I’ve been called a looney by people on the left and right for saying this. Glad to see other people who feel the same way starting to speak up.
I’m a bit fuzzy on this as well. I actually don’t know of any Right Wingers™ who are free market capitalism advocates and who are against labor unions and immigration. Some of those things are sort of mutually exclusive after all.
-XT
Ah, I see your point now. Thanks. I certainly would not claim that anti-immigration sentiment is limited to conservatives, but I do think that it is more closely associated with conservatives in the public mind. What I don’t know is whether this association is because there truly is more concern over illegal immigration among conservatives, or whether it’s merely a product of the Republican Party’s use of illegal immigration as whipping boy in past elections.
Because the only thing that company can do is cut off supply to their product if you refuse, they can’t stop you going to a competitor and buying off them instead. If they make any attempt to conspire with their competitors to cut off access to their product too, or encourage them to put the same exclusivity clause in their own contracts to remove that incentive to switch, they are committing a felony.
By forming a union, workers are attempting to obtain that anti-competitive power, by conspiring with other suppliers of labour such that refusing to trade with any one of them jeopardises a client’s ability to function.
If you want to get technical, an immigrant is someone is moves from one country to another. There was no “Country” in North America before there were people here, so the first settlers were not really “immigrants” in the sense the word is usually used. If they were, then the concept of “Descended from immigrants” ceases to have meaning because there is no place on earth it wouldn’t be true. Even in the place humans evolved, in Eastern Africa, populations have moved in and out since our rise as a species.
Of course, in a roundabout way this makes your point; it’s dumb to be concerned about where people come from. I suppose that’s easy for me to say because I’m Canadian (born and raised, incidentally) and live in a country that derives a lot of economic benefit from immigrants, and so I LIKE immigration and would in fact like to see us increase our intake.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of work in the southwestern USA with many businesses and I never could find any normal people who minded Mexican immigration or, if they did, really cared all that much about it. The prevailing attitude always seemed to be “Well, there must be work here for them to do, or else they wouldn’t come, so what’s the big deal?” I can’t help but think opposition to immigration is mostly loudmouths or people who think of it only in the abstract. That’s just anecdotal evidence so I could be wrong.
Any union that acquires a monopoly should be split up. But I don’t think any union has that large a share of any labor pool.
Although, letting people in didn’t work out so great for the Native Americans…
LW’s don’t pretend to be anti-capitalism, the way the RW’s pretend to be pro-capitalism.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Worse, since it seeks to protect the whole society, it’s industrial unionism. They’re proto-Wobblies!
Except not really. The right wing in this country incorporates nationalism as politics often does.
Sampiro’s “The straight dope on the Nazis: were they left or right/liberal or conservative?” thread got me thinking about how Nazionalsozialismus has odd things in common with modern US conservatism. A conservatism of half-hearted radicalism if you will. The common attraction for Nazism & the anti-immigrant wing of the present GOP may be nationalism for a huge non-majority part of the electorate. In fact, the racists seem to have lost McCain the election through their support.
Exactly. The GOP incorporates groups who really have no common cause to make it worth joining together. Except fighting Sauron. Who’s been dead for milllennia.
Heck, I’m a socialist Wobbly, & I endorse open borders! But I recognize that borders are arbitrary divisions of mankind & don’t stop trade anyhow. I just want to unionize the world.
I’m willing to exclude carriers of virulent exotic diseases as well.
Pragmatically, I’ve come to realize that adding requirement for basic English proficiency could make something like my position political gold.
Speak English? Malaria- & dengue-free? Not fleeing justice? Sign here, you’re in. No quotas, no need for coyotes, lots of jobs for ESL teachers.