Pretty much. At some point the switch flipped and people went ".. so ignoring ethical or moral concerns, could we make more money?"
No, the auto industry had a downturn because their salaried designers and well-compensated executives put out 20 years of shitty product.
But what about this particular strike makes it uniquely bad PR? So far you've said stuff about how it's bad for the LA economy, but so is every damn strike of any significance. I don't understand what's so different.
He's saying it's the workers' fault for not wanting to have their jobs turned into exploitative cycles of poverty when the dysfunctional business models and bad strategies of management demanded cuts (ie "getting 'whatever you can from your employer'."). I don't think he actually has an opinion on the "why" because the whole responsibility/accountability thing only goes one way anyway. He's stating this while only dimly aware of the OP and how significantly it differs from those situations because once the union button is pressed all you need to do is follow the script.
Hrrmmmmm... Odd of a union to go out of their way to provide for temp workers. COULD IT POSSIBLY BE THAT THESE TEMP WORKERS WERE ONCE FULL TIME WORKERS? MY, WOULDN'T IT BE A STRANGE AND IRREGULAR COINCIDENCE IF THAT WERE THE CASE.
For everyone in the thread who is asserting the Dockworkers aren't doing enough for the cause. In 2011 when we were fighting against Ohio's union busting law, Senate Bill 5 / State Issue 2, plenty of those LA Dockworkers took their own time and flew to Ohio at their own expense. They walked neighborhoods, knocked on doors, phone canvassed, anything we asked them to do in the lovely Midwestern weather. Not for themselves, but for a bunch of public union workers (aka leeches off the government tit) they had never met or would probably never see again. They had a hell of a time at the Election Day victory party.
That's pretty awesome. Any thoughts on higher-ups in union leadership promoting and maybe even paying for this kind of activity? Honest question here.
I don't know for sure, but I got the impression that it was an individual or possibly a local union choice. Not a state/national/international level decision.
ITT brett trolls ineptly and calls someone else a troll for the eleven thousandth time, while ranting about an issue on which he is a demonstrated, documented liar. And nobody is the least bit surprised.
Please point out where I have lied about anything, and a hint, that someone doesnt agree with your opinions on a subject does not make them a liar.
If you're not willing to take my word for it, you are clearly as bad as Hitler. Am I doing it right, or do I need to masturbate more furiously?
Brett does the dirty job of off-the-cuff wrongheaded gut responses that make little sense under scrutiny so nobody else has to do it. It's a public service, kind of like enacting a social safety net so no posts fall through the cracks without some form of government intervention.
The statement I cite is factually untrue, in terms of union negotiating strategy and in terms of why those industries "had such troubles". You carry that same detachment from the truth, where different phrasings of the same wholly fictional interpretation of union-business negotiations are given their turn, from one crime against grammar to another. But I agree with you to an extent. I think while you do lie, you do so mainly because you are too dumb to know better, and indeed that's not the same as an outright lie. I'm sure you understand why the distinction is difficult to prioritize for your audience, and will stop saying dumb, untrue things forthwith.
So the contracts that the unions got from the automakers and the airlines did not affect them at all when the businesses took a downturn? I never said the contracts are what caused the downturn in business, just that they were a huge weight on the industries when the downturn happened. That is neither a lie nor factually untrue.
Back when there was that discussion of his airline job that mysteriously involved union troubles, some poster went ahead and did due diligence, finding out that there was exactly one airline merge that matched his timespan description, and that brett was in fact lying off his ass about what was involved and the circumstances of the union's supposed shenanigans. It was kind of hilarious how he just dropped out of the conversation and then pretended it never happened, but yeah, whoever that enterprising poster was did us all a service in giving us yet another thing to laugh about brett about.
Wait, I'm not supposed to extract maximum value from my employer for my work? Fuck, I've been going about this capitalism thing all wrong! I'm socialist AND DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT
Correct. While framing it as an absolute ("at all") allows you to claim some semblance of plausibility to your argument, it is a deceptive way of presenting the problems that faced the (US) automakers and airlines at different points, almost without exception. American unions have, by and large, been limited and moderate in the mold established by Samuel Gompers and his ilk. Public, ugly disagreements with unions have typically indicated grand scale ass-covering on the part of management outside of moments when the unions have been pushed into protest by working conditions that are literally murderous. This dock negotiation is squarely in that mold, as was the Hostess fiasco recently. Specifically, your comments on the airlines in the past have been heavily guided by anecdotal evidence that does not square with the public record, and it's not an accident that you didn't get much traction with those increasingly watered-down arguments then. Define "huge weight". It is "factually untrue" unless it was a non sequitur in the post I cited. Which is possible, but far less likely than you hoping to handwave anti-union talking points into the conversation absent any evidence that they are relevant or true. I admit that having the choice between speaking gibberish and things that are untrue is not an appealing one, but you built this.
Part of the reason nobody's ever willing to listen to the "oh, the burden of the union contract when money gets tight" is that you rarely hear "we had a bad quarter, so we're laying off ten VPs", somehow the only people who shoulder the burden of having to tighten their belts during tough times are the rank and file employees. This is made more offensive in the numerous cases where said layoffs also involve a bonus being paid out to management (either for hitting their targets post-layoff, or contractual bonuses, or just flat out handing themselves cash to stay on through the hard times) This creates the rather accurate image that the reason we have Unions is that the deck is stacked the fuck against the worker, and something needs to balance the scales. As a capitalist, I'm not swayed by the argument that a union kills troubled companies. A company in trouble to the point of not being able to uphold prior contracts is supposed to die. Which sucks for everyone involved, but I'm a bit tired of the bizarre thought that it should only suck for the workers. Or that if a pay cut is needed, the poverty level workers should take a 10% hit but at no point does anyone go "and upper management should take an across the board hit to salary and benefits" because they're afraid the upper level folks will up and leave because their individual bargaining power is greater (hence the need for collective bargaining) ramble ramble, the reason Unions exist is that Management lacks the ethics for it not to exist. This is not to say that Unions are the best solution, but they're the only solution on the table.
"employee salaries" Libertarian Shithead is of the opinion that Workers and Unions must do EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER to help Company. If that includes giving up money and rights than so be it, it must be sacrificed to Company, Company's job is to make AS MUCH MONEY AS POSSIBLE IN ANY MANNER POSSIBLE because that is what Companies do. If Workers and Unions don't do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to help Company then they are hurting Company and are being selfish and deserve to lose their job. No word as to why anybody higher than mid-level is immune to Company rules.
A "mistake" that's repeated after the correct information has been provided becomes a lie. Not immediately, of course; it takes a while for the information to be absorbed. But you do reach a point where you can't plausibly claim to be ignorant anymore, and that's when the lying starts.
No, a "mistake" that's repeated after the correct information has been acknowledged becomes a lie. If repetition of the truth guaranteed its understanding, there would be no competing religions. Because regardless of whether god is Jesus, Allah, Krishna, or none of the above, we've already heard the truth countless times.
That's just stupid. Brett reads the forums, he reads every single post, sure he only responds to the lowest of the lowest low hanging fruit but he reads the 98% he ignores. You can't just assume he doesn't see facts when they are presented to him, in fact they are usually quoted at him and you'll notice the little number trying to grab your attention up in the corner that alerted you to the fact that I quoted you.
It's stupid on many levels. Here's the most obvious one: No, we've heard people's opinions countless times. There is nothing in Christianity that refutes any other religion. It puts forward its view of the world, and although some Christians attempt to respond to issues raised by other religions, none have done so definitively. They can't. They're discussing things that are beyond empirical evidence. Ditto for Muslim writers, Hindu writers, and so on. Contrast that with many of the issues where Brett continues to espouse his views. In these cases, we're dealing with things that have empirical evidence to support them, as well as rational arguments that can (and have) definitively demonstrated that he's wrong. At this point, it stops being a mistake and starts being a lie. Whether or not a truth has been acknowledged is completely irrelevant. Using your retarded logic, all I have to do to not be wrong is to never acknowledge opposing arguments.
Yes, I agree with the other points, although I don't think you're being stupid so much as overly generous in the face of an overwhelming body of evidence. Being stupid does not make him the proverbial noble savage incapable of true malice; unfortunately, it just downgrades the quality of his deception.
You're right that he's probably not necessarily being stupid with his main point. But the arguments that he mustered to support that? Come on. The religion argument was incredibly stupid, which is why I got kind of irate.
That's not really the case. Christianity does have a set of empirical evidence: four eyewitness accounts of what Jesus did. And if you don't accept that evidence, it's not because you have a contradictory eyewitness account of what really went on. Most of the time, it's because you simply disagree with what Christianity ultimately entails. It's sort of a proof by contrapositive, one of those "Well, that can't be right!" moments. We all do it some, but Brett does it a lot. Demonstrated to whose satisfaction? You can't avoid being wrong, sooner or later. But using my retarded logic, all you have to do to not be dishonest is to never be swayed by opposing arguments. That could be defect in your rational capacity, or in the opposing arguments. It's pretty clear that Brett will never be convinced to change his strongly held views. But I don't regard that as dishonesty. The sad fact is that almost nobody is ever convinced to change strongly held views. On the rare occasions that it happens to anyone on this forum, it's a minor miracle. And that's not for lack of trying. It's just that unlike Brett, most of us just have the decency to drop the subject out of exhaustion.
That's... not what empirical means. What you're saying here is quite a bit different from what you said the first time. You've dropped the word "acknowledged", and have changed it to "swayed"... which is quite a bit more reasonable. But it still isn't terribly relevant to this case; people have taken Brett step-by-step through the problems with his arguments. If he remains unswayed, that's because he has chosen to not bother following their logic. You can say that he has willfully chosen to cling to his mistake, but I would classify "willfull ignorance" as something more akin to lying. But at this point, it's a matter of semantics rather than a difference of opinion.
Well, written accounts are pretty much all you have to study ancient history. Put it this way: if you read on Wikipedia that La-ba'shum of Uruk was the eighth Sumerian ruler in the First Dynasty of Uruk, you would probably have only the minimum of skepticism. It doesn't cause any particular conflict with your beliefs. After reading the biographies of Jesus, you may be much more skeptical. But if you're skeptical, it's not because of the quality of evidence - the evidence regarding La-ba'shum is scantier and has undergone less scrutiny. It's because the evidence regarding Jesus conflicts with a lot of belief systems. And for most of us, evidence that conflicts with our beliefs is given less weight than evidence that support our beliefs. Brett simply exaggerates this human tendency. Lying, like any deception, engineers an inequality in which the deceiver knows something that his victim does not. Willful ignorance is not like that, it impoverishes everyone equally.
