31–40 of 53 posts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Rotterdam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Oakland
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I don't think that's the primary issue people have with high wage union labor, and your comment shows an unwillingness to engage constructively with political opponents. Unions are a monopoly, and when prices (in this case, of labor) are high due to a monopoly, we must ask whether the government should allow, forbid, or encourage this monopoly. When wages are very low, I think most people are not opposed to unions fo…
My issue with union shops is that getting things done is unnecessarily difficult. Case in point: sitting around for half a day waiting for the unionized cable puller to sling a single cat5 connection between two racks on the same row in a data center. Then the guy doesn't show up until after 1600, so he forces overtime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's the primary issue people have with high wage union labor, and your comment shows an unwillingness to engage constructively with political opponents. Unions are a monopoly, and when prices (in this case, of labor) are high due to a monopoly, we must ask whether the government should allow, forbid, or encourage this monopoly. When wages are very low, I think most people are not opposed to unions fo…
Let me just ask you: why, in a market system, shouldn't people get as wages whatever they can demand , using personal negotiating skills, collective negotiating skills, law, whatever? Management won't leave money on the table, why should the workers?
Is that a good thing? Consider that the handling of each container costs $300, about double what it does in say Rotterdam. Who pays for the difference? The American consumers.
Or suppose all the fast food work was, by law, under the Fast Food Worker's Union. They demand that their members pay is equal to the ILWU, $227,000 inclusive of benefits per annum. Now a Big Mac meal cost you $15. Does your argument still hold?
And consider also this: such unions are often cesspits of nepotism and corruption, usually manifesting as union not admitting new members without some special considerations.
The real automation in the Rotterdam port is the Automatic Guided Vehicle system that moves containers between the loading cranes and a container re-arranging system that optimizes the placement of containers dock side. The loading cranes themselves are only remote control on the deep water side, and this is for health and safety reasons. The cranes for the trains and barges for the hinterland are sit-in cabs. SOURCE…
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Do you think nobody should be making six-figure salaries? Or just that unionized workers shouldn't?
The idea of blue-collar workers getting well-paid is very upsetting to some white-collar workers. They feel their social status threatened by people they deem beneath them.
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You had me up to "law". From the econ perspective, the "free market" does not include lobbying for particular laws. To define it as such is mockery of the term. Assuming completely free property rights and contracts, unions would probably have almost no power. The power of unions stems from the fact that they are protected (e.g. you can't fire someone for joining a union) and the fact that the state ignores violent c…
Of course the free market includes the rules that govern it. If you don't have rules, you don't have a market, just a rule of anarchic might-makes-right force. If you're going to say "well, only property laws then," that's still laws! That's still a set of "this is how it should be" encoded into rules that we all have to agree to to take part in it! It's just been, for so long, assumed that "screw the workers and don…
The difference in our viewpoints seems to be that you have an "adversarial" understanding of the political system, where different interest groups try to get the best for themselves. On the other hand, I think that politics is mostly driven by ideology, not self-interest. If I can state an ideal set of laws, that should be sufficient and I don't need to concern myself with how special interest groups might try to manipulate the set of laws.
I also think you conflate self-interest with what is right/wrong when you say " If enough people like strong worker protection laws, well, that's democracy, why shouldn't that stuff get encoded into law?". Do they like it because they think it's right, or because it's good for them? That's an important difference.
On the specifics, I mostly believe in the free market. I don't consider the free market to be anti-worker (redistribution through taxation/welfare handles that aspect) or arbitrary. Classical economics shows that the free market should be considered the default position. I also support limited rights for unions, e.g. I don't think an employer should be able to fire you for joining a union, because the employers control of how people communicate in the workplace could be considered an unfair advantage.
Re violence, do you disagree that union members do sometimes commit violence against so-called scabs, when they attempt to enter a worksite? And do you think that in general these acts are punished in the same way that other violent acts would be?
From the Wikipedia page, it looks like Rotterdam had 36,315 vessel arrivals in 2008 while Oakland had only 1,928. Is this comparison really apples to apples? They point out the difference in tonnage, but I'm just wondering if there isn't a better comparison to be made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Rotterdam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Oakland
That said, Oakland is somewhat weird choice, it's the world's 62nd busiest (by TEU) when Rotterdam is 11th. LA is the busiest in the US at 18th, with Long Beach (also greater LA) not far behind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_busiest_cont...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think nobody should be making six-figure salaries? Or just that unionized workers shouldn't?
The idea of blue-collar workers getting well-paid is very upsetting to some white-collar workers. They feel their social status threatened by people they deem beneath them.
The presumed difference with white-collar work is the assumption that this pool of willing and qualified workers exists. Maybe it doesn't? I'm guessing that while there are many people who could be trained to be excellent computer programmers, but I doubt there is a significant pool of ready-to-go programmers in Oakland who are being blocked from employment by the current programmers currently holding a limited number of positions.
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You do realize the sentiment behind the second clause of your last sentence contradicts the assertion of the first one?
Could you flesh that idea out? It's not clear to me what parts of the sentence you're referring to.
You say the issue is not one of considering blue collar workers to be inferior ("beneath"), but your second clause implies that if blue collar workers do not possess "special skills" "that would command high market wages" then something is "not clear", i.e. the blue collar workers would be "lower" without those "special skills".
This presumes blue collar work and workers are inferior to white collar work and workers because blue collar workers need "special skills" to be equivalently compensated/regarded.
EDIT: qualifying condition for last sentence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you flesh that idea out? It's not clear to me what parts of the sentence you're referring to.
> So the issue isn't that blue collar workers are "beneath" white collar workers, but that (at least to an industry outsider) it's not clear what special skills these workers have that would command high market wages. You say the issue is not one of considering blue collar workers to be inferior ("beneath"), but your second clause implies that if blue collar workers do not possess "special skills" "that would command…
My claim is that there is no cognitive bias, but that white collar workers in general are worth more (because they possess a rarer set of skills).