Old ideas about labor and management -- it's time to change

In response to this.

The idea that companies in a free market would oppress workers, and that the reason we need government regulations is to protect workers, is an obsolete idea. Unions, for the most part, have created an adversarial position with management, and government has allowed unions to price themselves out of the market. The auto industry is representative of the old worker/management relationship and look at where they are. I worked with GM long enough to know what goes on, and it couldn't be sustained.

We are in a global economy and in the middle of a technological revolution -- the old relationships won't work. The future calls for workers with a certain amount of knowledge and skills. Anyone who hasn't learned a skill and acquired a certain level of education will not fit into the new workforce, and if government regulations protect unskilled workers, companies will not hire these workers to start with, especially if they have to be hired at a certain minimum wage that's too high. Then the only choice government has to protect workers is to hire them into government jobs or force companies to hire them, or put them on the welfare rolls.

What is it that people who advocate government protection of workers want? What do they expect will happen as the global market heats up and we try to compete. There seems to be an idea that companies are in business to provide employment at a high level of pay. The purpose of business is not to provide good, stable, long-term jobs. Hopefully this happens in a strong economy, but no businessperson risks investing in a business simply to provide jobs regardless if the company is making a profit. Do worker advocates demand that businesses hire unskilled workers, pay no attention to their productivity, give them benefits and forget about return on investment or success?

To satisfy the demands of anti-capitalists, business owners would have to act irrationally. In the real world, despite the picture now being painted of executives who do nothing and simply screw workers while raking in millions, the biggest job producers are small businesses with rational, prudent management. The huge manufacturers which are labor intensive are most likely a thing of the past. Technology is creating smaller, more skilled and knowledgable workforces -- having specialized knowledge is becoming more critical. And unless a giant corporation has government protection to limit competition, unions and wasteful, extravagant management cannot survive in the global economy.

So we have a changing workforce which demands skills and knowledge, an education system which is failing to produce skill and knowledge, and a demand for industry to hire and keep unskilled workers and pay them good wages. Big, clumsy, inefficient corporations are dying and becoming wards of the state and we're asking small businesses to commit financial suicide. Unions as they are now are of no benefit to the new workforce and this is why union membership is declining except in government work, and government is not producing any new wealth. The effort to save workers and strengthen unions in dying industries can't be sustained. If government protects these industries by stricting imports, prices will rise and we will shut ourselves out of the global economy.

The only long-term hope for the American workforce is education, training and free trade -- being part of a growing world economy. Using the extravagant reality of Wall Street financial companies, with government connections and protection, as the model scapegoat of American enterprise is very misleading. Using the auto unions as the model  for the future workforce is insane. Saying we need to save and empower this type of union makes no sense, regardless how stupid management has been. Neither a re-regulated financial industry nor a bailed-out and revamped auto industry is the model of the future -- they are the failures of corporate/government enmeshment which need to cut the strings tied to government.

The companies going forward will be samller, more nimble, more efficient and more reliant on brain work. If young people can't fit into this new workforce then they will become wards of the overburdened state. This new workforce will not likely be made up of useless layers of management, but it will not be bloated by overpaid, unskilled workers, either.

More later.