What is the purpose of unions? A basic and exceedingly charitable answer would be to ensure that industry does not take undue advantage of its labor force, and that those workers have easier access to some of the wealth which they helped create. So what’s so absurd about the notion of public service employee unionization? Just that there’s no such freakin’ thing as industry or profits in the public sector, that’s what! As the name implies, these folks have chosen to work in service to the public. They ain’t workin’ for no freakin’ evil corporation, and their efforts ain’t generating no freakin’ profit, anywhere! Time was, in fact, when it was widely understood that public service was just that – a service performed for the benefit of society, often at the personal sacrifice of the public servant. If an individual desired to pursue personal gain, it could be readily found in the free market, where exchanges benefit both buyers and sellers. Public servants, by contrast, can only enrich themselves at a cost to the general public, via the mechanism government sanctioned theft, sometimes referred to as taxation. With servants like these, who needs masters?!
The absurdity is even more apparent when you remember that public employees work, not for private profiteering capitalists, but for public officials which they themselves had a hand in electing. So the whole idea that public employees need to seek union representation in order to negotiate with their already publicly elected representatives is just about the most idiotic redundancy since the first man wore both his belt AND his suspenders.
Beyond this absurdity, it must be acknowledged that there is a sinister tendency for union representatives to seek out and work in tandem with corrupt public representatives (but I repeat myself), an incestuous relationship which ought to be every bit as vilified as corporate-government entanglements.
Ultimately, no matter what their dubiously altruistic intent may have originally been, private sector unions in general tend to grow into parasitic bureaucracies which only serve to further tax and regulate their members. This is okay, so long as union membership is freely offered or rejected, without coercion. Public service employee unions, however, are downright evil, stupid, and absurd from the outset. They should not be tolerated by a free society.
And I managed to get all of that out without making the obvious comparison of unionism to socialism. Are you proud of me?
Saturday, February 26, 2011
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