Converation thread

No, God created rights to protect you from harm, not to allow you to plunder other people and force them to provide a service you want.

Everyone pays, everyone benefits. That’s how this is supposed to work. The majority of people agree with this, and if you want an unregulated economy, hop into a Time Machine and go to 1892 Pittsburgh, then talk to me about how glorious laissez-faire capitalism is.

1892 Pittsburgh, where socialist steel union members burnt down and barricaded the homes of non-union workers in a campaign of terror, defaced the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of private property, and rioted lawlessly in the streets?

Nice language, nice arguments, very eloquent and incisive. Yes, I do think unions were the problem. They weren't losing 50% of their pay, they were losing, in the worst case, 18% of their pay. They were not being forced to work at all, they were free to quit at any point and many did, they were using brute force to coerce non-union workers to join their case, beating some half to the point of death and engaging in gun-fights with others that resulted in severe injury and in some cases death, plundering and burning buildings, and seizing control, through mob force, of a private factory,…  Read more armed to the hilt and barracking a multi-million dollar investment. They were asked to peaceably leave MULTIPLE times, but when it became clear they would not return the PRIVATE PROPERTY THEY STOLE or apologise to the NON-UNION WORKERS for their abominable crimes and campaign of arson and destruction, Carnegie had no choice but to hire the Pinkerton army to dislodge them, which was quickly and efficiently done with minimal issues. I didn't learn any of this on Fox News, but from research into the history of Andrew Carnegie which was checked against other sources.

I have a hard time not being emotional when the fall of those unions in the beginning would’ve meant the displacing of all workers rights we’ve gained since then. Henry Frick was a traitor, going against Carnegie’s own wishes and attempted to cut their wages by over 1/5th, including increasing working hours to 12, after the wage decreases 3 years prior, equating to roughly half of what they had when unions gained what they wished at the Homestead. Frick, and many other businessman had a LONG history of using the Pinkertons to either infiltrate, attack, or destroy unions as…  Read more a whole in the workforce, leading to multiple encounters with tens of deaths on the workers sides. The Pinkertons had an army larger than that of the entire US military at the time, and later, their pay got far worse over the early 1900s. The lead up was due a mix of cutting wages, longer work hours, and an extremely concerning clause in their contracts that would’ve required that all new members be non-union workers. Frick was the threat, he caused the unrest and refused to leave behind.

Did I say I admired Henry Frick? Is this another STRAW MAN FALLACY? I think it is. All I was doing was providing some historical context for you, a look at the other side, a counterpoint to the establishment narrative, and you started screaming and cursing at me. Do you think that's logical? Am I not allowed to provide context where context is needed?

No, but the goals align, and if those unions never pushed back against corporations in the slightest, you’d be working 12 hour shifts and over 60 hours a week, with likely no pay that would supplement your cost of living. Overall, the unions did much more good than harm, and if you take the stance of “they were the problem”, then it’s not unreasonable to assume that you were against what they did, including the ways they helped, which made a much stronger and long lasting impact on the workers and the future at large. I’m not unaware of the bad things some unions…  Read more did, but when that is the only context, not once in many of your statements did you acknowledge how hellish a lot of their work conditions actually were at the time, and only by government actions and union negotiation (violent or not), was any positive change done in that area that wasn’t a minor change of economic benefit from the largest companies in history.

12 hour shifts is not that bad, we're spoiled in America today. The unions were, from the start, infiltrated by socialist ideologies and some anarchists even, and were notoriously riotous and bloody when they didn't get what they wanted. And, also, you've STILL never addressed the fact that a considerable number of Carnegie's workforce WANTED to keep working and WANTED to not join the union, but the unionists responded by burning their houses to the ground. What about those poor workers, who, out of principle, refused to join the union? Did you know Carnegie gave them raises?

And there were plenty of loyalists to Britain, the revolution itself was a minority group, and socialism was created in the wake OF the Industrial Revolution as a response to the inhumane conditions and treatment of the workers as a whole. The unions sometimes betrayed the interests of the workers, and in many cases, yes, they got bloody, so did we during the revolution. The union workers viewed non-union workers as traitors to their dreams of gaining better wages and conditions because, before that time, Frick lived to use non-union workers to inflict his wrath on them. I will never say that…  Read more it was okay to do, but that started with Frick, and much of the time, the city was less burned and more taken over, then driving out the workers who remained non-union. I think the treatment of non-Union workers was egregious, but I think the Union worker’s thought process was right when taken out of the violent revolutionary context, because whenever they laid down and let Frick and Carnegie rule, pay was cut, and their conditions worsened, even as Carnegie claimed to be pro-union. Though the AA in particular remains a blot on the movement, their members had their hearts in the right place, and their leadership, just like with the companies, was the problem. All that truly means is that unions need to have laws to keep themselves in check, and that the government should watch them, as well as companies, closely for corruption.

And there were plenty of loyalists to Britain, the revolution itself was a minority group...

Hold up, I thought we were talking about labor unions and free markets and monopolies, not the history of the birth of this great Confederation. This word salad sure has the most random things in it...

The unions sometimes betrayed the interests of the workers, and in many cases, yes, they got bloody, so did we during the revolution.

That's an Appeal to Hypocrisy Fallacy – you're saying that violence and bloodshed on the part of the unions I cannot claim is wrong when I would have support…  Read moreed the American Revolution, but that completely sidesteps the moral dilemma you, as a pro-unioner, must inevitably face. Consider my arguments on its own merits rather than accusing me of being a hypocrite. Do not sidestep logic to point the finger at conservatives. Plus your alleged equivalency between the War of Independence and labor unions is an absurdity – the American Patriots were deeply conservative Christians who were only fighting to keep the constitutional rights they had as Englishmen, not to create new and radical ideas like equality, and plus, they tried every method of peace and reconciliation they could because the war finally erupted after Britain in cold blood slew the blameless inhabitants of Lexington and Massachusetts was forced to fight. Learn some history before you bring it up & embarrass yourself....

I am using the British loyalists as an example, not a diversion, to explain my point of view. People do disgusting things to do what they view is right, and today, what they did has proven to be right in the long run as now you HAVE weekends, now you have 8-hour workdays, overtime pay, a guaranteed basic amount of wages for working, mandating you be paid at least close to what you’re worth. Whatever economic impact that caused, it was worth it, because we’re happier, we’re healthier, we’re BETTER than in the 1880s, and that’s thanks to unions and the labor movement overtime.

Here's a thought experiment – imagine some cataclysmic event destroyed all the technological progress of man since the year 1800 and we were left completely to start over, completely to recreate everything we've lost – but with a catch – you can't work you employees more than eight hours a day, you can't work your employees more than five days a week, they must be paid 50% more for every hour they work more than that, you must pay them $15 an hour, you must allow them to unionise and go on strike whenever they please, you cannot let teenagers work, you…  Read more must give them two weeks of paid vacation per year, they just have tons of benefits and insurance options, they must be treated like royalty, you must obey environmental regulations, punitively established by the EPA, they use get paid by the government if they choose not to work, ad infinitum.

Well, I’d lax SOME of these things because some of them are useless now, but a lot of these things being destroyed just leads to disgustingly inhumane and unethical conditions, practically creating barely paid slave labor. I’d take out the unions for a little bit to get some progress done, but the moment they become big again, we’re riding these types of regulations right back in. With our current minds and access to knowledge, we’d recreate our previous circumstances extremely fast regardless. The factories that create the parts for more factories don’t have to…  Read more require what is practically slave labor to get us back to where we are now. Honestly though, I can’t name many times that the workers were treated like “royalty” by any means, even jn the modern world. We should’ve had more regulations by that time, government imposed rather than purely union, while using government aid (what little was there at the time) to help make the industry grow faster. If we had a do over, we’d recover faster than you think, maybe this take much better. Also, ask yourself again, who do these regulations benefit? You. Who does massive tax cuts benefit? The rich. We’re not tied to the success of the rich, that’s been proven, but they ARE tied to our success.

For the ten thousandth time, tax cuts benefit ALL so-called "classes" precisely because when the rich have more money, they expand their businesses, create more jobs, innovate, invest, in many cases, like the Ford Motor COmpany in the 1900s, pioneer new employee benefits to competitively garner necessary workers, and they invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, ad infinitum, all of which create jobs and employment for the middle & lower classes on top of moving the economy forward and creating new technologies. Regulations on private business are often ludicrous, and contribute…  Read more just as much to corporate inefficiency as taxes do. And again, I ask you, why in your worldview is treating employees, or anything else under the sun for that matter, WRONG? You have no basis, without the Bible, for objective morality, that's why I'm asking you to research the origins debate more.

Yet somehow tax cuts on the rich have zero correlation to our growth, and actually impair it drastically due to the deficit being increased as a nation makes less overall revenue from losing the tax revenue. Our productivity has never been higher, improving by over 60% within less than 50 years, while wages have increased a revoltingly small quantity of 17% in return. We’re exhausted, and it’s time that the money the rich gained largely from us comes full circle back, because this money hasn’t been used to help us, nor has it ever been guaranteed to. Ford did that as a rare…  Read more thing to draw in workers, then when times got rough, or even good in many cases, our jobs took the hit. We’re still overworked, even when we’ve gotten better, and most of us can’t keep 3,000 in our savings, not because of the government, but because of a shrinking list of viable work options and lacking decent pay all while a housing and healthcare crisis largely built BECAUSE of privatization has costed us dearly. Corporations have not been more efficient in centuries, and our obsession with efficiency has only worsened the problem of workers rights. Unions today are weak, the most they can do is hold things hostage, while having no ability to create positive incentives at all. Think Starbucks, Union busting in that area is strong, open, and hilariously illegal, but not one does crap about it. Regulations is literally what capitalism depends on, because when it’s fully laissez-faire, it costs us big, that’s been historically proven for a long time. Once again, the Bible is a solidified moral system, not the very basis of morality itself. I’m not gonna resurrect stone-age logic to explain why I think treating people like garbage is bad.

How do you explain, then, the shocking turnaround from post-war recession in the early 1920s to an economic boom just a year after Warren Harding slashed taxes in half and Coolidge quartered them? How do you explain, then, the economic revival that happened when Reagan rescinded federal regulations and slashed taxes by massive amounts? Or the realtively good economy after the Trump tax cuts?