As to the lack of popularity, it is probably because people are pragmatic and don't believe belonging to a union will be of much use. It is precisely what a secondary school teacher told me a few months ago.
As to the population, we should rather talk about the French being instinctively in favour of of unions, of protesters, of anyone who manages to appear as a victim. This particular technique is extremely well mastered.
As to unions somehow representing the whole people, I would invite linca to comment on the quality of the Democracy in France, as opposed to that in the US that he criticized not long ago. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
It's certainly better than the aternative where workers have no way of being heard and don't see their right protected. It's NEVER easy for workers to get unionised, unless you have strong instutional bias to do so, as more than a century of history shows.
But of course, this is just about workers "playing victim." Bleh. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Workers should be attracted into adhering to unions, I guess, and political parties should be closer to the base. So well, no, in this case I don't say it's "playing the victim". The right way I think is not for unions to do the work for the political parties, but for the democracy to improve. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The right way I think is not for unions to do the work for the political parties, but for the democracy to improve.
The job of political parties is to do politics. The job of unions is to secure a larger share of the value added for the workers. Is the distribution of wealth between employer and employee not a political question?
As an aside, several political parties have historically been joined to labour unions at the hip - where the parliamentary arm of the labour movement worked to secure workers' rights using the legislative process, the unions worked to secure workers' rights using collective bargaining. What is so odious about this combination, then? Certainly, it has been effective at building just and equitable societies.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
The Labour party should be the ones militating for higher taxation of financial revenues, not unions. Unions are not elected and not delegated to lead the country. The trade unions should be the ones militating for bigger salaries and lower work hours in a given industry, not political parties.
Sometimes union business is valid for everybody else and so becomes a matter of national politics (like the nation-wide minimum salary in France, or the limit of the working hours per week). But as a general rule, union business is specifical to a certain company or field. Sarkozy reportedly told the CGT union boss, literally: "if you intend to block down the country, then I'll give you my office and my chair, and you will lead the country".
When a political program is voted in, expecting trade union rebellion, as if the vote was not given by the people, is anti-democratical. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Unions represent their members. When issues constantly arise in workplaces, then there are things that unions cannot always achieve in one workplace alone, they need critical mass to create change.
You point out the minimum wage. Health and safety standards are another, in the UK provision of learning courses and skills training is a huge arm of most unions - but none of this can be done in individual workplaces alone.
Climate change, not of direct concern to unions? I'd argue it is. The workers have a home life as well as a work life. Rising prices in gas and electricity without adequate increase in salary, pushes low paid workers into poverty. Now, separate union branches could argue it out with their respective employers in individual workplaces to increase the salaries of workers and get nowhere with that or they can argue it out with the government to take countrywide action to support people who need subsidies to pay their fuel bills, and introduce policies that can help many more people than the ones the unions directly represent.
These are the kind of examples for why Unions should be political and why they should negotiate with the government. It is a form of consultation. It is another method for getting evidence on how real working people are being affected or could be affected by Government policy.
When my Government gets things wrong, I want my union to say so. I want activist organisations to say so.
You can complain about unions having influence. What about all the other lobbying groups? The voice of business is usually much greater than the unions. The voices of those elitist super wealthy few are drowning me out, and millions of others like me. Yes, I want my union to be political. Ad astra per aspera
Associations can manifest, but not block a country's railways because they don't agree with this or that policy - except when the whole public opinion is against, and there are general strikes.
When government gets it wrong concerning work issues it is the job of unions to protest.
The civil society organizations form a layer much stronger and more competent. Unions are just a part of it, and they're concerned with work issues.
I don't complain about union influence, but about giving them a censor right over the democratically elected representatives of the people. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
If my union wasn't challenging the government that is unreachable to me as an ordinary citizen with no influence, then who would be there to protect me? I can write to my MP, but to have an effect, I'd need to organise mass action to make my MP listen to me.
So I'd need to organise and get other people mobilized and active. You mention civil society organisations and unions being a part of that - well that is all I am asking for. So rather than me trying to set up my own single cause structure for lobbying on, I could tap into structures that are already there.
Unions do not have have direct line to the prime minister. They do not have direct influence to be in control of all the policies the Government produces. They have to produce infallible evidence to back the case they are arguing, to try to influence the change they believe will benefit their members (be it work related or indirectly impacting on their members' lives). They have to develop high level expertise to take to civil servants and ministers to try to negotiate and influence on policy.
All business has to do is flash some cash. And they are in. big discrepancy there.
And if you aren't aware of it, UK unions actually have much lower status in law which has severely diminished their strength, and taken away many rights over striking and so on. And unions are not just about strikes or action. That is a hugely outdated image, especially for UK unions.
btw there will never be any situation where the entire public opinion is against something. Ad astra per aspera
We've seen recently how well that works for everyone.
Business groups kick off about regulation and not letting the free market be truly free to let them do things how they wish to.
The UK unions are fairly restrained by legislation that limits their activities, US unions even more so. It isn't an even balance. Ad astra per aspera
In France, it seems there are about 5 million employees in micro-companies and about 9 million in companies with under 250 employees (wikipedia TPE/PME and pme.gouv.fr). Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
And a 200 employees company is already quite large. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
It's nearly impossible to start a workable small business without a decent stash of capital.
Of course it's not impossible, but even with microcredit it's hardly the open door you seem to assume it is. Most business don't become profitable for at least a couple of years.
As for employers - some are good, some are bad. Either way, workers do not have the same degree of control over their personal finances that employers do.
When your personal welfare depends on having a job, you're in a position of permanent political inequality with the caste which decides whether or not to employ you.
You seem to see this as a natural phenomenon, when in fact it's merely expedient and traditional.
Made by people like you and me,
Aren't unionised train drivers and capitalists also people like you and me? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Unionised train drivers, at least in France, were in a logic of lets do as much damage as possible and force them to submit. Their reasons were hanging tight to privileges. They were used to act from a very ideologic point of view that might be familiar to yourself :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Methinks you again used a common right-wing phrase without thinking and can't get out of it. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
French train drivers and big capitalists share something called privilege. As said above. Sigh. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
A starbucks opens and the local coffee shop closes, because the custom has been taken away. By great big fat multinational chains. Ad astra per aspera
What happened to the reality based community here?
BTW, anyone in the room besides me (and I assume In Wales) actually IN a union?
Trust me, I loved the things before I had to join one. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
That's not the point. The point is that money talks. That means that it doesn't matter how many people are represented, what matters is how much money is represented.
anyone in the room besides me (and I assume In Wales) actually IN a union?
I am. (In fact, just last week we elected our new representative.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Unions represent people their worker quality and for worker issues, and as such I am totally for strong unions, like the German kind. Parliaments represent people. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
This was rejected in a deliberate - ideological, if you will - political decision. By the very same people who are only too happy to use the bully pulpit to inform those who would have been covered by such an arrangement that they shouldn't be striking because it hurts society as a whole.
You want someone to blame for the train strikes? Blame Sarko and his friends for trying to run vital infrastructure on the cheap.
By the way I'm not looking to culpabilize anyone in particular, the Sarko line is quite cheap IMO. I just don't think unions should strike over national policies, distribution of funds, investments and so on, but about work-related issues, that's all. Unions should not short-circuit democracy. They're not more legitimate than democratically elected institutions. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
What one could see as ideological in the Danish example, frankly, beats me. I think it would be the best approach.
The decision that I call ideological above was the decision to abolish the system.
But that aside, I think the system itself was also a manifestation of ideology - namely the ideology that there are certain parts of the infrastructure that are too important to be left to the whims of the market (recall that the civil servants I described couldn't usually work for private companies - although with the privatisation mania that's been gripping our politicians some of them have been loaned out to the newly privatised companies (for obvious reasons)).
By the way I'm not looking to culpabilize anyone in particular,
Oh, but you are. If you argue that striking train drivers hold all of society hostage, you implicitly argue that the strike is the fault of the train drivers. You could just as easily turn this on its head and argue that the government ("Sarko and his friends," if you will) shouldn't be trying to eat its cake and have it too - and that stuff like train strikes is the kind of thing that just happens to happen from time to time when you try to eat your cake and have it too.
Your line of reasoning assumes that the current configuration of the French rail services is inevitable, and that it is up to the rail workers to adapt to it. The alternative narrative that I presented assumes that strikes among untenured workers are inevitable, and that it is up to the French rail service to adapt to it.
the Sarko line is quite cheap IMO.
Well, as they say; billige point er også point...
Other than these two points, railway-ers or anyone else can strike as long and as often as they see fit.
(btw I merely touched the issue of the French unions' political colour; I could have spoken of the student or college unions, magistrate unions and many others whose hard leaning to the left leaves absolutely no doubt; by this, they decredibilize their own action and open the way for abuses from the side of the government; I found it extremely undemocratical for president Sarkozy to boast that "today no one notices strikes anymore"; this is were some unions' lack of reasonable-ness and politicking led: the Power is able today to frame any strike being so) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The owners and upper management of large companies is almost universally to the right of whatever goes as "centre" in your political culture (which in today's political culture means that many of them are far-right cultists). Many if not most of the people employed in the police and military are right-of-centre. If unions did nothing more than mirror the ideological distribution of civilians who aren't owners or part of the upper management of large companies, they'd be left-of-centre. And surely, unions aren't supposed to represent upper management and owners...
As an aside, unions really actually aren't far left - most of them are to the right of where they were thirty or so years ago, but the Overton Window has become so fucked up in the meantime that they look bright red...
But I'm speaking of sensibilities. The word is very important. No one should get out of his role and act on its own sensibilitites rather than the role he has in society (police to protect the citizen, not be authoritarian, army to protect the country, not to use strength to rape women and burn villages and so on).
The turf for politics is the political parties and the democratical institutions. If others think they're more legit, they're no longer democratical. Do I believe democracy (in its present form) is the best way? I don't know. We can discuss that, but I'd rather have my union activate for my protection as a worker.
I agree with you about unions being framed red. This is why they need not do more PR and more framing back, but keep factual, irreproachable and bold, in our defense, not that of an ideology. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
And as an aside, I still think your idea of democracy would cause most of the Enlightenment thinkers who came up with the concept to spin in their graves if they could hear it. To give an admittedly extreme example: Were the electorate to decide - by duly amending their constitution - to impose apartheid or to remove the suffrage for brown people, it would be the moral obligation of all civilised citizens to work for the overthrow of this new constitution. Clearly, such anti-apartheid activists would be more legitimate than all the duly, legally and democratically elected officials of such a country.
We've had two recent economic summits in Wales to discuss the recession and how to tackle it and the strength of partnership the unions have with the Government is truly to the benefit of the whole population.
Where ValentinD says that unions should not be politically involved with anything outside direct workplace issues, we've shown here that the contributions of our unions during times like this is absolutely vital. It is the partnership arrangements that determine to an extent the role of unions in working with the Government. When Governments refuse to work with the unions, that's when we see real difficulties.
I guess another point I'd like to make is what is democratic about a system of governance that doesn't see a role for genuine open consultation and negotiation with NGOs, unions and other 'activist' organisations - the ones who have a far more in depth expertise of the issues affecting the groups they represent?
Understanding that with that expertise they can make links across sectors, themes and groups that go wider than any specific single cause remit is massively beneficial. Services fail when things don't align, when there are gaps that have been overlooked because the service design was developed by people with too narrow a knowledge base, unable to see 'out of the box' if you like.
So like you, I'm not convinced unions should stick to direct worker related issues, there are other things with relevance that it is important to include. Ad astra per aspera
Thirty years of uninterrupted rule by syndicalists and pre-Schröder Social Democrats will do that to a country :-P
Economic issues almost always touch employees' interest (there are so few true workers left today, that I kind of prefer employees).
But what would you say if your Welsh (ok, not a world economic power, but still, for the sake of example) went on strike Against Multinationals or Ultraliberalism - ie, for a clearly ideological issue. I can perfectly understand French post office employees on strike against privatisation, for instance. I cannot do the same regarding those on strike for the "preservation of the Public Service", which is a matter of public policy which in fact has only positive effects on them personally and on the respective service. They go on strike (supposedly) in the stead of the citizen, ie, opposing elections (by which people chose a non-left candidate). Hence they use their right for a kind of political coup (keeping proportions) which would not benefit them in any way. These are ideological attitudes to be avoided for their own credibility (and probably against the law as well). Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
But what would you say if your Welsh (ok, not a world economic power, but still, for the sake of example) went on strike Against Multinationals or Ultraliberalism - ie, for a clearly ideological issue.
I fail to see how going on strike against transnats is beyond the scope of labour rights. Some of the worst offenders on labour rights are precisely the transnats you don't want unions to strike against. One of the fundamental principles of all labour organisation is that abusing labour somewhere is abusing labour everywhere - partly out of an ideological sense of solidarity with the oppressed, but more pragmatically because slave labour abroad undercuts our bargaining position at home.
So dock workers refusing to unload a container of iPods because the factory they were produced in is abusive to its labour force is a strike directly against a company policy that harms the interests of the dock workers.
As for striking against neoliberalism, I can see various tactical and strategic problems - how do you know when you've won? What concessions would you demand?
But going on strike against a neoliberal government, on the other hand, is perfectly reasonable if you think the strike has a reasonable chance of hurting it more than it will hurt you. You'd support, I hope, a strike against an Islamic (or Christian) fundagelical government, even if it came to power through elections? And surely neoliberalism isn't any less noxious than Shari'a?
I can perfectly understand French post office employees on strike against privatisation, for instance. I cannot do the same regarding those on strike for the "preservation of the Public Service",
What's the difference between striking against privatisation and striking for preservation of the public service? I fail to see the distinction.
They go on strike (supposedly) in the stead of the citizen, ie, opposing elections
Bullshit.
Elections are decided on a fairly small range of issues - and the issues that unions usually strike over aren't usually among them. Further, during an election campaign, politicians will frequently make different - and conflicting - promises to different interest groups in society. Why shouldn't unions protect their interests when politicians try to undercut their own promises?
(Why people believe that a right-wing politician won't try to undercut labour rights and dismantle the public service is something of a mystery to me. But when you poll people, they apparently do. So, in a sense, when unions strike against the dismantling of the public service, they're just demanding that the politicians do what the voters apparently thought they were doing all along...)
These are ideological attitudes to be avoided for their own credibility (and probably against the law as well).
The Underground Railroad didn't have much credibility in the Confederacy either. Nor was it precisely legal...
At any rate, the internationalisation of labour interests can hardly be laid at the feet of the unions. If you internationalise capital, you internationalise labour interests. This is straightforward, generally acknowledged economics that no serious economist - left or right - disputes: In an era of globalised capital, doing offence to workers in China does direct and measurable harm to the hard and fast numbers on my bottom line in Denmark. Permit me to repeat: This is straight out of page 0 of any textbook on globalisation you might care to pick up.
So, if labour unions aren't supposed to defend the direct, measurable and extremely concrete interests of their members, then WTF are they supposed to do?
Distribution of wealth and work conditions are certainly political when the talk is about work or economic policies. When it is part of the debate employee-eployer at company, branch, or field level, it's union stuff.
An artificial distinction, if you ask me. When Parliament enacts a law stipulating that a labourer may not lift more than so-and-so many kg pr. day (on account of protecting his back from injury), it is usually the unions that end up enforcing it. When the unions negotiate terms for overtime pay, it is often the police that enforces it (or rather, the tax collection agency, because they're the ones who settle debts that the debtor refuses to pay).
And I also doubt that you'd apply the same distinction to - say - green politicians and pro-environment NGOs. Why shouldn't Greenpeace agitate for a cap on CO_2 emissions? Should they leave that to the political parties who are supposed to formulate nationwide policy?
That would be a curious kind of democracy.
Some industries are declining. Workers get made redundant. Let's say that the green agenda in many ways is good for a country as well as being good for a planet. Let's say a country commits to a significant investment in developing an infrastructure for renewable and green energy. This creates new jobs, redundant workers can be retrained and learn new skills and be kitted out to take on these new jobs.
There is a role for unions to play here, in supporting these workers but also in encouraging government and persuading them that this is a good course of action to take. Renewable energy helps to meet energy challenges, new jobs keeps people from needing benefits and from possibly not finding jobs again etc...
Now, if we kept all these things entirely separate and didn't let unions form and promote policy on green issues then it could take much longer for governments to come around to a more innovative way of thinking, they wouldn't have the forethought to retrain workers being made redundant from certain sectors and the links between apparently separate policy areas (environment, energy, employment, welfare) would be missed. Ad astra per aspera
I'd like to hear his answer to this.
I'm repeating myself. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
It seems to me that what you're complaining about is that some NGOs have members who hold influential positions within society and that those NGOs can mobilise those members to exert their influence, and that this gives them an influence that is not in proportion to their membership.
If that is your concern, then I suggest you take aim at the chemicals lobby, the finance lobby and the aeronautics lobby before laying blame on unions. Very few unions actually wield disproportionate power. And those who do do so only because various right-wing governments have been too miserly to create a cadre of tenured, well-paid civil servants with good pensions and high job security to handle critical infrastructure.
"go on strike by proxy" ? :) And do you find that normal, no matter the reasons?
Withholding labour is a basic human right. If you don't have the right to withhold your labour, you are a slave. Of course, that means that withholding labour can be used as a means of political leverage. If you object to this, surely you must also object to the exercise of other fundamental human rights (such as free speech) in service of political objectives. Otherwise, you'd have to explain to me what makes withholding labour so different from those other fundamental human rights that it justifies treating it so differently.
But like free speech, labour withholding is regulated. If transport workers block the country because they don't agree with government's education policies, I don't see how their companies, or their ministries can negotiate an end of the blockage. The government will defend his political program as voted by the people, by and large, which has precedence over this or that work category.
But I do think general strikes produced by general public opposition to a measure can be acceptable. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Honestly, there is something about public service that make the right to strike amendable with some reserves. For instance, hospitals will at the very least treat emergencies. It would be unacceptable that they do not.
To me the right to withdraw your labour has to be seen in the context that you are hurting the party negociating the share going to the workers with your stopping your work. This actually matches a private, competitive company a lot better than a monopoly delivering a public service (hospitals are local monopolies, SNCF a countrywide one). I don't think that the right to strike ought to be understood as the right to severely hurt people who have no say in the bargaining. On the other hand, there must be a right to strike for almost all workers (there can be a case for a few exceptions, but very few). So some compromise needs to be made -for example, you could have the train system run for free with regular service on strike days (actually, you do in most cases). They're not easy and probably have to be case by case, but I think public service is special. Which means it should also be defended from neo-liberal assaults, of course. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
It was abolished because it was considered too expensive.
The reason I mentioned it is that there is a not-so-subtle subtext to the "too expensive" argument:
As you seem to agree, paying people a fair compensation for signing away their right to strike is not actually too expensive by any reasonable cost-benefit accounting. So the real thrust of the "too expensive" argument is that paying people a fair compensation for partially signing away their human rights is more expensive than using the bully pulpit to intimidate them into not exercising those rights.
The point here is not that contracts that temporarily and conditionally restrict our exercise of fundamental rights are odious - far from it - the point is that such clauses must be compensated in reasonable proportion to the restriction they place on your rights.
Signing away the right to strike means signing away a very important political tool, as well as a considerable part of your leverage against your employer, so it should be used sparingly and compensated generously.
I find it better to vote every 2-3-4 years and let the guys work. Big countries cannot practically be governed, say, by referendum, or other associative means. Just a pragmatic view. Is it possible? I think not, except Liechtenstein and such. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
An ideological view. I find it better to vote every 2-3-4 years and let the guys work.
I find it better to vote every 2-3-4 years and let the guys work.
What do you think they do, when they work? Politics is a neverending power struggle between different groups for different changes in society. If ordinary people and their organisations leave walk over after the vote has been cast, that just means that their interests will not be considered until you approach the next election. Left on the scene will be the media owners, the lobbyists, the internal wrangling for position in the parties etc. Of course, if you prefer the results that would yield, you would prefer to "let the guys work".
So I guess you mistyped.
An ideological view: I find it better to vote every 2-3-4 years and let the guys work.
There, fixed it for you. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Parliamentarian democracy introduces a level of indirection. It is them who bother about it, and are responsible for it. I prefer delegation to direct democracy, I'm not ready or competent to vote on every issue, and I'm not sure we can devise a system of certification of any social organization, their own interests, their own competences and so on.
Bref, the case is far more complicated than just labeling today's democracy as inherently ideological. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
But hey, what does Jefferson know about democracy anyway :-P
But then why not bring a communist dictatorship, purely and simply. At least them, you'll believe when they'll tell you it's the people who has the power. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
They should decide military strategy too, and of course have a veto right on the Red Button - its use will most obviously affect workers' rights and benefits.
Well, yes, every major social interest group should have veto rights on the red button. Pushing the red button would be a crime against humanity on a scale not seen since the Great War - doing so against the wishes of a significant minority of the population (nevermind an outright majority) doubly so.
I don't think that unions are necessarily the best fora in which to discuss military strategy - but if they can give compelling arguments for this or that strategy, I see nothing wrong with that. And if some strategy is so anathema to them that they are willing to deploy all their political guns - up to and including the general strike - it would probably behove any prudent politician to ask himself why this strategy has so antagonised a majority (or, even in the most de-unionised countries, significant minority) of the population.
But then why not bring a communist dictatorship, purely and simply. At least them, you'll believe when they'll tell you it's the people who has the power.
I'll assume that this is snark. The unions are hardly the only NGOs that attempt to influence public policy. They're not even the most odious of the various NGOs that do so.
Unions' legitimate interest is about work issues, not army or foreign politics - unless it somehow affects workers.
You're simply asserting this artificial distinction as if it's true, and you've ignored the reasons you've been given which show that it isn't.
What could possibly be more ideological than repeating the same point over and over, and ignoring extended arguments against it?
We cannot extend the "workers interests" at what actually is people's interests. Or people's interests are represented by parliaments and other elected instances in democracies.
As a general rule, mixing genres and then claiming a hold on truth won't bring us anywhere.
Exactly the same kind of false reasoning was made on another diary about women who are paid less because they work less because they're supposed to care for children because of the society-imposed roles - and so on.
This kind of line of thought only shows lack of rigour.
In the end, everything is dependent of anything, so we pick our favourite victims: workers (as if we're not all of us workers, as if we don't have a democratical system), women (as if they wouldn't want children, as if they wouldn't like caretaking) and so on.
In short, you may protest that the democratical system bases on parties, parliaments and governments for general-interest issue, and unions for precisely labour related issues. That may make you a revolutionary-in-waiting, but won't make me an ideologist. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
A last one for the road, straight from one of your links :
Powerful and influential doctors continue to express fears that the increasing proportion of women in medicine will lead to a loss of power and influence and professional status.
As to your quote, I had seen that phrase. SO what's the problem? Did I deny that? Did I ever even comment that? Is anything I said contradicting that?
An ideological will always bring unrelated arguments to decredibilize an opponent. For him, winning is the important thing, not finding the truth or learning something new.
I hope at least you read well your own links on the other debate and learnt that there are a lot of unexplained or arbitrary factors regarding gender differences in pay, other than Male Oppressors. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I hope at least you read well your own links on the other debate and learnt that there are a lot of unexplained or arbitrary factors regarding gender differences in pay, other than Male Oppressors.
Which you decided I had denied, despite I having not done so. And the sentence I linked is hardly unrelated to the topic. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
Bun then, that book is probably full of ideology and sloppy reasoning itself, I suppose. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
This is a bit like free speech you know, no matter how many laws you make, people will always find a way around them to pass the message they want (see the recent Christian Vanneste's trial decision). Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Those are not extended arguments, but utopical thinking typical of the hard left. The comment about civil society vs formal democratically elected organisms is relevant of this.
Come on, you can't be serious.
There is a healthy and ongoing debate about local vs. centralised and direct vs. indirect democracy that goes back at least to the French and American revolutions and continues to this day. Different countries have settled upon different - mostly viable - solutions for various reasons. Spain, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland - to name just the ones I know - all have varying degrees of devolution of power from the central parliament to more local units. Hardly a case of utopianism run amok (and I note that Switzerland isn't precisely a hard-left country either...).
The best example is the European Union. Most left hardliners are of course against more integration, because they claim it to be an instrument of the bad wolf (capitalism). So they call indirect democracy undemocratical (in spite of the fact that the EU Parliament is elected directly and the Commission represents the democratically elected governments, not the Evil Billionnaires and Multinationals).
So they play the Poll Chord ("polls all over Europe are against Europe") and demand "direct democracy", as more democratical. Which leads to the EU constitution, an opaque, technocratic document of hundreds of pages, being submitted to referendums, attacked with populist slogans, and being, logically rejected. Goal attained! 1-0 for the Direct Democracy! Tomorrow we'll vote to Give More Money to the People! After tomorrow, we'll vote For More Sunny Days! Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Is it that the voters are stupid? That the politicians aren't representing the best interests of the voters? That the decision-making architecture of the EU has fundamental design flaws? That state-level public debate fails to consider the federal issues? That the voters deem the federal level unimportant? All of the above?
But whichever our answer to where the democratic failure originated, there is no denying that a political class that's 90 % pro-EU and a public that's 40 % pro-EU and 20 % don't-know-don't-care signals a failure of democracy somewhere.
I just wanted to point out that "Brussels" is our own elected, not some bureaucratical class parachuted from planet Mars.
Voters are not stupid, but (I think Frank said that already) the constitution is too technical. Referendums must be made on simple questions ending in yes, or no, not a 200 pages cryptical diplomatic formulations + annexes.
So this is where the difference between the public and the political class comes from, IMO. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
