It's time to get 2009 kicked off properly - by bashing socialism and proclaiming the virtue of manly qualities like perseverance, taking responsibility for one's own actions, honoring agreements, and living within one's means.
The UAW, along with a lot of other unions, do none of that. Thus, the UAW is unmanly, and unmanliness is not tolerated here. After the most recent $17.3 billion bail-out (it has always been a 'bail-out' and not a 'stimulus package'), it has come to my attention that these funds were not to bail out the companies, but to save the unions who have a stranglehold on them. Such a relationship as what the UAW has with the Big Three is any organized labor fan's wet dream: dictate to a company its hiring/firing policies, dictate non-market wages, be able to "negotiate" paid vacations for workers on disciplinary leave, bleed the company dry, and then get rescued by the government (unions donate heavily to Democratic candidates, who they know will shore up their positions) when their disastrous relationship nearly sinks the company.
The Obama administration's soft spot for organized labor will ensure more handouts if any other large unionized industries start to go belly-up. Sympathy for habitual screw-ups is the favored tone for the Democratic party.
One thing I discovered about the UAW is that they built a posh resort and golf course in northern Michigan (top part of the 'mitten'), of course using union dues to pay for the whole thing. The website is HERE. Your average factory worker probably couldn't/wouldn't cough up the $55 for 18 holes on the off-season, unless they went twice a year and didn't bring anyone else. A decent cable subscription, a few 6-packs and some large pizzas will be easier on the wallet than trying to take 8 blue-collar guys to a swank golf resort at $55 per head. To compound the sarcasm, there's a nice little "Public Always Welcome", even though union members get preferential tee times. The resort, in actuality, is pretty far out in the hinterlands, relative to your average rich-snob country club, thus making it perfect for the fat cats of the UAW to live very well off of factory workers and taxpayers.
Sadly (trying to keep a straight face here, folks) the resort is losing money, to the tune of a cool $23 million over the last 5 years. It's estimated that the whole thing was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $33 million earlier in 2008. This is where some of that bailout money is likely going.
People were livid about the Big 3 leadership flying to the Congressional hearings by private jet, but not a peep out of those same detractors regarding the patrician lifestyles of the UAW leadership.
Here's a nice article written by an ex-supervisor at a GM plant, who pulls no punches in her descriptions of the rampant corruption and ineptitude that the UAW encouraged: HERE
"To put it bluntly, the UAW takes the hard earned money of the best workers and spends it defending the very worst workers while tying up the industry with thousands of pages of work rules that make it impossible to be competitive. And the spineless management often makes short sighted decisions to satisfy the union and maximize immediate benefits over long term sustainability."
In other words, organized labor is protecting those who cannot do their manual labor jobs properly in order to score points with neo-socialists (who will be running our country come January 20th), squandering union dues on multi-million dollar country clubs, and then shifting the blame to the management who would never stand up to a political and economic force like the UAW.
"The strength of the union and the weakness of management made it impossible to conduct business properly at any level. For instance, I had an employee who punched in his time card and then disappeared. The rules were such that I had to spend hours documenting that this man was not in his three foot by three foot work area. I needed witnesses, timed reports, calls over the intercom and a plant wide search all documented in detail. After this absurdity I decided to go my own route; I called the corner bar and paged him and he came to the phone. I gave him a 30 day unpaid disciplinary lay off because he was a “repeat offender”. When he returned he thanked me for the PAID vacation. I scoffed, until he explained: (1) He had tried to get the lay-off because it was fishing season; (2) The UAW negotiated with GM Labor Relations Department to give him the time WITH PAY."
This is the same kind of mindset that perpetuates our growing welfare state: subsidize poor performance, mollycoddle the immature and stupid, and then blame someone else when the whole three-ring circus goes down in flames. I cannot bring myself to even fathom the utter intellectual nebulosity that occurs inside the heads of those who consider centralized goverment involvement in industry and large bureacratic unions to be "good things", especially when they consider corporations with the same kind of bureaucracy and luxurious golf resorts to be "bad things".
As St. Milton (Friedman) once said, "Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it." What is so different about corporations and unions? The leadership of each have their own interests in mind - economic, and personal, respectively. If we also would like to look at government, the chief interest of a government is its institutions and positions of leadership, and not necessarily the ordinary people who compose it - yet Leftists will throw tantrums because there's "not enough" self-interested institutions and bureacracies with their involvement in our economy.
[aside: Leftists like to talk about "good" and "bad" in very concrete terms, yet they will dialectically invert themselves in the same breath and declare that one's value judgments are solely based on perspective, whether it be geographical, cultural, class/gender/race-based, or otherwise.]
Back to the article.
"I supervised a loading dock and 21 UAW workers who worked approximately five hours per day for eight hours pay. They could easily load one third more rail cars and still maintain their union negotiated break times, but when I tried to make them increase production ever so slightly they sabotaged my ability to make even the current production levels by hiding stock, calling in sick, feigning equipment problems, and even once, as a show of force, used a fork lift truck and pallets and racks to create a car part prison where they trapped me while I was conducting inventory. The reaction of upper management to my request to boost production was that I should 'not be naïve'."
They act like welfare leeches and dreadlocked trust-funded Community Studies majors - wanting to be given everything, but suddenly getting very defensive and even outright hostile when they are expected to actually work for what they're given.
Even with the $17 billion, the UAW has now refused to make any concessions, despite its statements prior to the bailout money being awarded.
Screw the UAW. It's too bad the Bush administration won't be around much longer to rescind the loans, because I have a feeling that Zero is going to want to appease union fat cats by letting them keep their change, so they can fix up their golf courses, pay incompetent workers full benefits, and give the finger to the American taxpayers.
If capitalism and market forces were allowed to take their course, we wouldn't be having this problem. It's not simply about "deregulation" or "overregulation" - it's about who's doing the "regulation": the market, the government, or unions? Markets are self-correcting. They do not lend themselves to the rapid increases or decreases that result from government involvement. Letting go of useless baggage like workers who mouth off and harass the management is a manly thing. Excusing and rewarding that kind of behavior is UNmanly.
Enough With That Peace Bullshit, Give Capitalism A Chance!
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
1.1.09
14.7.08
The Oxymoronic Nature of Libertarian Socialism
Libertarianism is defined as the freedom "to do as you choose with your own life and property, as long as you don't harm the person and property of others." - libertarianism.com
The Cato Institute defines the three core principles of Libertarian thought:
Individualism: "Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility."
Individual Rights: "Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property."
Spontaneous Order: "The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes."
This is in direct opposition to socialism: the eventual abolition of private property, income redistribution, and emphasis on the collective good.
"Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society. Because such people are rich, they may choose where and how to live, and their choices in turn limit the options of the poor." - Encyclopedia Britannica
Socialism also entails arbitrarily defining what is "fair", how much wealth is "too much", who is "poor", and why the "poor" "deserve" the now-shared wealth of the "rich".
Private property and individual ownership is a cornerstone of Libertarian philosophy, which socialism seeks to destroy. The abolition of individual ownership is a way of denying individuals their "right" to life, liberty, and property. The Objectivist strain of Libertarians (which I somewhat identify with) see the institutions of State and Law as guarantors of such privileges, and not as a burden to them.
Socialism also places restrictions on how productive one may be, with whom one contracts for business decisions, and the amount of wealth one may have. Socialism rejects the concept of individualism, assuming that decisions affecting the collective are automatically and equally beneficial to all individuals.
Libertarian Socialism:
"Libertarian Socialism is a term essentially synonymous with the word "Anarchism". Anarchy, strictly meaning "without rulers", leads one to wonder what sort of system would exist in place of one without state or capitalist masters... the answer being a radically democratic society while preserving the maximal amount of individual liberty and freedom possible."
"Libertarian Socialism recognizes that the concept of "property" (specifically, the means of production, factories, land used for profit, rented space) is theft and that in a truly libertarian society, the individual would be free of exploitation caused by the concentration of all means of wealth-making into the hands of an elite minority of capitalists." - flag.blackened.net
Does it not strike you as odd that the abolition of private property and "egalitarianism" must be enforced by a central authority? The concept that "everything belongs to everyone" is utter tripe. "You can't have this, it belongs to everyone" is a denial of my individual right to utilize property for beneficial purposes. Who is going to define how activities benefit only oneself or society? How does libertarian socialism plan to eliminate the "gap between rich and poor"? It will have to be done through laws (implying more state power) or through violence, two things that libertarian socialism rejects.
And what happens after the redistribution? I am better at a lot of things than other people, so it is likely that I would be more successful than many other people if we all started from the same place. Bill Gates never completed college, yet he has made more of an impact on the world as we know it than 99% of all college graduates. Ability is what divides people, not class, race, or gender. In most cases, people are where they are because of skill, not because of some conspiracy that seeks to keep a perpetual massive lower class. In a constitutional republican society, such a thing is political suicide. I want people to be successful, but tearing down society and remaking it in the image and likeness of messianic egalitarian egoists is not the way to do it. People should be successful in their endeavors because they are proficient, not because it gets handed to them because they are better at making a fuss about "inequality" more than others.
Have you ever watched the 100-meter dash at the Olympics? Everyone starts from the same place, but inevitably someone wins. That means the winner was a better runner, and thus more deserving of praise than the others. Should those who come in last place be equally praised? Noam Chomsky acknowledges the imbalance of ability, but rationalizes rewarding the less-able by stating those who cannot proficiently perform tasks are valuable just because they can "appreciate" the work of others. Huh, I'd like to get paid for complimenting others' achievements. Noam Chomsky also sells millions of books, gives speeches and presentations, and has a cushy university job, so I don't think he has any right or even the proper perspective to complain about what is "unfair" or what worth certain things in society have. I highly doubt a white male who has lived in the utopia of New England academia for most of his life knows anything about working, failure, or difficulty. He is a linguist who has become a saint among the left for his political ideas - though I'm not quite sure how a linguist can have more credibility than a political scientist or an economist in discussing political or economic matters.
Libertarian socialism desires egalitarianism, collective responsibility, and "non-coercive" institutions, but it will have to coerce people like me through either law or raw force in order to enter a world not unlike that which Harrison Bergeron lived in. It must first suspend individual liberty and the ability of self-determination in order to erect the framework. Libertarian socialism claims to uphold self-determination, but it only does so in a more limited scope that is both arbitrarily imposed and must come about from statist institutions.
The Cato Institute defines the three core principles of Libertarian thought:
Individualism: "Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility."
Individual Rights: "Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property."
Spontaneous Order: "The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes."
This is in direct opposition to socialism: the eventual abolition of private property, income redistribution, and emphasis on the collective good.
"Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society. Because such people are rich, they may choose where and how to live, and their choices in turn limit the options of the poor." - Encyclopedia Britannica
Socialism also entails arbitrarily defining what is "fair", how much wealth is "too much", who is "poor", and why the "poor" "deserve" the now-shared wealth of the "rich".
Private property and individual ownership is a cornerstone of Libertarian philosophy, which socialism seeks to destroy. The abolition of individual ownership is a way of denying individuals their "right" to life, liberty, and property. The Objectivist strain of Libertarians (which I somewhat identify with) see the institutions of State and Law as guarantors of such privileges, and not as a burden to them.
Socialism also places restrictions on how productive one may be, with whom one contracts for business decisions, and the amount of wealth one may have. Socialism rejects the concept of individualism, assuming that decisions affecting the collective are automatically and equally beneficial to all individuals.
Libertarian Socialism:
"Libertarian Socialism is a term essentially synonymous with the word "Anarchism". Anarchy, strictly meaning "without rulers", leads one to wonder what sort of system would exist in place of one without state or capitalist masters... the answer being a radically democratic society while preserving the maximal amount of individual liberty and freedom possible."
"Libertarian Socialism recognizes that the concept of "property" (specifically, the means of production, factories, land used for profit, rented space) is theft and that in a truly libertarian society, the individual would be free of exploitation caused by the concentration of all means of wealth-making into the hands of an elite minority of capitalists." - flag.blackened.net
Does it not strike you as odd that the abolition of private property and "egalitarianism" must be enforced by a central authority? The concept that "everything belongs to everyone" is utter tripe. "You can't have this, it belongs to everyone" is a denial of my individual right to utilize property for beneficial purposes. Who is going to define how activities benefit only oneself or society? How does libertarian socialism plan to eliminate the "gap between rich and poor"? It will have to be done through laws (implying more state power) or through violence, two things that libertarian socialism rejects.
And what happens after the redistribution? I am better at a lot of things than other people, so it is likely that I would be more successful than many other people if we all started from the same place. Bill Gates never completed college, yet he has made more of an impact on the world as we know it than 99% of all college graduates. Ability is what divides people, not class, race, or gender. In most cases, people are where they are because of skill, not because of some conspiracy that seeks to keep a perpetual massive lower class. In a constitutional republican society, such a thing is political suicide. I want people to be successful, but tearing down society and remaking it in the image and likeness of messianic egalitarian egoists is not the way to do it. People should be successful in their endeavors because they are proficient, not because it gets handed to them because they are better at making a fuss about "inequality" more than others.
Have you ever watched the 100-meter dash at the Olympics? Everyone starts from the same place, but inevitably someone wins. That means the winner was a better runner, and thus more deserving of praise than the others. Should those who come in last place be equally praised? Noam Chomsky acknowledges the imbalance of ability, but rationalizes rewarding the less-able by stating those who cannot proficiently perform tasks are valuable just because they can "appreciate" the work of others. Huh, I'd like to get paid for complimenting others' achievements. Noam Chomsky also sells millions of books, gives speeches and presentations, and has a cushy university job, so I don't think he has any right or even the proper perspective to complain about what is "unfair" or what worth certain things in society have. I highly doubt a white male who has lived in the utopia of New England academia for most of his life knows anything about working, failure, or difficulty. He is a linguist who has become a saint among the left for his political ideas - though I'm not quite sure how a linguist can have more credibility than a political scientist or an economist in discussing political or economic matters.
Libertarian socialism desires egalitarianism, collective responsibility, and "non-coercive" institutions, but it will have to coerce people like me through either law or raw force in order to enter a world not unlike that which Harrison Bergeron lived in. It must first suspend individual liberty and the ability of self-determination in order to erect the framework. Libertarian socialism claims to uphold self-determination, but it only does so in a more limited scope that is both arbitrarily imposed and must come about from statist institutions.
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