From: "Mike Denny" <mike@...>
Reply-To: lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com
To: <lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [lpsf-discuss] FW: The Myth of Voluntary Unions
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 12:23:56 -0700FYI
Mike
Wait a second, I see several probklems with this article.
1) Why is the amount aparticualr or average employer pays necccesarily any natural market level? Different societies place vastly different importance and caompensation for the same professions; consider the position of physicians in ancient Rome with that of modern doctors. Why can a union not serve to correct an irrational social consensus of the value of labor, represented by price, to a more appropraite level? Is not some work genuinely undervalued? A strike is oneway to force the praxeological issue of how much the workers' labor is worth relative to alternatives.
For instance, in my experience nurses are usually better at administering medicine than doctors, yet they are paid far less, at least partially due to historical devaluation. What is wrong with a union correcting this by a general nurses' strike?
And what abour genuine cases of irrational working conditions... not all strikes are simply about pay. for instance, Susan Faludi in _Backlash_ wrote of a number of cases where hidebound coporate cultures just didn't see females as fit for certain positions. What about exotic dancing clubs? I attended an event last night where Carol Liegh was talking about how many clubs employ unspoken racial quotas against minorities*, and set up payment structures where girls feel pressured into prositution in private booths. A firm can have irrational policies that are easier to change by voice than by exit, and irratioanl conditions can and have permeated entire industries.
* Actually, I will concede that sex work is one of the few times some forms of caring about race actaully make senses, for the simple reason of physical aesthetics. But in practice this is all caught up with eroticized semi-racial/semi-cultural sterotypes and some outright racist standards of beauty. My own experience with parallel issues of gender is that individuals tend towards honest and cheerful aesthetic preference, but that firms tend to take the low road and mindlessly regurgiate stereotypes.
2) DiLorenzo seems to assume that only violence is effective to discourage people from crossing picket lines. Is rational argument not a consideration as an efficacious method of acheiving human goals? Is it at least concievable that unions might encourage pursuit of cooperation for long-term common self-interest. Boycotts and public protests dochange corporate policies without a shred of coercion. And what about the Gandhian independence movement in India... DiLorenzo seems to forget that unions are not always arrayed exclusively or primarily against employers.
3) Corporations have plenty of history of employing violence as well, much of it simply by getting the state or the military to do the dirty work for them. Halliburton had more blood on its hands than the Teamsters. What about the use of state power to compel miners to work in early 20th century America? I am my no means saying unions have not had their own black marks, but DiLorenzo is very one-sided.
4) DiLorenzo lists "mass picketing, insults, threats, throwing rocks and bottles, car chasing, abusive phone calls, physical assaults, property destruction, and even murder" as means of intimidation.
Granted, actually. But I find it really suspicious that libertarians, who bend over backwards to fail to understand how sexual harrassment or hate speech might have anything whatsoever in common with throwinng rocks and bottles,and constantly tell margianlized peope to "get over it", or that patriarchal efforts to silence women by condescension and deregation are an illusion... suddenly know exactly how "mass picketing, insults, threats... car chasing (?), (and) abusive phone calls are meant to exercise power when the beneficiary is supposed to be unions (or feminists), not patriarchy.
I think that all speech should be free, including both the noncoercive tactics of racists and these unions, but I would still say some speech is meant to push power over others. I'm tired of seeing libertarians endlessly solicitous of the feelings of poor opressed angry white males but unable to get a clue when women or people of color have similar feelings. Either start treating hate speech and bigotry as ugly uses of power that still hsould be legal, or else it's all good clean smears and nonunionized workers should just have to learn to 'deal with it' just like libertarians epect of gays or women.
Ultimately, I think the power game is very real on all sides, and that power stcuctures, in and out of the state, hurt everyone and we should all learn realize that in the end the enemy is us. But when a group like the von Mises Institute, fond of promoting social power structures itself, has an author writing the above, it reeks of blatant hypocrisy.
5) DiLorenzo talks about historical realism as a reason to view the idea of noncoercive unions as naive and unrealistic. But the same applies to the idea of a noncoercive government (or peaceful state of anarchy). This is the eternal cry of the old and tired trying to look like wisdom.
I'm a recent union girl myself, and I see no reason libertarians should take the side of coporations over unions. Mosat corpoarations and labor unions that exist are in my opinion creatures of the state anyway, but there are also business firms and labor unions which are exemplary by libertarian standards. And when paleolibertarians try to redefine the Freedom Movement as the partisan support of conservative socail institutions, of which corporations are a fairly moderate example, they ain't got my vote.
1968,
Jeanie Ring
"If their lives were exotic and strange...
they would likely have gladly exchanged them
for something, a little more plain;
maybe something, a little more sane...
We each pay a fabulous price
for our visions of Paradise
but the Spirit...
of a Vision...
is a Dream..."
- Rush, 'Mission'