trc (04/21/83)
Response to Guy Harris: 1: The employer would generally be foolish to close his doors merely on the basis of an election, and the workers would be foolish to believe that the employer would. In all, a very weak coercion... 2: You say that "enough highly-paid lawyers" can prevent justice from being served. First, there is a built in penalty (the cost) for using this tactic in trivial situations. Second, employees are generally smart enough to form unions in the face of unfair treatment, and so can afford lawyers as a group. (The trouble is that they start from similarly bad premises - might makes right - and often turn around and treat employers unfairly.) I am not trying to justify the TRULY coercive actions taken by either employers or employees back during the early years of unionization! 3: Finally, you state that a political philosophy that depends upon a just legal system is not practical. That is, of course, stating it backwards - there is something wrong with a political system that does not insure a just legal system. And I would heartily agree that there is something wrong with both our legal and political systems. It is also a reversal to say that another system is impractical because a failure of the current system nullifies the good results of application of part of the other system. Tell me - which is more practical for you - a system with a truly just legal system, or one that can be bought by those with more money than you? Tom Craver houti!trc
guy (04/22/83)
2: You say that "enough highly-paid lawyers" can prevent justice from
being served. First, there is a built in penalty (the cost)
for using this tactic in trivial situations.
What about non-trivial situations? Yes, there is a cost, but there are times
where somebody might consider it worth it...
Second, employees are generally smart enough to form unions in the
face of unfair treatment, and so can afford lawyers as a group. (The
trouble is that they start from similarly bad premises - might makes
right - and often turn around and treat employers unfairly.) I am not
trying to justify the TRULY coercive actions taken by either
employers or employees back during the early years of unionization!
Unfortunately, those coercive actions WERE taken (cf. what happened at Ford
in the 1930's). NOW we have unions which give employees some countervailing
power, but a lot of people died in things like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire
before the unions could improve working conditions...
3: Finally, you state that a political philosophy that depends upon a
just legal system is not practical. That is, of course, stating
it backwards - there is something wrong with a political system
that does not insure a just legal system. And I would heartily
agree that there is something wrong with both our legal and
political systems. It is also a reversal to say that another
system is impractical because a failure of the current system
nullifies the good results of application of part of the other
system. Tell me - which is more practical for you - a system
with a truly just legal system, or one that can be bought by
those with more money than you?
I'm suspicious that there *is* no political system that insures a just legal
system. I wish there was, but (pace the idea of limited government) I suspect
that if Big Government didn't exist Big Business (or Big Whatever) would have
to invent it. A system that can be bought by those with more money that I
IS more "practical" in the sense that 1) that's what we've got now and 2) I'm
not sure we can get to a political system with a sufficiently just legal
system.
I wish we *did* live in the best of all possible worlds, but I'm certainly
not going to base my actions on 1) the belief that we do nor 2) the belief
that we can enter that world relatively simply...
Guy Harris
RLG Corporation
{seismo,mcnc,we13}!rlgvax!guy