you know? What was the end result of Marxism supposed to be?
Good. Then you need to understand what is actually in your best interest as a superior person. This is all assuming you are not a sociopath and have functioning empathic circuits. If you don't lord it over the people who are inferior to you, your true value to them will be apparent, and they will respect you even more for not holding that over them. This kind of close connection, with emotional openness and honesty between leader, manager, and follower is what we evolved to do. It is the most efficient way for everyone to get more of what they want from life, and deep down, all of us know it.
Leaders are really no better or worse than anyone else. It takes all kinds to make the world work. Even sociopaths, but that's a much longer discussion.
Of course companies collude. What, you've never heard of RIAA or the MPAA? Where have you been? Collective bargaining is not socialism. Without collective bargaining, maximal benefit goes to the owners and minimal benefit goes to the workers. Are you really saying that you are against my right to free speech and free association? Because that's all I'm advocating for, and it sure sounds like you are against anything that is going to cost the owning class any money.
OSHA is a joke. Reagan gutted OSHA. They don't have the manpower to investigate, let alone prosecute. Without a union to back you up, how far do you think you're going to get in making a case over this stuff? You rock the boat in a non union shop over safety issues, you get the axe. Maybe you have the time and resources to go on a crusade, but most workers don't.
Hehe, I love to pick on libertarians. It's a sad little vice of mine. I know just what to say to piss you guys off. It's like going to a line of nerds waiting for the new Star Wars movie and yelling, "Star Trek sucks!" You got their little obsession wrong, and that pisses them off more than if you'd just said Star Wars sucks. (With apologies to Brian Posen)
Honestly, most of you guys are all right. We're all anarchists here, right? We all want to do away with coercive government and organize society around principles of free association. Everything else is minor compared to those shared goals.
I never said threaten anyone. I said, we'll speak out about what you've done. Plenty of people have morals and ethics and don't like to do business with people who screw other people over. If it's just me saying, "This guy screwed me over," though, a lot of people will assume its just me. But if a hundred guys say, "This guy screwed us all over," then people might listen. And if it's just me saying to the boss, "I'll quit unless I get a raise and some health care," the boss might think I'm replaceable. But if a hundred guys say that, the boss might think, it would be harder to replace them all than give them what they want. Now, it's all still voluntary, if the boss didn't think he was still getting a good deal, there wouldn't be one. He's just not getting as good of a deal as he'd get if he negotiated with us all one on one. But no one has any guarantee of getting the best deal, just one that is acceptable to them.
Originally, the IWW was founded as much to combat the practices of 1900s era trade unions as it was to defend the rights of the workers. And as much as you complain about workers tactics, back in the day it was considered acceptable practice to hire Pinkertons to kill workers who spoke up. Look up the Everett or Centralia massacres. Now do you understand why we need unions? Because many business owners are just itching to go back to those bad old days. To me, all current neo-con policies look suspiciously like they are trying to do just that.
Me, I only married once. I negotiate rather than running away.:P
I still don't see how me telling everyone what you've done to me is extortion. As for your complaints about unions, some of them are valid, though much less so in the IWW. With direct democracy, a worker trying to shirk his duties will get called on the floor by his fellow workers.
You know, haggling is as old as trade itself. If you don't like job X, try to negotiate rather than putting yourself and your employer in a more difficult situation. With your attitude to negotiation, I'm wondering, are you married, and how many times?
Sure that fits my definition of free speech. Fire us, we'll organize the next lot too. And we'll contact your suppliers, customers, and everyone in your community and tell them what you did. We'll picket every place that sells your product. We will fuck you if you try to fuck us, got it? Fair's fair, we don't want to put our employer out of business or price ourselves out of a job, but if you are living fat off of our work while we are starving, we will come down on you and yours like a ton of bricks. What do you expect us to do, roll over and spread our fucking cheeks for you? Maybe if we didn't have each other's back, we'd have to. But we've got solidarity, so we can make you regret fucking us over.
Ehhh, who said anything about liking their work? I like the work of plenty of artists I don't respect as people. I happen to love early U2, but I think they suck now. I like Beck, but I'd never respect anyone who is a Scientologist.
I think you are being disingenuous and insincere. I think you are attempting to imply that anyone who takes a stand and speaks out about their beliefs is trying to shove those beliefs down your throat. I'm not. If you're not buying what I'm selling, more power to you. But I'm not going to shut up just because you try to imply that me voicing my own opinions makes me some kind of fascist dictator wannabe.
Libertarians are anarchists who refuse to recognize what they are, or what the roots of their political philosophy is. They also believe that the only problem, the only force capable of real coercion, is government. They support the status quo of the business world. Basically, there are two schools of anarchism: social anarchists and individualist anarchists. Libertarians are a small part of the individualist school of anarchism. I'm a social anarchist, so libertarians kinda piss me off. I feel they have delusions of grandeur, of being something totally new instead of a tired rehashing of something much older.
The way I see it, libertarians are fighting for the right to oppress others economically. They don't want to do away with oppression, they just want to get rid of the government monopoly on it. Most libertarians are at least closeted elitists, if not outspoken in their views that they are manifestly destined to rule over their inferiors.
In any voluntary transaction, both sides value the thing they are receiving more than the thing they are trading away. Therefore, extra value is created in every transaction. However, the distribution of that extra value is unfair. The owners have a lot more resources and power to influence how much of a cut they get. Collective bargaining helps even out that imbalance, giving workers a more powerful position to bargain from. Obviously, if the workers price themselves out of a job, they are not bargaining correctly. I'd be happy if labor got even half the extra value created in the transaction. I mean, everyone wants to pay as little as they can get away with, and without unions, owners can get away with paying the bare minimum that workers are willing to accept. There is also a maximum owners are willing to pay, don't you think it's fair that workers can bargain collectively to get something in the middle?
What extortion? We're practicing free speech. If you don't like that, move to a country where free speech is not allowed, I'm sure it would suit your character and moral values better.
ts also fair to point out that the IWW is deeply in bed with anarchists and hard line socialists. There is a reason why they aren't mainstream anymore. Here in Dallas the local chapter won't allow anyone from the "ruling class" which they define as anyone with the power to hire or fire people. That's an entirely accurate assessment of the situation. And it's not just Dallas, "No power to hire or fire" has been a hard and fast rule in the IWW since day one. If you have that power and want in, collectivize the hiring and firing process like we recommend. If you don't want to make a lofty statement, honestly, another union would probably be a better choice for you, and we are quite up front about that when people contact us. As for Haymarket, I firmly believe the Pinkertons engineered that false flag operation.
I just hope you don't consider yourself a libertarian...
The IWW has never endorsed any political party or theory. In the past, there were some pretty rowdy arguments between the commie/socialist types and the anarchist types in the IWW. In practice, our philosophy is classed as Anarcho-syndicalism.
As for the origin of the term wobbly, the official position of the IWW is: we don't know. But there are some interesting theories on that page. By the way, I helped make the IWW the second union on the web.(The Israeli Teachers union was first, by a few months.) I also helped with the world's first cyber-picket against Border's Books, and helped defend against the DDoS they or their agents launched in counter-attack.
As for the lingo, back in the depression, the IWW was very tight with the hobo culture and organized massive free speech protests all over the country, encouraging indigents to hop trains or hitch to get there. The IWW was also among the first in the front lines protecting the rights of migrant workers. Some of the worst beat-downs the IWW got were defending migrant workers. Basically, Wobs, hobos, and migrant workers go way back.
the union should perform the job of "a lawyer with a lot of arms", so to speak. Also, my ideal union would offer vocational training (to help, for instance, when an industry ceases to exist due to innovation. Buggy whip manufacturing, for instance.), certification and testing, employment development and temp services, and a health care provider of last resort. More of a guild than a union, really.
You have the right to hire who you like, and I have the right to bargain collectively. I also have the right to free speech, so if you treat me or my coworkers like shit, I WILL be out in front of your place of business telling everyone what you've done. Like it or lump it, buddy.
Unions as they exist today are a mixed bag, neither the saviors of the working poor nor the blight you make them out to be. Reform is needed, but that's been true of unions for over 100 years. I volunteered with the Industrial Workers of the World, otherwise known as the Wobblies. Most people don't know about us outside of history class, but the IWW still exists. Here's how the IWW is different: no mandatory union dues taken out of your paycheck, complete and total democracy, and only one paid (and democratically elected) position. Also, instead of seperate unions, everyone is in the same union, but a different branch. That way, when the janitors at a plant strike, the electricians do too.
I uphold that anyone should be able to hire whoever they like. But I and my friends should be able to bargain collectively, and we will point out, quite vociferously, when you as a business owner are trying to screw us over. That's free speech, and the Wobs used to read from the Constitution in town squares across the US just to make that point. That's one reason the IWW was suppressed so hard. Even to the point of being literallymassacred.
U2 started using Stage Crew Services, a non union shop, back in the '90s. Seeing as how they were born working class and still tout their so-called activism, that smells of hypocrisy to me. I haven't bought a U2 album since. Funny thing, everyone is so up in U2's ass, you can't find much about it on the web. I was part of a protest against them, we got a chance to talk to them, and Bono was the biggest piece of shit ever. Basically said, "Do you know who I am, and what I've done? I'm the biggest activist in the world, who are you peons to criticize me? I'll hire whoever I like."
Well, I'm not a big drinker anyway, so I've only smoked a few times. I came down with a really bad cold the day after I quit, lasted all week, so that covered up any symptoms from quitting. I've been grumpy as hell, though. I'm getting back on an exercise routine, and that usually helps me calm down. Sorry to hear about your in-law, heart surgery is always rough. Good luck with everything!
It's those darn Japanese guy's fault! Never mind that many subassemblies are in fact made in local shops. Never mind that we invented the Kaizan method, but no one here would use it. Never mind that the plant president lives on the same block as my father in-law and makes less than $500,000 per year while my father in-law makes over $200,000. He could make MORE working at an American car company, you know why he doesn't? Because they have crap standards and treat their employees like shit.
It's not the world's inability that's the problem. It's the cheap labor conservatives an their policy of doing anything to screw over the working man and make him desperate enough to put up with anything they dish out. You can bend over and spread for them if you like, but I'm not going to.
Slashdot Mirror
I meant me and him, not 'we' in the larger sense of everyone reading Slashdot.
Libertarianism is, by and large, the free enterprise of Ayn Rand. Which is influenced by Anarcho-capitalism, which comes from the Austrian school of Rothbard and Mises, which was influenced by the Boston anarchists before that.
They believe that the market is the most effective and only fair mediator. Marx's problem with that was that there were no negative feedback loops in the market, only positive, leading to a runaway class division and a new oligarchy. Which we have. The early socialist-anarchists said that there were runaway feedback loops in Marx's system too. You'll notice that the early anarchists in Russia were among the first up against the wall. Or with an icepick through their head, like Trotsky.
So, you essentially put three kinds of anarchism on one side, and Marxism on the other. You know what Marxism was, right? A transitional form between what and what? Do you know? What was the end result of Marxism supposed to be?
Good. Then you need to understand what is actually in your best interest as a superior person. This is all assuming you are not a sociopath and have functioning empathic circuits. If you don't lord it over the people who are inferior to you, your true value to them will be apparent, and they will respect you even more for not holding that over them. This kind of close connection, with emotional openness and honesty between leader, manager, and follower is what we evolved to do. It is the most efficient way for everyone to get more of what they want from life, and deep down, all of us know it.
Leaders are really no better or worse than anyone else. It takes all kinds to make the world work. Even sociopaths, but that's a much longer discussion.
Of course companies collude. What, you've never heard of RIAA or the MPAA? Where have you been? Collective bargaining is not socialism. Without collective bargaining, maximal benefit goes to the owners and minimal benefit goes to the workers. Are you really saying that you are against my right to free speech and free association? Because that's all I'm advocating for, and it sure sounds like you are against anything that is going to cost the owning class any money.
OSHA is a joke. Reagan gutted OSHA. They don't have the manpower to investigate, let alone prosecute. Without a union to back you up, how far do you think you're going to get in making a case over this stuff? You rock the boat in a non union shop over safety issues, you get the axe. Maybe you have the time and resources to go on a crusade, but most workers don't.
Hehe, I love to pick on libertarians. It's a sad little vice of mine. I know just what to say to piss you guys off. It's like going to a line of nerds waiting for the new Star Wars movie and yelling, "Star Trek sucks!" You got their little obsession wrong, and that pisses them off more than if you'd just said Star Wars sucks. (With apologies to Brian Posen)
Honestly, most of you guys are all right. We're all anarchists here, right? We all want to do away with coercive government and organize society around principles of free association. Everything else is minor compared to those shared goals.
I never said threaten anyone. I said, we'll speak out about what you've done. Plenty of people have morals and ethics and don't like to do business with people who screw other people over. If it's just me saying, "This guy screwed me over," though, a lot of people will assume its just me. But if a hundred guys say, "This guy screwed us all over," then people might listen. And if it's just me saying to the boss, "I'll quit unless I get a raise and some health care," the boss might think I'm replaceable. But if a hundred guys say that, the boss might think, it would be harder to replace them all than give them what they want. Now, it's all still voluntary, if the boss didn't think he was still getting a good deal, there wouldn't be one. He's just not getting as good of a deal as he'd get if he negotiated with us all one on one. But no one has any guarantee of getting the best deal, just one that is acceptable to them.
:P
Originally, the IWW was founded as much to combat the practices of 1900s era trade unions as it was to defend the rights of the workers. And as much as you complain about workers tactics, back in the day it was considered acceptable practice to hire Pinkertons to kill workers who spoke up. Look up the Everett or Centralia massacres. Now do you understand why we need unions? Because many business owners are just itching to go back to those bad old days. To me, all current neo-con policies look suspiciously like they are trying to do just that.
Me, I only married once. I negotiate rather than running away.
I still don't see how me telling everyone what you've done to me is extortion. As for your complaints about unions, some of them are valid, though much less so in the IWW. With direct democracy, a worker trying to shirk his duties will get called on the floor by his fellow workers.
You know, haggling is as old as trade itself. If you don't like job X, try to negotiate rather than putting yourself and your employer in a more difficult situation. With your attitude to negotiation, I'm wondering, are you married, and how many times?
Sure that fits my definition of free speech. Fire us, we'll organize the next lot too. And we'll contact your suppliers, customers, and everyone in your community and tell them what you did. We'll picket every place that sells your product. We will fuck you if you try to fuck us, got it? Fair's fair, we don't want to put our employer out of business or price ourselves out of a job, but if you are living fat off of our work while we are starving, we will come down on you and yours like a ton of bricks. What do you expect us to do, roll over and spread our fucking cheeks for you? Maybe if we didn't have each other's back, we'd have to. But we've got solidarity, so we can make you regret fucking us over.
I laughed my ass off when they got to the punchline in that episode. Basically jumped up shouting, "I've been saying that for YEARS!"
Ehhh, who said anything about liking their work? I like the work of plenty of artists I don't respect as people. I happen to love early U2, but I think they suck now. I like Beck, but I'd never respect anyone who is a Scientologist.
I think you are being disingenuous and insincere. I think you are attempting to imply that anyone who takes a stand and speaks out about their beliefs is trying to shove those beliefs down your throat. I'm not. If you're not buying what I'm selling, more power to you. But I'm not going to shut up just because you try to imply that me voicing my own opinions makes me some kind of fascist dictator wannabe.
Libertarians are anarchists who refuse to recognize what they are, or what the roots of their political philosophy is. They also believe that the only problem, the only force capable of real coercion, is government. They support the status quo of the business world. Basically, there are two schools of anarchism: social anarchists and individualist anarchists. Libertarians are a small part of the individualist school of anarchism. I'm a social anarchist, so libertarians kinda piss me off. I feel they have delusions of grandeur, of being something totally new instead of a tired rehashing of something much older.
The way I see it, libertarians are fighting for the right to oppress others economically. They don't want to do away with oppression, they just want to get rid of the government monopoly on it. Most libertarians are at least closeted elitists, if not outspoken in their views that they are manifestly destined to rule over their inferiors.
In any voluntary transaction, both sides value the thing they are receiving more than the thing they are trading away. Therefore, extra value is created in every transaction. However, the distribution of that extra value is unfair. The owners have a lot more resources and power to influence how much of a cut they get. Collective bargaining helps even out that imbalance, giving workers a more powerful position to bargain from. Obviously, if the workers price themselves out of a job, they are not bargaining correctly. I'd be happy if labor got even half the extra value created in the transaction. I mean, everyone wants to pay as little as they can get away with, and without unions, owners can get away with paying the bare minimum that workers are willing to accept. There is also a maximum owners are willing to pay, don't you think it's fair that workers can bargain collectively to get something in the middle?
What extortion? We're practicing free speech. If you don't like that, move to a country where free speech is not allowed, I'm sure it would suit your character and moral values better.
I just hope you don't consider yourself a libertarian...
The IWW has never endorsed any political party or theory. In the past, there were some pretty rowdy arguments between the commie/socialist types and the anarchist types in the IWW. In practice, our philosophy is classed as Anarcho-syndicalism.
As for the origin of the term wobbly, the official position of the IWW is: we don't know. But there are some interesting theories on that page. By the way, I helped make the IWW the second union on the web.(The Israeli Teachers union was first, by a few months.) I also helped with the world's first cyber-picket against Border's Books, and helped defend against the DDoS they or their agents launched in counter-attack.
As for the lingo, back in the depression, the IWW was very tight with the hobo culture and organized massive free speech protests all over the country, encouraging indigents to hop trains or hitch to get there. The IWW was also among the first in the front lines protecting the rights of migrant workers. Some of the worst beat-downs the IWW got were defending migrant workers. Basically, Wobs, hobos, and migrant workers go way back.
You have the right to hire who you like, and I have the right to bargain collectively. I also have the right to free speech, so if you treat me or my coworkers like shit, I WILL be out in front of your place of business telling everyone what you've done. Like it or lump it, buddy.
Unions as they exist today are a mixed bag, neither the saviors of the working poor nor the blight you make them out to be. Reform is needed, but that's been true of unions for over 100 years. I volunteered with the Industrial Workers of the World, otherwise known as the Wobblies. Most people don't know about us outside of history class, but the IWW still exists. Here's how the IWW is different: no mandatory union dues taken out of your paycheck, complete and total democracy, and only one paid (and democratically elected) position. Also, instead of seperate unions, everyone is in the same union, but a different branch. That way, when the janitors at a plant strike, the electricians do too.
I uphold that anyone should be able to hire whoever they like. But I and my friends should be able to bargain collectively, and we will point out, quite vociferously, when you as a business owner are trying to screw us over. That's free speech, and the Wobs used to read from the Constitution in town squares across the US just to make that point. That's one reason the IWW was suppressed so hard. Even to the point of being literally massacred.
We are NOT like other unions.
Yet another reason to hate those smug hypocritical sell-outs.
They actively suppressed unions and treated their crews like shit, from what I heard.
U2 started using Stage Crew Services, a non union shop, back in the '90s. Seeing as how they were born working class and still tout their so-called activism, that smells of hypocrisy to me. I haven't bought a U2 album since. Funny thing, everyone is so up in U2's ass, you can't find much about it on the web. I was part of a protest against them, we got a chance to talk to them, and Bono was the biggest piece of shit ever. Basically said, "Do you know who I am, and what I've done? I'm the biggest activist in the world, who are you peons to criticize me? I'll hire whoever I like."
Well, I'm not a big drinker anyway, so I've only smoked a few times. I came down with a really bad cold the day after I quit, lasted all week, so that covered up any symptoms from quitting. I've been grumpy as hell, though. I'm getting back on an exercise routine, and that usually helps me calm down. Sorry to hear about your in-law, heart surgery is always rough. Good luck with everything!
You don't even want to know what using one of these for a colon exam will do. Especially after a big meal of Taco Bell.
Well, that's true. Say, how's the quitting smoking going? I've smoked a few since new years, only when I'm drinking, but otherwise doing pretty good.
It's those darn Japanese guy's fault! Never mind that many subassemblies are in fact made in local shops. Never mind that we invented the Kaizan method, but no one here would use it. Never mind that the plant president lives on the same block as my father in-law and makes less than $500,000 per year while my father in-law makes over $200,000. He could make MORE working at an American car company, you know why he doesn't? Because they have crap standards and treat their employees like shit.
It's not the world's inability that's the problem. It's the cheap labor conservatives an their policy of doing anything to screw over the working man and make him desperate enough to put up with anything they dish out. You can bend over and spread for them if you like, but I'm not going to.