by Oakley » Fri 11 Mar 2011, 02:30:30
The "battle" is over who bears the burden of economic contraction. Considering that we are just in the infancy of the collapse of the industrial age for want of energy to fuel it, the future should be interesting to say the least.
Just imagine what will happen when the federal government finally gets to the point where they can't deliver on all their promises. They will not only default on the formal national debt, but will not pay the benefits they have promised to social security and medicare beneficiaries. I suspect that the political pressure to significantly cut these benefits will make the current union demonstrations look like a summer picnic. My bet is that within a decade or two, the federal government goes the way of the USSR and just collapses and closes up shop.
On the public employee union issue, there is no such right as a "collective bargaining right". In a free society you are free to join whatever organization you want or to not join. Employers are free to bargain or not with individuals or unions. What people refer to as "collective bargaining rights" are really special privileges (power) granted to unions by laws that force employers to bargain with unions. In effect these laws interfere with the free market with the outcome that union members receive more than they would in the free market, otherwise what would be the point. I am hardly sympathetic with these unions because they distort the free market and transfer wealth by government force from someone else's pocket to union members pockets; in the case of public employee unions from the pockets of taxpayers. You are mistaken if you think that revoking the laws that give unions privilege is a destruction of civil liberties; it is quite the opposite, i.e, creation of these laws in the first place destroyed civil liberties.
I am not sympathetic with the thug corporations that use government to rig the economy in their favor either. And the Democrat and Republican politicians (almost all of them) who are involved in the widespread destruction of freedom and free markets make we want to puke.
Government is a monopoly. They don't have competition to put pressure on them to be effective and efficient, so if they are dealing with public employee unions they just cave in to union demands and increase taxes to compensate. The unions, with a significant bank account from union dues fund the campaigns of politicians who are willing to respond to union demands. A mutuality of interests develops just like the mutuality of interest between big corporations and politicians (economic fascism). Ultimately the general public gets a good screwing. But the ending of the industrial age is putting limits on the ability of governments to plunder taxpayers, hence government cut backs. Resistance to the plunder and control society is increasing whether it is state governments breaking their special relationships with unions (because the states are broke and have reached the limit on plundering taxpayers) or citizens rejecting big government in movements like the tea party.
As the economic pie continues to contract there will simply not be enough to support the entire population, and there will be major changes. Governments, unions, big corporations and other special interests will likely be looked upon with contempt as the average person struggles just to stay alive; privilege for the few at the expense of the many will become intolerable. Many governments will be swept away. Scarcity will become the constant companion of most with deprivation and death being common. Those feeding at the government trough will complain as they are today in Wisconsin, but government will not be able to listen because those they plunder to pay for the feed will be broke and will resist, and government will be scrambling just to survive as a shadow of its former self, if at all.
So I can't really get excited about the complaints of overpaid union members as they face the loss of their ability to force their employers to pay them more than a free market would value their services. Their narcissistic special interest pails in comparison to the magnitude of what is to come. If you are dependent upon government or the mainstream economic system, I think you are screwed. Egypt and Wisconsin are just a minor foreshadowing of a much different future.
What it will come down to is reliance upon one's self, family, friends, and local community, instead of reliance on government and a disintegrating economic system.
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence" Thomas H Huxley
