"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.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
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)
