*sigh* The things you learn...
Jan. 29th, 2003 09:19 amLast night's Management and Labor Relations class was a good one, as the last two have been. We haven't got an assigned textbook, so we get a lot of handouts and pointers to web sites. (The prof says that it's a little hard to justify assigning a textbook when the only really good candidate costs around $95 and labor law hasn't changed significantly since 1947.) We spent most of the class talking about the Norris-La Guardia Act of... I think 1932... and the act passed in 1935 that basically reinstated all the provisions of the National Recovery Act that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in '33. We also read a bit from Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.
If I ever hear some pious Congressdroid, President, or other government official - hell, even someone who just writes to the newspaper - claim that this is a Christian country or has ever been a Christian country, I will laugh, long and hard and bitterly. It's not. It's never been. I don't mean this from the point of view of religious freedom or pluralism, I don't mean it from the point of view of state establishment of religion, I don't even mean it from the point of view of the Deism of so many of the Founding Fathers. I mean it from the point of view of actual Christian practice. American capitalism is one long history of people trying to screw each other over - and screw them hard. Free enterprise, in its most basic form as it gets taught in the schools, is ostensibly an exchange that goes something like this:
PERSON ONE: I have a Thing!
PERSON TWO: I want that Thing!
ONE: What will you give me for it?
TWO: This much!
ONE: Good God above, that's not enough! Do you want me to starve? Give me this much instead.
TWO: That's insane! How about this much?
ONE: Well, all right.
TOGETHER: Now we both have something close to what we want!
The more one looks at the history of American capitalism, the more it becomes abundantly clear that the vast majority of it consists of people trying to get out of offering their partners in the dance of commerce any compensation at all. I understand that the nature of free enterprise is to look out for number one, but if all that the seller ever does is take and take and take, the system collapses because eventually there is nothing left to give. Every time companies ever got asked to do this or that in order to improve the lot of the people who worked for them, they fought it kicking and screaming, swearing on their mothers' graves that even the slightest concession would kill them. Every time they were offered reasonable ways out that would result in both sides having at least some measure of what they wanted/needed, they went loophole diving and hunted up ways of getting out giving even the tiniest concession.
Meanwhile, on the OTHER side of the issue, there are the workers - who are not by any stretch of the imagination blameless. Merely taking it up the ass for two hundred years does not make you a saint. It means you've taken it up the ass for two hundred years, that's all - and given the nature of the economic system it means you're more likely to seek your compensation by turning around and cheating someone else of theirs. Don't believe me? Some years ago - Prof. didn't give a date - the secretaries who work for the Teamsters union decided they, too, wanted to unionize. So they got together and well over half of them submitted the green cards the National Labor Relations Board mandates are used to say 'we'd like a union'. All it takes to trigger an NLRB-governed election is a submission of these cards by 30% of the workers in a particular workplace, and all it takes to get a union is for the majority of workers to vote and the majority of those voting to say 'yes' to whichever union is proposed. If there's a significant majority of all the workers asking for a union, it's kinda silly to hold an election - 51% submitting green cards is a bit different from 2800 out of 3200 people submitting 'em, which is what happened with the secretaries.
The Teamsters screamed bloody murder, demanded an election, and mounted a ferocious campaign to convince the secretaries and administrative workers that they did not need representation to look after their interests. God forbid someone other than the boss should see to it that people were fairly treated! By damn, these workers would pay their dues week after week to a union that did nothing useful for them, and they'd like it!
My grandfather was a bricklayer and a union man all his working life. When I was little I thought 'the Union' was a church, because the way he talked about it you could hear the capital letter. I was taught never to cross a picket line if there was a strike going on, and to seriously consider whether I should cross one if it were only a protest. But those who speak for the laborer are human, and those who speak for the employer are human, and human nature untaught and unbridled by rules is inherently selfish. This is the nature of the beast, of the evolutionary process that has put the human race where it is today: one gets ahead by looking out for one's own genes, whether it be physically, socially, or economically. On some unfortunate level we are stuck with the mentality of the chimpanzee presented with the bowl of tokens... it was an experiment done a few years ago and recorded in, I believe, The Parrot's Lament by Eugene Linden. The chimp was given two bowls, one containing three tokens, the other five. The chimp had been taught to understand that one token could be exchanged for one piece of fruit. If the chimp pointed at the bowl with five tokens in it, he was given the bowl with three instead and the bowl with five was given to another chimp. If he pointed at the one with three, he got the one with five and the other chimp got the one with three. The chimp understood this and had no trouble with it, but if the tokens were replaced with actual pieces of fruit the chimp could not bring himself to point at the bowl with three pieces. He'd point at the one with five, and get the one with three. The human race seems to be like that: we know that certain choices sting now, but will pay off later, and yet we cannot seem to let go of what we want right now. There would be more for everyone concerned if we agreed not to roger the guy we're dealing with so thoroughly that he can't walk, but you know what? Doing that NOW gets us money NOW, and we want that NOW, so who cares if he'll never be able to buy our product in future?
Problem is, none of the economic alternatives to capitalism work very well. They're supposed to be fairer, but the fact of the matter is that they are implemented by human beings and human beings are selfish. We're ingeious little bastards. We'll find a way to turn even the shiniest-fairest alternative to our own personal, private advantage, and God help the person of principle when there are those who look out for themselves in the short term on the loose. Looking out for number one benefits number one most when it benefits more than just number one - when it builds a better world, economically or otherwise, for number one to live in. When it doesn't leave other people bitter, angry, and with no alternative than to turn around and attempt to screw number one back in some form. When it involves treating other people with the same amount of respect we ourselves would like, because one day we will be the customer to someone else....
This is why I laugh bitterly at those who say the U.S. is a Christian country. It's not. It's a capitalist country. Christianity and Capitalism can be compatible, if the capitalist ethos is informed by Christian morality. Even on so simple a level as keeping the Golden Rule in mind, that much would be a tremendous improvement and a vast leap in the direction of this so-called 'Christian' nation people seem to think existed. Unfortunately, Yeshua bin Miryam saw the problem coming two thousand years off, when he was asked by a rich young man what he had to do to gain the kingdom of Heaven. He told the man to sell what he had and give to the poor, and the young man went away sad. bin Miryam told those around him that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.... He didn't say it was impossible. He just said it was very, very hard. He understood economic nature, all right - how it was tied to the atavistic part of the human soul. We'd do well to remember that...
As for what ought to be done about it? I don't know. When I do, I'll tell you - but if I do I rather suspect there'll be a Nobel Prize in it somewhere, so don't hold your breath. All I know is that I can't force this understanding on anyone. I can't make someone else do what they should, and I shouldn't even try to force someone else to do what they should. I have to keep all of this in mind, and I have to remember the tie-in from elsewhere in the sayings of the same man... the part where he informed those who wanted to righteously correct the flaws and failings of others that they should 'remove the log from your OWN eye before attempting to take the speck from your brother's'. The system has flaws because it is built on human beings, and human beings, like everything else in a world subject to entropy, have flaws. All I can do is strive to correct my own flaws and to understand how best to go about making things better. Maybe I'll get there someday, but in the meantime it has to begin with me... with each person who feels that something needs fixing.
And in the meantime, the next person who proclaims that this or that Christian document ought to be enshrined in American law or public life is gonna get the story of Zhuangzi and the Duke of Lu between the eyes. "We have many Confucians here," said the Duke, "but very few of your followers." "I see many dressed as Confucians," said Zhuangzi, "but are they really Confucians? Why not issue an order that all those who dress as Confucians without practicing the doctrine be put to death as frauds?" So the Duke issued the order, and within a week, only one man was left in Confucian dress in all of Lu - but he could expound on, and act according to, the Confucian doctrines like a champ.
Show me that kind of behavior in the hearts and minds of those who proclaim their Christianity before going off to the corporate world or the courts of law, and I'll begin to consider not laughing.
If I ever hear some pious Congressdroid, President, or other government official - hell, even someone who just writes to the newspaper - claim that this is a Christian country or has ever been a Christian country, I will laugh, long and hard and bitterly. It's not. It's never been. I don't mean this from the point of view of religious freedom or pluralism, I don't mean it from the point of view of state establishment of religion, I don't even mean it from the point of view of the Deism of so many of the Founding Fathers. I mean it from the point of view of actual Christian practice. American capitalism is one long history of people trying to screw each other over - and screw them hard. Free enterprise, in its most basic form as it gets taught in the schools, is ostensibly an exchange that goes something like this:
PERSON ONE: I have a Thing!
PERSON TWO: I want that Thing!
ONE: What will you give me for it?
TWO: This much!
ONE: Good God above, that's not enough! Do you want me to starve? Give me this much instead.
TWO: That's insane! How about this much?
ONE: Well, all right.
TOGETHER: Now we both have something close to what we want!
The more one looks at the history of American capitalism, the more it becomes abundantly clear that the vast majority of it consists of people trying to get out of offering their partners in the dance of commerce any compensation at all. I understand that the nature of free enterprise is to look out for number one, but if all that the seller ever does is take and take and take, the system collapses because eventually there is nothing left to give. Every time companies ever got asked to do this or that in order to improve the lot of the people who worked for them, they fought it kicking and screaming, swearing on their mothers' graves that even the slightest concession would kill them. Every time they were offered reasonable ways out that would result in both sides having at least some measure of what they wanted/needed, they went loophole diving and hunted up ways of getting out giving even the tiniest concession.
Meanwhile, on the OTHER side of the issue, there are the workers - who are not by any stretch of the imagination blameless. Merely taking it up the ass for two hundred years does not make you a saint. It means you've taken it up the ass for two hundred years, that's all - and given the nature of the economic system it means you're more likely to seek your compensation by turning around and cheating someone else of theirs. Don't believe me? Some years ago - Prof. didn't give a date - the secretaries who work for the Teamsters union decided they, too, wanted to unionize. So they got together and well over half of them submitted the green cards the National Labor Relations Board mandates are used to say 'we'd like a union'. All it takes to trigger an NLRB-governed election is a submission of these cards by 30% of the workers in a particular workplace, and all it takes to get a union is for the majority of workers to vote and the majority of those voting to say 'yes' to whichever union is proposed. If there's a significant majority of all the workers asking for a union, it's kinda silly to hold an election - 51% submitting green cards is a bit different from 2800 out of 3200 people submitting 'em, which is what happened with the secretaries.
The Teamsters screamed bloody murder, demanded an election, and mounted a ferocious campaign to convince the secretaries and administrative workers that they did not need representation to look after their interests. God forbid someone other than the boss should see to it that people were fairly treated! By damn, these workers would pay their dues week after week to a union that did nothing useful for them, and they'd like it!
My grandfather was a bricklayer and a union man all his working life. When I was little I thought 'the Union' was a church, because the way he talked about it you could hear the capital letter. I was taught never to cross a picket line if there was a strike going on, and to seriously consider whether I should cross one if it were only a protest. But those who speak for the laborer are human, and those who speak for the employer are human, and human nature untaught and unbridled by rules is inherently selfish. This is the nature of the beast, of the evolutionary process that has put the human race where it is today: one gets ahead by looking out for one's own genes, whether it be physically, socially, or economically. On some unfortunate level we are stuck with the mentality of the chimpanzee presented with the bowl of tokens... it was an experiment done a few years ago and recorded in, I believe, The Parrot's Lament by Eugene Linden. The chimp was given two bowls, one containing three tokens, the other five. The chimp had been taught to understand that one token could be exchanged for one piece of fruit. If the chimp pointed at the bowl with five tokens in it, he was given the bowl with three instead and the bowl with five was given to another chimp. If he pointed at the one with three, he got the one with five and the other chimp got the one with three. The chimp understood this and had no trouble with it, but if the tokens were replaced with actual pieces of fruit the chimp could not bring himself to point at the bowl with three pieces. He'd point at the one with five, and get the one with three. The human race seems to be like that: we know that certain choices sting now, but will pay off later, and yet we cannot seem to let go of what we want right now. There would be more for everyone concerned if we agreed not to roger the guy we're dealing with so thoroughly that he can't walk, but you know what? Doing that NOW gets us money NOW, and we want that NOW, so who cares if he'll never be able to buy our product in future?
Problem is, none of the economic alternatives to capitalism work very well. They're supposed to be fairer, but the fact of the matter is that they are implemented by human beings and human beings are selfish. We're ingeious little bastards. We'll find a way to turn even the shiniest-fairest alternative to our own personal, private advantage, and God help the person of principle when there are those who look out for themselves in the short term on the loose. Looking out for number one benefits number one most when it benefits more than just number one - when it builds a better world, economically or otherwise, for number one to live in. When it doesn't leave other people bitter, angry, and with no alternative than to turn around and attempt to screw number one back in some form. When it involves treating other people with the same amount of respect we ourselves would like, because one day we will be the customer to someone else....
This is why I laugh bitterly at those who say the U.S. is a Christian country. It's not. It's a capitalist country. Christianity and Capitalism can be compatible, if the capitalist ethos is informed by Christian morality. Even on so simple a level as keeping the Golden Rule in mind, that much would be a tremendous improvement and a vast leap in the direction of this so-called 'Christian' nation people seem to think existed. Unfortunately, Yeshua bin Miryam saw the problem coming two thousand years off, when he was asked by a rich young man what he had to do to gain the kingdom of Heaven. He told the man to sell what he had and give to the poor, and the young man went away sad. bin Miryam told those around him that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.... He didn't say it was impossible. He just said it was very, very hard. He understood economic nature, all right - how it was tied to the atavistic part of the human soul. We'd do well to remember that...
As for what ought to be done about it? I don't know. When I do, I'll tell you - but if I do I rather suspect there'll be a Nobel Prize in it somewhere, so don't hold your breath. All I know is that I can't force this understanding on anyone. I can't make someone else do what they should, and I shouldn't even try to force someone else to do what they should. I have to keep all of this in mind, and I have to remember the tie-in from elsewhere in the sayings of the same man... the part where he informed those who wanted to righteously correct the flaws and failings of others that they should 'remove the log from your OWN eye before attempting to take the speck from your brother's'. The system has flaws because it is built on human beings, and human beings, like everything else in a world subject to entropy, have flaws. All I can do is strive to correct my own flaws and to understand how best to go about making things better. Maybe I'll get there someday, but in the meantime it has to begin with me... with each person who feels that something needs fixing.
And in the meantime, the next person who proclaims that this or that Christian document ought to be enshrined in American law or public life is gonna get the story of Zhuangzi and the Duke of Lu between the eyes. "We have many Confucians here," said the Duke, "but very few of your followers." "I see many dressed as Confucians," said Zhuangzi, "but are they really Confucians? Why not issue an order that all those who dress as Confucians without practicing the doctrine be put to death as frauds?" So the Duke issued the order, and within a week, only one man was left in Confucian dress in all of Lu - but he could expound on, and act according to, the Confucian doctrines like a champ.
Show me that kind of behavior in the hearts and minds of those who proclaim their Christianity before going off to the corporate world or the courts of law, and I'll begin to consider not laughing.