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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

It always amazes me that if you get a bunch of workers together and organize them so they can act collectively, you get a ton of hate and a lot of people assume you're destroying value. Yet do the exact same thing on the employer side and this is not only acceptable, it's the only way we would ever think of doing things.

In other words, why can't I replace "unions" with "corporations" and have the statement still be true?

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Wait, isnt doing the same thing on the employer side called a trust? If this isn't what you had in mind please elaborate.

How do you figure? A trust is when employers not only organize, but that they all join together such that there is no competition. The equivalent on the worker side would be a single union that covers all workers in a particular field. And while I'm sure such things exist, it's nothing inherent to unions.

Are you joking? The United States is dominated by the modern trusts. In 1911 Standard Oil was broken up. In 1999 the two major Standard Oil subsidiaries - Standard Oil of New York and Standard Oil of New Jersey merged once again, into ExxonMobil. In 1984 Bell was broken up. Now the Baby Bells have merged back together with the countries local loops dominated by Verizon and AT&T (and Qwest) and the wireless spectrum also dominated by AT&T and Verizon (and Sprint...and T-Mobile, which AT&T tried to merge with, then Sprint - and which will be merged or carried off to the graveyard in the coming years).

Monopoly is the name of the game, or duopoly any how - and everyone from Peter Thiel to Warren Buffett is pretty open about it. The "Big Eight" accounting firms have been halved, they are now the Big Four. The media is owned by the Big Six, which is really the Big Five as Redstone controls Viacom and CBS.

The US is full of trusts and monopolies and the trend has been for more of the same. Even breakfast cereals have a Big Four. Less than 7% of workers in private industry are in unions, and that number has been falling.

Well put, I would further add that much of the equity in these few firms is owned by massive firms such as Blackstone, and and Blackrock. Concentrating the ownership into the hands of fewer owners further promotes anticompetitive action.

Fully agree. Workers sell their labor to employers and should be free to form associations among themselves and negotiate the sale of their labor together or individually as they please, just like any other seller. Unless of course they start using force rather than negotiation, or begin to hold a monopoly on the sale of all labor in a given field. Just like any other seller.

"Unless of course they start using force rather than negotiation, or begin to hold a monopoly"

But that's the typical form of negotiation from unions. Unions often take advantage of their exclusive/monopolistic access to a workplace - e.g. UAW workers, school teachers, police officers, etc. And as far as violence, good luck trying to work at an automotive plant if you're not in a union and a strike is going on. If you don't get beat up or your tires slashed, you'll at least be harassed and threatened just trying to make a living. I recall an instance growing up where union drivers fired a gun into a truck on the highway during a trucking strike. The truck was carrying explosives. The driver was instantly vaporized. No one was ever prosecuted for the murder. Par for the course in unions where I grew up.

Edit for reference (note my recollection about there being no prosecution was incorrect)

http://mo.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.1...

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