> Those who want more government would do more for their cause by getting
> government to do its existing task set well than by arguing that private
> industry is horrible and tyrannical, too.
Go get 'em, Dan. The idea of you being an hysterical Thatcherite is,
well, hysterical. Who is it that are we supposed to take seriously?
If expecting the employees that I pay for with my tax dollars to do
their job and do it well is "Thatcherite", than so be it. I have no
problem paying MUNI (and BART) employees close to the highest rates in
the world. We do, after all, want the highest quality public transit in
the world. By I, at least, want to get what I am paying for. We're
paying top dollar, we should get top service. That is not Thatcherism,
that is common sense.
> From: Dave Jansson <djansson@sj.bigger.net>
>
> While we're lost in hysteria regarding how awful unions are, lets try to
> keep some perspective.
First, recall that I defended unions in my first message. Unions, per
se, are an essential part of a modern economy. The key word is, part.
I refer back to that three-way tension between workers, management, and
customers. One of the key problems with MUNI, but only one, is that the
first of those has far too much power relative to the other two. That
is not an attack on unionism in general, it is an (obvious, certainly
not hysterical) observation about one union in particular.
> corporations are responsible for
> vastly worse offenses than unions could even dream of committing.
> Pollution,
Indeed. However, recall that it is British Petroleum who has responded
positively to the CO2 problem, while the American labor movement, afraid
of losing jobs in the auto industry, look like they are going to fight
even the modest environmental controls negotiated in Japan. I am no
defender of corporate power (Microsoft is getting everything they
deserve, and, outside of the operating system, there is no Microsoft
software running on this computer), but the issues are not as simple as
corporations being always wrong and labor always being right.
-- Donald
_________________________
Donald F. Robertson
San Francisco
donaldrf@hooked.net
76217.2066@CompuServe.com
Donald's Space Exploration page:
http://www.hooked.net/~donaldrf/index.html
The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually
we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of
inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to
reclaim a little more land. -- Thomas Huxley.