Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (19550)	12/26/2004 9:43:17 PM
From: ThirdEye	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

I wasn't taking a position on the PATCO strike one way or the other. I was merely drawing an analogy between the balance of power expressed in government and the arbitrage that takes place between capital and labor. I don't think we have what you might define as a free market system(at least at the macro level) and that is because of the abuse of labor that occurred during the industrialization process that was brought to light by the classical muckrakers a century ago. The result was alot of legislation that corrected an imbalance. There is still alot of free market character to the ongoing struggle between labor and capital. Take nurses for example. There is a shortage of several hundred thousand nurses now or in the foreseeable future. They command a good deal of power simply as a function of supply and demand. Sure, there are also what you would call inefficiencies in the system by virtue of entrenched dynosaurs who wield heavyhanded power over the rank and file(UAW) and are more interested in their own position than the long term vialbility of the sector they work in. But I could also point to the huge concessions granted by airline unions as the reverse situation the nurses face. The dissolution of unions, however, would not have saved our manufacturing base and will not bring it back. The pendulum swings both ways.