Why unions have been necessary: oligopsony. Don't you just love funny words that mean so much?

[originalpckelly]

In a market where there is an oligopoly, there also tends to be an oligopsony for employment market. An oligopoly is like a monopoly, but instead of one large company selling goods, it's multiple large companies selling goods. An oligopsony is a group of large buyers in a market, it is the "oligo" prefix equivalent for a monopsony, which is one large buyer in a market.

By its very nature, a oligopsony has near dictatorial power over what it pays for a good, much like an oligopoly has when it sells goods. If one of the oligopsonistic companies wants to pay $5 a hour for labor, there is so little other choice in the market to sell labor to (which is what employees do), that employees almost have to accept it. The sheer overwhelming size of the oligopsonistic company gives it more power when bargaining.

The corporate model tends to produce monopolies and oligopolies, and thus oligopsonies and monopsonies in the labor market. For that reason, labor should tend to form equivalent monopolies and oligopolies, to sell their labor as one unit or multiple powerful units.

This is why corporations fight tooth and nail to oppose unions and bust unions big time.

There are downsides to unions, mainly striking and possibility that one's life can be upended during that time.

I think if we were to eliminate the corporations, and thus the monopsonies and oligopsonies for labor purchasing they create, the need for unions would end.

Not before then, however. IF we keep corporations around as a nation, then we must have strong unions to counter the mono/oligopsonies of large corporations.

Terms in this post that may be unfamiliar:
1. Oligopsony: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopsony
2. Monopsony: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
3. Oligopoly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly

[originalpckelly]

1. I'm doing a shameless self-kick for a rational explanation of why unions are necessary.

[ret5hd]

2. Probably no one can convince you unions are necessary...

so my guess is you are more apt to be looking for argument than enlightenment.

[originalpckelly]

3. I just proved why unions are necessary, what are you talking about?

As long as we have a corporate model, unions are necessary.

[ret5hd]

5. I guess i misinterpreted the intent of your post #1. My apologies.

[originalpckelly]

7. I'm for ending corporate rule of America,

but until that happens, I have conclusively proved, perhaps beyond a reasonable doubt, that unions are necessary.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. How do you propose to eliminate "corporations" and...

still manage to make anything besides furniture in Amish woodshops?

(Don't forget to mention that an oligopoly is a limited number of entities with high, or impossible, entry costs.)

[originalpckelly]

6. Workplace market system:

1. In all situations where a service is directly provided to the purchaser, the purchaser should directly pay the person doing the service.

2. In all situations where there is not direct contact between the purchaser and the service provider (such as in a factory) one step in the manufacturing process sells its goods on to the next step for a profit, in much the same way a manufacturer would sell to a wholesaler, a wholesaler to a retailer and a retailer to a customer. Each step in the manufacturing process has a profit margin, and this is where old fashioned employees would derive their income from. Each person, who we'd traditionally call an employee, would fully own the machines that they use to do their work. This system, I suppose, is like Marxism, in that the goal is to get employees to own their means of production, but not through collective ownership, but rather through equitable private ownership.

3. In any situation where it is not possible to employ this system, workers would create employee owned companies.

I think a lot of the economy can be carried out with this model. To make schedules, in place of managers who sap productive capacity from our system by reducing the number of workers actually producing something, we would have an employment futures market.

To operate in a workplace, employees would be required to be licensed like doctors or other professionals to operate their business.

To protect people from unlimited liability, each and every person above the legal working age would be given a business and personal finance identity. When money is passed through from the business identity to the personal one, it would be automatically taxed.

What kind of business has impossibly high costs? Have you ever thought that if we shake this system of corporate control off our backs that it might just end that? I also mean to end the traditional property investment schemes that steal people's capital as well. Both mortgages and renting are schemes set up by landowners to steal money from the people. It is absolutely possible to produce condos that would be cheap enough to purchase that they would allow people to save aside their money, instead of relying upon loans. I imagine that the situation going forward, is that young men and women would live with their parents while they went to work and saved aside enough money to buy one of these condos outright. Cars would also be purchased outright as well.

This system would, in theory, free the people of this nation, and the world from the control of the investor class.

What's nice about this idea, is that most of it can be implemented in our own economy, and if it is a successful system, it should out compete regular corporate control, as employee and customer satisfaction would be higher, as both would have more control over their interaction, than in this system.

The basic reason it would do this, is that instead allowing the investor oligarchy to tax the labor of workers by the corporations receiving revenue first, the people doing the actual work would receive the revenues first.