Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Hell of a grand question. What has happened to direct mass action by the first world multitude?

Well, here's one avenue not crowded with a zillion heads wanting to be movers and shakers... our blessed union rank and filers. Most places these wage-clipped souls are being somehow co-opted by... mon Dieu, their own representative democracy!

An article I recently read somewhere (now alas misplaced) gives a nice MIT Sloan School industrial-relations take on this revoltin' development. Its upshot: a close examination of recent labor developments in Italy and Ireland suggests, contrary to conventional wisdom, that associative democracy, not top-down dictat, allows working class leadership the best shot at moderating rankers' "militant wage demands."

Yes, that's right, top-down self-perpetuating outfits, like unions spontaneously become over time, will ultimately lose the handle on job site level demands -- short of Benito and castor oil tactics -- only the steady injection of due and just process, combined with a fair airing of views, and, most importantly, one-member one-vote referenda, will lead over the longer haul to moderation negotiation and class harmony.

In short: "you piecards got to get the mates to do it -- voluntarily." That is, if you want wage increases to remain below the threshold of serious profit squeezery.

As we all too well know in our imperfect market world, for-profit managements, even just budget-constrained managements, have some degree of freedom to raise prices. So when profits are about to be squozen... yes, this triggers increases, and the increases spread through the system, triggering cost based increases, and then more wage reaction increases till nothing but wasteful inflationary spirals obtain. After all, you can't end up with 130% of the whole deal, now can you?

So profits and wages chase their own tails to nowhere, till the macro authorities (in grief or glee ) are forced to engineer a credit contraction, and let the burgeoning jobless sack eventually cool the fevered brow of wagery's rash ambition. Thoughts most foul indeed, eh?

More "democracy" is not the solution here, it's the problem. One vote per member, each equal to another, ends the rule of intensity. The will of the militant minority gets itself swamped by a flood of well meaning... just being realistic... don't give a shit cynical... apathetic... personal addictions-dominated and compulsions-distracted... exploiter-compatible go-along types.

The majority usually has the sense the pies laid out the reality, aired the debate fair and square, played by the rules and won anyway So hey "you hotheads, shut up and put up... you had your say!"

BTW obviously this works best the larger the unit involved -- i.e. national wage pacts, broad sectoral inclusions, etc. And better still, the more the lower cadre are beholden to the upper cadre, the more remote the peak of the outfit from the base, the more layers of hierarchy and yet the more direct and regular the voting in of the various layers of officialdom.

Yes, it will all work great, you'll have harmonics incorporated, so long as the mates' local "officials" can be fixed, of course, despite direct election from below.

But this is easy too, so long as this same on the spot leadership has a sense of investment in the institution and process, and as a result encourages due process to head toward stability and thus the correct moderated conclusion -- and persists in encouraging this sane calm open-minded posture even against red hot ragers. The haunch of the votin' rankers will generally vote in the reasonable compromise the profiteers require -- that is, the majority will vote yes to their own handcuffs and toxic pill packets. And alas they'll swallow 'em too, and prolly more often than not blame their subsequent pain on "can't be helped unforeseeable outside conditions."

The lesson for top level social engineer policy staff types is obviously the same institutional Rx for unions as the mind wizards prescribe for civil society as a whole: If you want unity of action at the top and at the same time willing pliability at the base -- use, errr, democratic centralism.

Heard that anywhere before?

http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=9464

ACLU calls out US over 'absurd bloating' of terror watch list

More that 900,000 people are currently listed as suspected terrorists on the US government's "do not fly" list, and that number will grow to beyond 1 million by summer, says the American Civil Liberties Union.

"If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins," Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, stated in a press release from the group. "The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security."

"....Homeland Security's handling of the watch lists is typical of this administration's blundering approach to the war on terror," said ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Tim Sparapani.

Never say our rulers aren't consistent. Here's fifty years of social control in a nutshell.

Alan Greenspan, 2007:

“I was aware that the loosening of mortgage credit terms for subprime borrowers increased financial risk, and that subsidised home ownership initiatives distort market outcomes. But I believed then, as now, that .... Protection of property rights, so critical to a market economy, requires a critical mass of owners to sustain political support.”

"No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist -- he has too much to do."

I incautiously followed a link, just now, sent to me in an email, and nearly lost my breakfast. I warn you, this is not for the faint of heart:

(If you don't see the thing embedded above, and you're really a glutton for punishment, here's the URL):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg0wiOHc9tI

On a slightly different note, the Washpost offers an opportunity for cognitive dissonance -- that is, if anybody were bothering to do any cognition:

Obama takes the oath of office under the tightest security for an official event in the city's history, with a large swath of downtown Washington closed to vehicular traffic. About 28,000 law enforcement and military personnel have been deployed in and around Washington....

The security force is more than 50 percent larger than the contingent assembled four years ago for Bush's second inauguration.

Is this is the kind of "progress" that "progressives" had in mind?

Oh, I know what you're going to say: Smith, save your breath. No height of absurdity will remain unscaled today, no abyss of bathos unplumbed, and as old Reagan memorably observed, facts are stupid things.

According to the editors of the Morning Perception Management, voters will flock to the polls today to cast their votes in what it is tacitly a referendum on President Obama's regime. The editorial enthymeme is that they're too stupid to consider local issues and so spiteful that they'll consider casting a symbolic vote for or against the regime, even if it means voting for something or someone they consider contemptible. The spite will be interpreted through the MPM preemptively, as it is now, and post facto, to ensure plausible continuity with previous interpretive extravagance.

As with any misanthropic caricature, there are enough spiteful people to form a photo op and provide a few appalling interviews. Neurotic pseudo-intellectuals will fret competitively over the implications of their existence. Meanwhile, about 65 to 70% of the electorate won't make it to the polls. Indifference, disgust, work and family will claim their time. Most of those that do make it will be voting on the same machines that have been causing so much trouble, even without the hallowed tradition of rigging and fraud. One might think that all the official encomiums paid to democratic proceduralism would get us a federal holiday for voting, possibly a functional infrastructure for it too, and one would be wrong. Gassy idolatry and a sanctimony empty enough to be cynical trump republican sentiments.

High turnout theoretically favors Democrats. But rather than working over time to facilitate that, they bend their efforts to normalizing the grandiose rhetoric of candidates immediately to their right and delegitimizing their more popular activists, with predictable consequences. A year ago, Barack Obama's election was touted by them as a repudiation of the Bush regime and the Republican Party. Now they're getting ready to lose seats in municipal and state governments.