May 8, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
11:40
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| Hello everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio. | |
| This is true news, a little bit of a departure or a different take. | |
| This is a message to our good friends, the auto workers, or those really in the manufacturing sector as a whole, but in the auto sector in particular. | |
| Things not going so well, right? | |
| I mean, plants have been closed down for weeks. | |
| One of your companies is partnering up with the Italian company Fiat, as in Fiat currency, as in the root of much of this mess. | |
| And there seems to be a lot of anger and resentment and a lot of blame and a lot of attack against the system, right? | |
| Capitalism, the free market, voluntary trade, the managers, the banksters, the executives, the government even to some degree. | |
| And that's all nonsense. | |
| Now, I'm going to tell you the truth, and you're not going to like it. | |
| And you will feel an urge to attack the messenger, but that's alright. | |
| That's the first job of the philosopher, is to be immune to being attacked for bringing the truth to people. | |
| But I'm going to tell you what happened and give you the chance for an honorable recourse, which is to admit fault and to work to save your children from where your country is sliding towards. | |
| So I'm going to lay it out for you straight, because I know that many of you are straight talkers or appreciate that. | |
| The reason that things have gotten so fucked up is not because of foreign competition. | |
| It's not because of NAFTA. It's not because of Mexican laborers. | |
| It's not because of Wall Street. | |
| It's not because of the executives. | |
| It's not because of any of that nonsense. | |
| And the degree to which you cling to these silly fantasies is the degree to which you are just making life worse and worse and worse for those who come after you, in particular your own children. | |
| The reason Why the government is appointing people to your boards of directors and taking huge stakes in these companies and the reason you've become so desperately and pathetically addicted to and dependent upon the forced extraction of money from your fellow citizens is because, | |
| and I'm going to use a collective term here, just understand I may not be speaking to you individually, but you're part of a movement, you know, those who are unionized. | |
| Because it's all gotten fucked up because you went for the gun, right? | |
| You went for the gun. | |
| After the Second World War, things were pretty good in the blue-collar sector. | |
| One guy could support a wife and two kids, a house, maybe even a car. | |
| Things were pretty good. Then, and it started really in the 60s but really grew in the 70s, a bunch of people came along to you and said, probably with the help of Bruce Springsteen, how you were the real workers and you deserved more and you deserved even more free healthcare and you deserved Six weeks or four weeks vacation a year and you deserved a big raise and you deserved all of this stuff because you were the real worker and the managers were against your interests and you were the ones who made this company really run and you deserved more. | |
| Now there's nothing wrong with thinking you deserve more and there's nothing wrong with getting together with your friends and saying let's Have a strike to get more. | |
| More power to you. I think that's wonderful. | |
| I think that's very empowering. | |
| But if you all decide to go on strike, that's still a voluntary interaction, right? | |
| There's no gun. If everybody just decides to walk out, and I've been a business owner, I know what that's like. | |
| If everyone just decides to walk out, business owners kind of screwed, right? | |
| And so there's a lot of power in that kind of collective action, but there's no gun. | |
| Everybody decides to quit or walk out or not come to work. | |
| That is a strike, and that can be a very honorable thing. | |
| There's no gun, right? | |
| But you didn't feel quite comfortable with that, did you? | |
| You didn't feel quite comfortable with that risk, perhaps after you saw what Reagan did to the airline traffic controllers and fired them all. | |
| Didn't really feel comfortable with that. | |
| So what you decided to do was to go for the gun. | |
| And that means pressuring the government through your union representatives to reduce foreign competition through taxes and import duties and restrictions on trade. | |
| To make it illegal to hire what are called scabs or replacement workers. | |
| So if you all go on strike. | |
| Can't go and hire other people to make it illegal to compete through licensing and various kinds of gun-based robbery, which prevents other people from doing your job unless they complete some completely ridiculous and lengthy internship. | |
| Like, it takes years and years to become an electrician. | |
| Please. So you went for the gun. | |
| You went for the state. | |
| You went for the power of violence. | |
| So that those, and sometimes directly, right, that you would beat up people who crossed your strike lines. | |
| And that did happen and there was violence. | |
| And of course, people associate unions with the mafia, which is entirely inconsequential, in my opinion, the real mafia that the unions are associated with. | |
| It's the infinite power of a centralized government, of the centralized state. | |
| So you wanted stuff, and people slithered in, right? | |
| Whenever people get greedy, this is how people control you, and even more tragically control your children, is they will tell you that you're entitled to more than you're getting. | |
| And they will also say that you don't actually really have to take the risk of trying to get it yourself or even collectively. | |
| Oh, you deserve 20% more pay. | |
| It's like, okay, well, go in and try and negotiate that and you'll find out whether you're actually worth 20% more pay, not from your business owners. | |
| But from your customers, right? | |
| Because if you're worth 20% more, then the price of the car is going to go up 20%, more or less. | |
| And if the customers are happy with that, then they will buy. | |
| That car that's 20% more because they just love you and want you to get paid more. | |
| But if they then decide to go to some other foreign or other manufacturer who's not giving 20% raises, then you'll quickly find out that you're not worth 20% more. | |
| So you wanted the 20% more. | |
| This is what people do. They'll come in and they'll say, I can get you more. | |
| And you don't have to take the risk of actually trying to negotiate it for yourself. | |
| Don't worry, you deserve more and I'm going to go to the Congressman and I'm going to go to the Senate and I'm going to go and rouse up the politicians and I'm going to get a media campaign and we're going to get a law passed and it's going to guarantee you more. | |
| More vacation, more health care, more pensions, more pay, more job security, less competition. | |
| Better hours. Time and a half for overtime. | |
| Night time work. We're gonna get you more and you're not gonna have to lift a goddamn finger. | |
| You're not gonna have to take any risk. | |
| We will just give you more by going for the gun. | |
| By getting laws passed in your favor that have people arrested and thrown in jail for having the temerity and the audacity to compete with you in a free market environment. | |
| Now, come on. | |
| You know, deep, deep, deep down in your heart, that this was a far from honorable course of action. | |
| And that nothing in this life ever comes for free. | |
| Okay. | |
| So when you got more, it wasn't going to last. | |
| If you price yourself out of a market and use the government to artificially prop up those wages with the power of the gun, you're just selling your soul to the devil. | |
| And not even for that much. | |
| And so now that it's all collapsing, everybody wants to avoid this basic reality that The unions went for the gun, sold their souls, sold the souls of the workers to the mafia of the state, and gained a little bit for a while, right? | |
| Your paycheck went up, you had more job security, right? | |
| But everything comes at a cost. | |
| It's like saying someone who is taking heroin seems to be very happy, doesn't have to work on their problems. | |
| Well, there's a price to be paid. | |
| for any artificial theft and inflation of wages and working conditions. | |
| And the really tragic thing about what is happening to the auto industry and to the manufacturing sector as a whole is that if you decide to get the mafia to get you some money, | |
| if you decide to borrow from the mafia, which is really all that preferential legislation does, you're just borrowing from the mafia, It's that the bill will come due and the bill has been coming due in terms of the wages that have peaked and are now collapsing over the past 20 years or so. | |
| And your children now have nowhere to go. | |
| They have no jobs to get a hold of because you sold your souls to the mafia for a few points on the dollar. | |
| It's so sad. | |
| It's so... What a terrible deal! | |
| You know, if you're gonna sell your soul to the Mafia, at least get the Taj Mahal. | |
| Thirty pieces of silver doesn't really seem to cut it. | |
| The really tragic thing is that if you end up in debt to the Mafia, most times, they won't go after your children. | |
| But that's not the way it works with the state. | |
| You sell your soul to the state, you will get your thirty pieces of silver. | |
| But the federal government and the Chinese will end up owning your children. | |
| So fess up. You went for the gun. | |
| It was dishonorable. | |
| You did the entirely wrong thing and your children will pay the greatest price. | |
| So stop telling us all how hard done by you are. | |
| Fess up to the immorality that you have committed and let's work to clean up this mess. |
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