See a pattern developing here

The JAM · Post by **The JAM** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 5:12 pm

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.

Thanks, Shiro. For a moment I thought that the comics syndicates, if they were the labor unions everyone is so deathly wary of, I was wondering if Charles Shultz ever spoke out against his.

EdBecerra · Post by **EdBecerra** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 5:55 pm

UncleMonty wrote:Would you expect a folksong written to support the union labor movement to say anything else? I won't claim the owners of those mines were saints, but I reject the union propaganda that coal miners of the 1800's were slaves and their employers slave-owners. Anyone with a few day's food and clothes on his back could have left the mine and found work elsewhere. If they instead chose to marry and raise families while working as miners, that tells me they were satisfied with their situation.

Not always, Monty. In my own grandfather's family, when some tried to leave the mines, their children were taken hostage by the mine owner. Attempts to alert the law only served to backfire, as the local law was paid off by the mine owner.

One member of the family left in the dead of night to post a letter to their congressional representative...

A few days later, the mine owner publically announced that he'd need the wives and children of the workers to help him throw a party - he was having a party with his good friend, the congressman. Bastard just couldn't resist rubbing it in.

Money and power can buy anything, Monty. Even souls.

While I'm something of a libertarian, I'm well aware of the one power of the poor... the power of an armed and angry lynch mob. A lesson the French learned to their regret, and a power the robber barons of the 19th century circumvented by bribing the federal government.

I still think the greatest leveler we had was removed when dueling was made illegal. The right to call someone out and FORCE him to face you on the field of honor with a pistol in your hand tends to make a person more polite.

Fear keeps you cautious, as Grand-dad used to say. Right now, the new robber barons have nothing to fear from us.

That needs to change.

The JAM · Post by **The JAM** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 7:04 pm

And how was that problem solved? The mine ran out of coal?

EdBecerra · Post by **EdBecerra** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 10:59 pm

The JAM wrote:And how was that problem solved? The mine ran out of coal?

Actually, according to what my grandfather used to say, the idiot owner of the mine lost everything in one of the smaller economic depressions that preceeded the Great Depression, due to stupid investing and thinking that stocks and bonds were as safe as folding money, and gold in a vault. He supposedly put a bullet in his head, and everyone ran while they could, thanks to the confusion caused by his taking the cowardly way out.

*shrugs* It's been a long time since Grandpa passed on, and I'm the last to remember his stories. They grow fuzzy with time, and will vanish when I do.

The JAM · Post by **The JAM** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 9:41 am

Pity. Maybe there should be an official documentary about that.

UncleMonty · Post by **UncleMonty** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:42 pm

OK, for the sake of discussion, let's say all you've told us is true, Ed... In that one case.
Kidnapping, corruption, widespread conspiracy, slavery, all of that. OK? Now, where does a labor union come into a picture like that? That scenario doesn't call for a strike. It calls for a riot.
Why didn't the miners take up their pickaxes and explosives, and blow the mine and its owner to the seventh level of Dante's Inferno? It is one of the duties of an American citizen to take up weapons against tyranny when all other methods have failed.

Now suppose there had been a labor union there. What makes anyone think the union would even have been on the side of the miners? Workers are to a union boss what cattle are to a rancher anyway, and if the corruption was that widespread it's likely the union boss would have just taken his bribe and gone home.

In the end, the mine owner proved himself the fool he was. His own actions destroyed him.
None of this provides any support for a labor union.

EdBecerra · Post by **EdBecerra** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:39 am

UncleMonty wrote:OK, for the sake of discussion, let's say all you've told us is true, Ed... In that one case.
Kidnapping, corruption, widespread conspiracy, slavery, all of that. OK? Now, where does a labor union come into a picture like that? That scenario doesn't call for a strike. It calls for a riot.
Why didn't the miners take up their pickaxes and explosives, and blow the mine and its owner to the seventh level of Dante's Inferno? It is one of the duties of an American citizen to take up weapons against tyranny when all other methods have failed.

*shrugs* Some folks just ain't got what it takes to do that. So I suppose you're faced with two choices... nanny-state to take care of them, or Larry Niven's attitude of "Let 'em die - consider it 'evolution in action'."

I ain't sure which is worse.

As for the above, truth to tell, all I have are my grandfather's stories, and no hard evidence. *shrugsX2*

It's a thin line between libertarianism and anarchy, and it takes a truly adult people to make it work. Something I don't think humanity qualifies as, and probably never will.

At the moment, I'm slightly stoned from vicodin, thanks to some minor foot surgery earlier in the day, and the bizzare thought occurs... what if George O. Smith's "future past" from his Venus Equilateral stories had come to pass - how would humanity have reacted to that?