I'm a bit conflicted on the whole issue of unions, myself. I've seen good ones, and I've seen bad.
Some of the best I've seen are probably the professional theater unions. I'm not a professional actor, but I have done some apprenticeships with professional theaters as a hobby, and I've learned a few things about these organizations. Three good things about these unions: 1) They don't let just anyone in, you have to show that you're a Professional, just as you have to have some qualifications to enter the IEEE or get a license to call yourself a Professional Engineer. They also provide training opportunities, similar to IEEE etc. In this, I consider them to be more Professional Trade Organizations than Organized Labor. 2) They provide members with benefits that non-actors might get through their employers (credit unions, health insurance, etc.) that actors have a tough time with due to the irregular nature of their employment, potentially having a different boss in a different city every performance season and so on. 3) The Law stays pretty much out of the employee/employer relationship.
This third point is important. There are certain signs, I think, of when a union goes bad. One is when you can't get a job in a certain field without being part of the union. When I worked at Kroger, I was told that I had the option to join the Local Grocery Workers' Union, but I decided not to, and all was fine. State law says the union can't stop the employer from hiring me. It's not so for all industries and all states.
Bad Thing #2 is when the unions go political. Combine this with mandated union membership, and if I want a job, then a portion of my money will be donated to whatever party the Union likes, whether I like that party or not. As you say, the unions are democratic in nature, but so is a lynch mob. Democracy alone does not guarantee individual rights.
Political power can lead straight into Bad Thing #3, when politicians and laws take away an employer's right to decide whether or not he will deal with a union. For example, out on the West Coast, it may be at some point cheaper for the shipping companies to hire and train a completely new workforce rather than give the union what they want. But the Federal Government has a law against this. Through the power of government, they have their employer and the economy of the nation at their mercy, and they know it. With this kind of power, they've got no reason to come to an agreement that's fair on both sides.
You talked of the problem of management squeezing the employers of all their worth. Well, that's because management has the power. Give the unions the power to squeeze beyond reason, and odds are they'll use it, too. And someone undeserving is likely to get hurt either way.
The best 'union gone bad' quote I've read is from Atlas Shrugged. I lent my copy to someone else, so I may not get it right, but it's from when Dagny Taggert tells the would-be union bosses, "You want to hold me hostage by my employees, and you want to hold my employees hostage by the jobs I give them."
Thomas Paine said that, if the dictates of conscience were strong enough, there would be no need for government, and government would not exist. Similarly, if all employers treated their employees fairly for fair work, as I have been treated at some but not all of the jobs I have held, there would be no need for unions. The fact that there is a shortage of unions in the IT field just indicates to me that the demand is not very great.
Incidentally, I am working in one of those 'regular overtime' places right now. It's a small company, though, and small companies generally don't unionize. Less of a distance between the top of the totem pole and the bottom, and fewer seats for the to fill should we all spontaneously decide to walk off. And according to the statistics, most of America's economic growth comes from small businesses. I think most unions are in long-established, labor-oriented industries, such as shipping, construction, and factory-working. If IT can still be considered a 'young' sector of the economy, I'm not all that surprised that things are the way they are.
Whew... didn't mean for this post to go that long. I'd better hit submit before I think of something else!
Re:This is so incredibly scary...
on
One of Many
·
· Score: 2
Think of it this way.
Our universe only has One of Many Seven of Nines....
...here I come. Seems the local rental place is the only place to get good stuff I haven't seen already.
Cowboy Bebop is great, probably the best dubs there are, but CN's shown them so many times, I know 'em all, and there's no reason for me to set aside time to watch it on a weekend night when I can be out with other anime-watching friends and rented/purchased DVDs.
Inuyasha's a good series in the fansubs I've seen, but the dubs just ruin it for me. Yuu Yuu Hakusho has caught my interest somewhat, but mostly for the jazzy theme music. DBZ is funny, but after you've seen a few episodes, you've seen 'em all.
I'm still saddened by the fact that only 13 eps of Big O were ever made... and that I missed about half of the last season of ReBoot. Grrr.
Oh, well, at least it looks like we're getting another season of Stargate out of Sci Fi....
Well, unless Taco's decided Brak's had enough of a workout and taken it down without notice, I'd say we've been successful.
Once again, the power of countless geeks wasting time online has been demonstrated. We must always remember that this power can be used for good... or evil....
Indeed, Congress does make such laws. And, in theory, there should be three 'stops' on Congress overstepping their power.
First, there's the People. We have the power to vote Bad Legislators out of Congress every two years. The problem here is that there's no shortage of voters who are lazy, ill-informed, easily hoodwinked, or just incompetent. And I haven't even gotten into corruption at the ballot box.
Then, we've got the President, who has the power to veto any bill that comes his way. Unfortunately, for this to work, the President has to have a strong interest in upholding the Constitution. An interest above and beyond any desire he may have to increase his personal stock of political credit or power. Also, Congress has a habit of getting bad laws passed as 'riders' on legislation that's good, or even downright necessary.
Finally, there's the Judiciary. As you say, the Constitution is worded very clearly on matters of personal rights. Politicians have found a way around this, though, as well. Since the days of FDR, at least, it's become a tactic for 'progressives' and 'activists' who view the Constitution as an unnecessary obstacle to push for the appointment of 'progressive' judges. Judges who have no qualms about interpreting the law to say something it doesn't actually say. With the cooperation of such a judge, laws can be twisted in ways that no elected government official would dare try.
As you say, the Constitution is the Supreme law of the land. But it's a unique sort of law. Rather than binding the people, the intent of the framers was to both create and bind government in the same document. There are only three crimes mentioned in the original Constitution for which an individual can be tried: counterfeit, piracy (Arrr!), and treason.
Every elected representative takes an oath to serve and protect the nation, and to uphold the Constitution. If you ask me, the breaking of this oath is, in itself, an act which may be called treason. But for all crimes, before someone can be held accountable, someone has to call them on it.
So, how many of us are going to hold our representatives to their oaths this Nov. 5th? We'll have to see.
I better get in line to buy a license to this patent of theirs if I'm going to start my own web businesses. I'll just add this to the 'One-Click' and 'hyperlink' license expenses.
I'm having trouble finding an order form on their web site, though. Seems to be down or something. I better keep reloading until I get it. Any of you other/.ers getting anything?
I think it was Ray Kroc(sp?) himself that once explained this phenomenon. McDonalds's real business isn't making great food. It's picking great real estate. That is to say, they're good at finding locations where money can be made. And it's because they've known their business and stuck to it so well that they've done so well over the years.
a true postmodernist would likely reject the very idea that a hoax is a meaningful concept
Is that so? Hmmmm....
Maybe I should get into the business of selling seafront property in Kansas to these 'true postmodernists'. And just to be nice, I'd better warn them about the Good Times virus, and make them aware of the big bucks they can get from M$ by forwarding my e-mails to everyone they know!:-)
people who use screen readers to access the site still cannot get complete access to schedule and route information.
As a non-disabled person with a few college years of experience in trying to make heads or tails of MARTA's schedules and routes, my message to these Disabled persons is:
I thought we were supposed to have large rooms which could holographically take on the appearance of any environment by The Next Generation, complete with lifelike artificial characters? Not to mention warp drives, food replicators, and a sentient android....
Very good question. The best start I can think of lies in the Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
In my view, the only good excuse for taking a fundamental, "inalienable" right away from someone is if that person is guilty of violating another's fundamental rights, among which are life, liberty, and property.
And even then, the law must bind the government to rules of playing fair. The proper job of a defense attourney is not to get his client free by any means. It's to make sure the government plays by the rules.
Running off on a tangent, I have yet to run across a good definition or litmus test for what "human rights" are, to differentiate them from "natural rights". The only written document I've seen defining Human Rights is a certain UN Declaration, with strikes me as overly broad in some areas, and completely useless in others.
Not a bad definition. Especially tricky these days, when people are trying to claim "rights" that don't really exist. A "right" not to be offended. A "right" to someone else's money. And so on.
The rights I believe in are what Locke called "natural rights". And I've heard of a good litmus test for telling whether a right is a "natural" right or a contrived one. If I possess a natural right, then my possession and exercise of that right demands nothing of you but that you do not interfere with that right. "Constitutional rights" are just natural rights that were important enough to mention by name in those first ten amendments. (Another quick note: It's not one-right-per-amendment, the first Amendment alone guarantees five!)
For example: I have the right to speak, and all it demands of you is that you don't use the power of the government to shut me up. I have the right to life, as long as my living costs you nothing. And another old and favorite phrase of mine, your right to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins.
On the other hand, let's take this "right" to health care. The problem is, health care will always cost somebody something. Even at the most basic level, it demands that a doctor sacrifice a portion of his time to training and treatment. If you don't allow the doctor to charge what he feels is a fair price for his work, then this "right" to health care exists at the cost of the doctor's right to his time and his talents. Otherwise, it exists at the cost of someone else's right to enjoy his or her full income.
One last thought, paraphrased from an Ayn Rand quote that I can't remember word-for-word at the moment: The ultimate minority is the individual, the minority of one. Anyone who claims to be in favor of minority rights but who advocates taking a right away from even a single individual against their will is either not thinking straight or has something up their sleeves.
There's a hole in the middle of it all, there's a hole in the middle of it all, there's a hole in the middle, there's a hole in the middle, there's a hole in the middle of it all....
There's a quark in the hole in the middle of it all....
Slashdot Mirror
Since they've got Opera now, it'll be a little while longer. At least until the fat lady sings.
I'm a bit conflicted on the whole issue of unions, myself. I've seen good ones, and I've seen bad.
Some of the best I've seen are probably the professional theater unions. I'm not a professional actor, but I have done some apprenticeships with professional theaters as a hobby, and I've learned a few things about these organizations. Three good things about these unions:
1) They don't let just anyone in, you have to show that you're a Professional, just as you have to have some qualifications to enter the IEEE or get a license to call yourself a Professional Engineer. They also provide training opportunities, similar to IEEE etc. In this, I consider them to be more Professional Trade Organizations than Organized Labor.
2) They provide members with benefits that non-actors might get through their employers (credit unions, health insurance, etc.) that actors have a tough time with due to the irregular nature of their employment, potentially having a different boss in a different city every performance season and so on.
3) The Law stays pretty much out of the employee/employer relationship.
This third point is important. There are certain signs, I think, of when a union goes bad. One is when you can't get a job in a certain field without being part of the union. When I worked at Kroger, I was told that I had the option to join the Local Grocery Workers' Union, but I decided not to, and all was fine. State law says the union can't stop the employer from hiring me. It's not so for all industries and all states.
Bad Thing #2 is when the unions go political. Combine this with mandated union membership, and if I want a job, then a portion of my money will be donated to whatever party the Union likes, whether I like that party or not. As you say, the unions are democratic in nature, but so is a lynch mob. Democracy alone does not guarantee individual rights.
Political power can lead straight into Bad Thing #3, when politicians and laws take away an employer's right to decide whether or not he will deal with a union. For example, out on the West Coast, it may be at some point cheaper for the shipping companies to hire and train a completely new workforce rather than give the union what they want. But the Federal Government has a law against this. Through the power of government, they have their employer and the economy of the nation at their mercy, and they know it. With this kind of power, they've got no reason to come to an agreement that's fair on both sides.
You talked of the problem of management squeezing the employers of all their worth. Well, that's because management has the power. Give the unions the power to squeeze beyond reason, and odds are they'll use it, too. And someone undeserving is likely to get hurt either way.
The best 'union gone bad' quote I've read is from Atlas Shrugged. I lent my copy to someone else, so I may not get it right, but it's from when Dagny Taggert tells the would-be union bosses, "You want to hold me hostage by my employees, and you want to hold my employees hostage by the jobs I give them."
Thomas Paine said that, if the dictates of conscience were strong enough, there would be no need for government, and government would not exist. Similarly, if all employers treated their employees fairly for fair work, as I have been treated at some but not all of the jobs I have held, there would be no need for unions. The fact that there is a shortage of unions in the IT field just indicates to me that the demand is not very great.
Incidentally, I am working in one of those 'regular overtime' places right now. It's a small company, though, and small companies generally don't unionize. Less of a distance between the top of the totem pole and the bottom, and fewer seats for the to fill should we all spontaneously decide to walk off. And according to the statistics, most of America's economic growth comes from small businesses. I think most unions are in long-established, labor-oriented industries, such as shipping, construction, and factory-working. If IT can still be considered a 'young' sector of the economy, I'm not all that surprised that things are the way they are.
Whew... didn't mean for this post to go that long. I'd better hit submit before I think of something else!
Think of it this way.
Our universe only has One of Many Seven of Nines....
Unfortunately, it was the first half I missed. Augh!
...here I come. Seems the local rental place is the only place to get good stuff I haven't seen already.
Cowboy Bebop is great, probably the best dubs there are, but CN's shown them so many times, I know 'em all, and there's no reason for me to set aside time to watch it on a weekend night when I can be out with other anime-watching friends and rented/purchased DVDs.
Inuyasha's a good series in the fansubs I've seen, but the dubs just ruin it for me. Yuu Yuu Hakusho has caught my interest somewhat, but mostly for the jazzy theme music. DBZ is funny, but after you've seen a few episodes, you've seen 'em all.
I'm still saddened by the fact that only 13 eps of Big O were ever made... and that I missed about half of the last season of ReBoot. Grrr.
Oh, well, at least it looks like we're getting another season of Stargate out of Sci Fi....
Well, unless Taco's decided Brak's had enough of a workout and taken it down without notice, I'd say we've been successful.
Once again, the power of countless geeks wasting time online has been demonstrated. We must always remember that this power can be used for good... or evil....
You guys got another one called Zorak?
/. stores the Microsoft stories, isn't it?
An evil, giant, annoying bug out to take over the world that's always getting blasted by the host....
That'd be the server where
The Tick vs. The Incredible Hulk.
The loser: Anyone in the area who happens to own a tall building.
The winner: The local building/road construction unions.
...should you choose to accept it, is to come up with an application/product combining nanotech paints, Organic LEDs, and Light-Emitting Silicon.
Any suggestions? I'm stumped.
The point is, now you can put five or six movies onto a single DVD! This is perfect for:
Getting your geek friends together for that day-long viewing of the entire (Star Wars/Star Trek/LotR) series, of course.
So, when can we expect the first wrapper/hack/crack/workaround to get around this EULA?
Or can I just have a minor click through it to avoid giving this company the right to access my Address Book?
Just wondering.
Indeed, Congress does make such laws. And, in theory, there should be three 'stops' on Congress overstepping their power.
First, there's the People. We have the power to vote Bad Legislators out of Congress every two years. The problem here is that there's no shortage of voters who are lazy, ill-informed, easily hoodwinked, or just incompetent. And I haven't even gotten into corruption at the ballot box.
Then, we've got the President, who has the power to veto any bill that comes his way. Unfortunately, for this to work, the President has to have a strong interest in upholding the Constitution. An interest above and beyond any desire he may have to increase his personal stock of political credit or power. Also, Congress has a habit of getting bad laws passed as 'riders' on legislation that's good, or even downright necessary.
Finally, there's the Judiciary. As you say, the Constitution is worded very clearly on matters of personal rights. Politicians have found a way around this, though, as well. Since the days of FDR, at least, it's become a tactic for 'progressives' and 'activists' who view the Constitution as an unnecessary obstacle to push for the appointment of 'progressive' judges. Judges who have no qualms about interpreting the law to say something it doesn't actually say. With the cooperation of such a judge, laws can be twisted in ways that no elected government official would dare try.
As you say, the Constitution is the Supreme law of the land. But it's a unique sort of law. Rather than binding the people, the intent of the framers was to both create and bind government in the same document. There are only three crimes mentioned in the original Constitution for which an individual can be tried: counterfeit, piracy (Arrr!), and treason.
Every elected representative takes an oath to serve and protect the nation, and to uphold the Constitution. If you ask me, the breaking of this oath is, in itself, an act which may be called treason. But for all crimes, before someone can be held accountable, someone has to call them on it.
So, how many of us are going to hold our representatives to their oaths this Nov. 5th? We'll have to see.
I had no idea anyone had patented this.
/.ers getting anything?
I better get in line to buy a license to this patent of theirs if I'm going to start my own web businesses. I'll just add this to the 'One-Click' and 'hyperlink' license expenses.
I'm having trouble finding an order form on their web site, though. Seems to be down or something. I better keep reloading until I get it. Any of you other
I think it was Ray Kroc(sp?) himself that once explained this phenomenon. McDonalds's real business isn't making great food. It's picking great real estate. That is to say, they're good at finding locations where money can be made. And it's because they've known their business and stuck to it so well that they've done so well over the years.
Just something to think about.
a true postmodernist would likely reject the very idea that a hoax is a meaningful concept
:-)
Is that so? Hmmmm....
Maybe I should get into the business of selling seafront property in Kansas to these 'true postmodernists'. And just to be nice, I'd better warn them about the Good Times virus, and make them aware of the big bucks they can get from M$ by forwarding my e-mails to everyone they know!
Isn't William Shatner from Canada? Maybe this is an attempt to develop a more powerful 'Priceline SuperComputer'....
A supercomputer capable of creating more convincing commercials, perhaps?
people who use screen readers to access the site still cannot get complete access to schedule and route information.
As a non-disabled person with a few college years of experience in trying to make heads or tails of MARTA's schedules and routes, my message to these Disabled persons is:
You ain't missin' much. Trust me.
If it were me, I'd have hijack a computer speaker to sing the blues.
'Cause I..... ain't got no boooooooooody! (Sing it with me now!)
I can't get my mind off of the old analogy of a van full of data tapes travelling cross-country.
Anyone care to do the math to figure out the bandwidth of one million (or billion) AOL disks travelling at highway speeds?
[portentously] and thats how we produce ... the miracle of dry cleaning [/portentously]
To make this even more perfect, imagine the above being read by Ben Stein.
I thought we were supposed to have large rooms which could holographically take on the appearance of any environment by The Next Generation, complete with lifelike artificial characters? Not to mention warp drives, food replicators, and a sentient android....
Very good question. The best start I can think of lies in the Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
In my view, the only good excuse for taking a fundamental, "inalienable" right away from someone is if that person is guilty of violating another's fundamental rights, among which are life, liberty, and property.
And even then, the law must bind the government to rules of playing fair. The proper job of a defense attourney is not to get his client free by any means. It's to make sure the government plays by the rules.
Running off on a tangent, I have yet to run across a good definition or litmus test for what "human rights" are, to differentiate them from "natural rights". The only written document I've seen defining Human Rights is a certain UN Declaration, with strikes me as overly broad in some areas, and completely useless in others.
Not a bad definition. Especially tricky these days, when people are trying to claim "rights" that don't really exist. A "right" not to be offended. A "right" to someone else's money. And so on.
The rights I believe in are what Locke called "natural rights". And I've heard of a good litmus test for telling whether a right is a "natural" right or a contrived one. If I possess a natural right, then my possession and exercise of that right demands nothing of you but that you do not interfere with that right. "Constitutional rights" are just natural rights that were important enough to mention by name in those first ten amendments. (Another quick note: It's not one-right-per-amendment, the first Amendment alone guarantees five!)
For example: I have the right to speak, and all it demands of you is that you don't use the power of the government to shut me up. I have the right to life, as long as my living costs you nothing. And another old and favorite phrase of mine, your right to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins.
On the other hand, let's take this "right" to health care. The problem is, health care will always cost somebody something. Even at the most basic level, it demands that a doctor sacrifice a portion of his time to training and treatment. If you don't allow the doctor to charge what he feels is a fair price for his work, then this "right" to health care exists at the cost of the doctor's right to his time and his talents. Otherwise, it exists at the cost of someone else's right to enjoy his or her full income.
One last thought, paraphrased from an Ayn Rand quote that I can't remember word-for-word at the moment: The ultimate minority is the individual, the minority of one. Anyone who claims to be in favor of minority rights but who advocates taking a right away from even a single individual against their will is either not thinking straight or has something up their sleeves.
Look! Up in the sky!
It's a bird!
It's a plane!
No, it's a bird the size of a small plane!
</WeakJoke>
All together now!
There's a hole in the middle of it all, there's a hole in the middle of it all, there's a hole in the middle, there's a hole in the middle, there's a hole in the middle of it all....
There's a quark in the hole in the middle of it all....