# F#@% these union busters **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 28, 2011, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896 "2011-02-28T08:41:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/361 "2011-03-04T14:21:48Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > I’m rather confused. Didn’t we at the Federal level just have to renew a tax break due to end because it had a built in expiration date? And what does that tell you about the reality of expiration dates? > [@](#): > > Nice circular definition there on the homework. If you fail, you just didn’t work hard or smart enough. Pretty convenient. Well, that’s the way it works in business. But it’s not about working hard so much as working smart. I know that sounds trite, but it’s true. > [@](#): > > In the real world, businesses have limited resources. Most of those are used to deal with local competition. And the ones smart enough to realize there’s a big wide world out there are the ones who are going to survive. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/362 "2011-03-04T17:32:40Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Should we? They are just like you. ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/363 "2011-03-04T18:51:57Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > And what does that tell you about the reality of expiration dates? > Well, that’s the way it works in business. But it’s not about working hard so much as working smart. I know that sounds trite, but it’s true. > And the ones smart enough to realize there’s a big wide world out there are the ones who are going to survive. One data point tells me nothing about the general issue. As with all legislation, the results vary with the political climate. Yet another circular definition. Except when you check reality, survival depends on many many things. Spend too many resources trying to look too far afield for competition and you can fail that way too. For our society to work, we need active participants to make it work. We need educated, involved citizens that form groups to communicate their concerns to government. If we allow special interests to weed out opposition groups, they’ll own the system. Unions are part of the checks and balances that help make our system work. Laws are not a sufficient defense. Unless the laws change, it’s just a Maginot Line that people and groups will game around. The laws won’t change and/or won’t be enforced without the continuous activity of said groups. And this works the other way too. If unions get too powerful, they’ll push the pendulum too far the other way. Unions have been on the decline for decades now. They’re not getting too powerful. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/364 "2011-03-04T19:03:07Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > One data point tells me nothing about the general issue. As with all legislation, the results vary with the political climate. 😕 It was your data point. You brought it up as though it somehow refuted my argument, but it re-enforces my argument. Still, I’m finding it hard to believe that you don’t understand how such things work. Politics, not economics, will be the deciding factor in when the protection end. That’s great for the minority of the workers affected, and screws the rest of us who have to put up with higher prices. See: steel tariffs enacted under Bush. > [@](#): > > Yet another circular definition. Except when you check reality, survival depends on many many things. Spend too many resources trying to look too far afield for competition and you can fail that way too. > > For our society to work, we need active participants to make it work. We need educated, involved citizens that form groups to communicate their concerns to government. If we allow special interests to weed out opposition groups, they’ll own the system. Unions are part of the checks and balances that help make our system work. > > Laws are not a sufficient defense. Unless the laws change, it’s just a Maginot Line that people and groups will game around. The laws won’t change and/or won’t be enforced without the continuous activity of said groups. And this works the other way too. If unions get too powerful, they’ll push the pendulum too far the other way. > > Unions have been on the decline for decades now. They’re not getting too powerful. I never said unions were getting too powerful. Economists will tell you that when the governments steps in to protect industries from foreign competition, it’s a net drag on the economy, and costs us more than it saves. Even if you could keep politics out of it, it’s the wrong thing to do. And the fact is, you can’t keep politics out of it, and so you end up making things even worse. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/365 "2011-03-04T19:12:58Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > You’re protesting as if those very things aren’t evident **in this very thread alone**! I’m making nothing up - I can only go by what conservatives themselves say. How do you know their conservatives? > [@Gyrate](#): > > Did you really just gloss over eight pages of blaming the victim? Who is the victim again? > [@gonzomax](#): > > They are just like you. Are they? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/366 "2011-03-04T19:23:18Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > How do you know their conservatives?.. You have an alternative suggestion to offer? If you haven’t, then we can safely rely on the principles of aquatic avian taxonomics: if it walks like a duck, and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/367 "2011-03-04T20:05:52Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > 😕 It was your data point. You brought it up as though it somehow refuted my argument, but it re-enforces my argument. Still, I’m finding it hard to believe that you don’t understand how such things work. Politics, not economics, will be the deciding factor in when the protection end. That’s great for the minority of the workers affected, and screws the rest of us who have to put up with higher prices. See: steel tariffs enacted under Bush. Other countries have lower standards of living and lower labor costs. If you do nothing to regulate the imports of cheap foreign goods, you will destroy the standard of living of our workers. I would rather not have that happen without retooling our labor in response. What is happening is that risk-averse, lazy and stupid Capital is taking the short sighted road of exporting all our jobs and production to cheaper sources over seas. Yes, this reduces our cost of goods, but ends up cannibalizing our standard of living. Suggesting that you don’t do this for a “minority of workers” is inviting the death of a thousand cuts. It does no good for us if every store is a Walmart and every worker is an employee there. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/368 "2011-03-04T20:10:19Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Economists will tell you that when the governments steps in to protect industries from foreign competition, it’s a net drag on the economy, and costs us more than it saves. Even if you could keep politics out of it, it’s the wrong thing to do. And the fact is, you can’t keep politics out of it, and so you end up making things even worse. Many economists, possibly even most economists. But it isn’t true to suggest there aren’t economic arguments in favor of protectionism, especially “second best” arguments which accept global free trade to be superior, but acknowledge that once one player (Japan, for example) steps away from it, the next best solution might not be simply to blindly continue with free trade. And there is the whole sunset/sunrise industry argument, that economists argue in favor of. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/369 "2011-03-04T20:11:35Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > How do you know their conservatives? > > Who is the victim again? > > Are they? And the billionaires fomenting this union busting joke are not like you. They live a separate life in huge homes behind gates and well protected by the police. they do not eat or drink where you go, they do not vacation where you do. They do not attend the same schools. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/370 "2011-03-04T20:25:16Z")
> [@AlienVessels](#): > > Other countries have lower standards of living and lower labor costs. If you do nothing to regulate the imports of cheap foreign goods, you will destroy the standard of living of our workers. I would rather not have that happen without retooling our labor in response. > > What is happening is that risk-averse, lazy and stupid Capital is taking the short sighted road of exporting all our jobs and production to cheaper sources over seas. Yes, this reduces our cost of goods, but ends up cannibalizing our standard of living. > > Suggesting that you don’t do this for a “minority of workers” is inviting the death of a thousand cuts. It does no good for us if every store is a Walmart and every worker is an employee there. It’s a world economy whether we like or not. Shut off the US’s access to foreign markets, and other countries will be happy to fill the gap, leaving us worse off. No is going to buy expensive stuff from the US when they can buy the same stuff, cheaper, from somewhere else. As I’ve said in many other threads, only a fool in the US would want to compete with workers in China. You’re going to lose every time. Unless, you can add more value then they do. Sometimes that’s possible through better use of technology, but not often. ---
**Author:** ![flickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@flickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flickster)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/371 "2011-03-04T20:59:17Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > And the billionaires fomenting this union busting joke are not like you. They live a separate life in huge homes behind gates and well protected by the police. they do not eat or drink where you go, they do not vacation where you do. They do not attend the same schools. ummm other than as taxpayers, how exactly do billionaires have an impact on public-sector unions? ---
**Author:** ![AlienVessels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@AlienVessels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlienVessels)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/372 "2011-03-04T21:06:08Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s a world economy whether we like or not. Shut off the US’s access to foreign markets, and other countries will be happy to fill the gap, leaving us worse off. No is going to buy expensive stuff from the US when they can buy the same stuff, cheaper, from somewhere else. As I’ve said in many other threads, only a fool in the US would want to compete with workers in China. You’re going to lose every time. Unless, you can add more value then they do. Sometimes that’s possible through better use of technology, but not often. That’s right. But there’s no reason not to manage that transition by protecting our interests, just as other countries’ governments do, often far better than ours does. We can afford to skip paying bottom dollar for a widget for a short time while we retool. I reject the argument that you can’t let government legislate that transition. We either get the government to work properly or we’ll be governed by organizations that will grow powerful enough to dictate to us. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/373 "2011-03-04T21:09:09Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > You have an alternative suggestion to offer? If you haven’t, then we can safely rely on the principles of aquatic avian taxonomics: if it walks like a duck, and so forth. Not everyone fits neatly into a box. Some times you’ll find that an animal with webbed feet and a duck bill turns out to be a mamal that gives birth to eggs. Some times you’ll spend your whole life assuming that all swans are white, using every swan you see as confirmation, only to find out that there are in fact black swans. And some times you’ll find that a person spends part of their life working for a union getting screwed by management, and the other part of their life working as management getting screwed by unions. The lesson from taxonomics is that some times you need to adjust your catagories to include things you didn’t now previously existed, such as an animal that both walks and quacks like a duck, but is not in fact a duck. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/374 "2011-03-04T21:12:02Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > And the billionaires fomenting this union busting joke are not like you. They live a separate life in huge homes behind gates and well protected by the police. they do not eat or drink where you go, they do not vacation where you do. They do not attend the same schools. What happens if no one is like me? How do you know where I eat, drink, or vacation? BTW the answer to that last question is Costa Rica! ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/375 "2011-03-04T22:23:40Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > How do you know their conservatives? Odor. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/376 "2011-03-04T22:26:27Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > Hell, I’ve been explicitly ordered to do that (hire the unqualified applicant over the good one) by my superiors (or by a company co-owner whose own org chart had no reporting line even remotely from me to him, except when he wanted to hire someone based on knowing him). In all cases, incidentally, it was either nepotism or age discrimination, commonly the latter. Which goes to prove my points in previous posts—“shining” at a job or at the interview may be a total waste of time. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_jeffrey_lebowski/32/215_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Jeffrey_Lebowski)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/377 "2011-03-04T22:41:34Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > How do you know their conservatives? By their inability to distinguish the difference between their, there, and they’re. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/378 "2011-03-04T22:46:21Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](#): > > By their inability to distinguish the difference between their, there, and they’re. _snerk_ ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/379 "2011-03-04T23:06:35Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > Which goes to prove my points in previous posts—“shining” at a job or at the interview may be a total waste of time. Which is exactly why we need unions, so no one has to “shine” at their job. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896/380 "2011-03-05T01:56:46Z")
> [@villa](#): > > Many economists, possibly even most economists. Definitely most economist. By a long shot. > [@](#): > > But it isn’t true to suggest there aren’t economic arguments in favor of protectionism, especially “second best” arguments which accept global free trade to be superior, but acknowledge that once one player (Japan, for example) steps away from it, the next best solution might not be simply to blindly continue with free trade. And there is the whole sunset/sunrise industry argument, that economists argue in favor of. I can find PhDs who advocate for Intelligent Design, too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/f-these-union-busters/572896.md?page=20)