In Response To Michael
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your comment.
I think it is an enormous stretch of the imagination to fear that a city garbage strike will lead to your home invasion by a totalitarian police force.
More importantly, at the heart of your argument is the admirable American love of liberty and the individual. So many Presidents, including the present dissembler, have made fools of the electorate by imposing bigger and more extensive government on them, while preaching Ermersonian ideals.
While I am largely sympathetic to those views, and in many an instant will still side with them, there is no question in my mind that government has an important role to play.Yes, it more often than not plays badly and makes us yearn again for the dictum "that government which governs least, governs best."
However, cities and sovereign states and provinces and countries do need policy and management.In the course of caring for the sewers and the fires and the public order, governments will employ workers. Yes, it is a sign of our unwillingness to care for ourselves that government is now the biggest employer in Canada, and no doubt the least effecient.
But, here we are. Postal workers, garbage collectors, park rangers and so on.
Now, all of these people deserve some reasonable kick at the cat. That is, within the range of their abilities and opportunities, they aught to be able to afgord some of the many extraordinary comforts of the current age.
The politicians and their managers can. Vancouver City Hall, for example is overrun with people we've never heard of who have been earning in a excess of $100,000 a year for many years.
(My own personal belief is that, if many of those were fired, the garbage men would do just fine, thank you, and so would you and I.)
So...strike on, I say. I will not be voting for ANY of the current City Council come next election. I may fear stinky garbage, but I don't expect the Boys in Blue to drop by, arms drawn, for breakfast.
1 comment:
Hi David—I am afraid that you drew a cartoon of my argument and then proceeded to deal with your cartoon rather than my argument. It is akin to my saying that “Berner wants to throw the rich out of their houses in Shaughnessy (artist friends excepted) and replace them with postal clerks and sanitation workers.” I don’t think that this represents your position and neither does the putative fear of armed police invading my home represent mine.
Things that I did NOT say:
1/ I did not make a case against government in general or against government employing people to, among other things, pick up the garbage. My case is against clubs/associations (unions) that some workers want to join (but the rest are forced to join as a condition of their employment.) Then the most angry and radical people in this association are allowed to intimidate the rest of the membership into going on strike without ever having a vote with a secret ballot. Is this democracy or a street-gang?
2/ I do not live in fear of my home being invaded by The Boys in Blue coming for breakfast any time soon. I was simply attempting to show that, in the last analysis, any agreement between the government and it’s unions rests on the power of the State and not success in the marketplace. Unlike a corporation, I cannot conceive of a scenario where the City of Vancouver goes out of business. This risk is an inherent limitation on a business that does not have a counterpart for government. The potential use of state power to tax (and, if need be, to resort to more forceful measures) to remain solvent is a defining difference between the public and private sector.
Michael
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