All bets are off - Cory Doctorow

[justaprogressive]

When unions are outlawed, only outlaws will have unions. Unions don't owe their existence to labor laws that protect organizing activities. Rather, labor laws exist because once-illegal unions were formed in the teeth of violent suppression, and those unions demanded – and got – labor law.

Bosses have hated unions since the start, and they've really hated laws protecting workers. Dress this up in whatever self-serving rationale you want – "the freedom to contract," or "meritocracy" – it all cashes out to this: when workers bargain collectively, value that would otherwise go to investors and executives goes to the workers.

I'm not just talking about wages here, either. If an employer is forced – by a union, or by a labor law that only exists because of union militancy – to operate a safe workplace, they have to spend money on things like fire suppression, PPE, and paid breaks to avoid repetitive strain injuries. In the absence of some force that corrals bosses into providing these safety measures, they can use that money to pay themselves, and externalize the cost of on-the-job injuries to their workers.

The cost and price of a good or service is the tangible expression of power. It is a matter of politics, not economics. If consumer protection agencies demand that companies provide safe, well-manufactured goods, if there are prohibitions on price-fixing and profiteering, then value shifts from the corporation to its customers.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/29/which-side-are-you-on/#strike-three-yer-out

[Hugin]

1. K&R n/t

[usonian]

2. You can quote more. Cory uses a Creative Commons license.

[justaprogressive]

3. DU says 4 paragraphs

did know about the legal end...

[usonian]

4. DUlimits excerpts of copyrighted works for legal reasons. (standard copyright, and fair use provision)

The DU limit is to avoid copyright infringement disputes with copyrighted works.

From Cory's site.


This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

I and others have had no problems posting Creative Commons and US government official documents in total.

Because they are not "you may not copy" copyright, where "fair use" is considered 4 paragraphs.

IANAL, but this works.