Herman Cain: It's Your Fault if You're Unemployed

[Coito ergo sum]

So, to make it fair, one of the things you would advocate doing is to make it illegal for a person to do the following:

(1) Buy a bunch of sugar, ice, lemons, water, set up a table somewhere, and sell lemonade at a price higher than the capital invested in the materials and/or not allow the person setting up the lemonade stand to make or keep any money in excess of that capital investment? Or,
(2) Buy a bunch of hot dogs, heat them up, put them on buns and sell them at a profit and retain the profit?

To you - people who set up businesses like that are "assholes" and they are keeping you down? They make life unfair, and if they make money and build a successful business

It's inequitable is what it is. What of the person who hasn't the means to do either 1 or 2 (both of which require expensive licenses, fees, and are subject to regulation by the way)? What of the person who does 1 or 2, but barely gets by while a person who is a do nothing CEO of a major bank receives a 50 million dollar bonus because they saw a better than expected profit from the labours of people like him/her? Is that equitable?

It's inequitable for someone to open up a lemonade stand?

What's the alternative? We need stores and manufacturing plants and other goods and services. If nobody who wants to go do that stuff is allowed to go do that stuff, who is going to do that stuff?

Moreover, people who make a lot of money are generally doing something that you and I can't do. You think it's "easy" and "do nothing" to be a CEO of a major bank? That seems to me to be a gross understatement of what it takes to become and be a successful banker.

Now ask me about the person on state financial support who does nothing to earn the money they receive and will do so for life. Go ahead.

Why would I do that? Does it have something to do with whether that person should be allowed to open up a lemonade stand, or sell hot dogs?

[JimC]

CES wrote:

When I was going to college "the poor" could go to my college for free.

In my day too, a Uni education was free in Oz...

Now there are fees, which most students pay back in installments after they get a job. That doesn't worry me too much, but the fees are only one part. Sure, you can hopefully get a part-time job, but combining that with study and living pretty poor is a grind.

The other thing which sticks in my craw is, in Oz, if you become a full, up-front fee-paying student you can get into most courses with a lower ATAR score; if rich daddy can come up with the readies for the fees, and install you in a flat close to the Uni, and give you a few hundred bucks a month to live on, you're in clover compared to the rest...

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

Again, life is not fair. You rise or fall on your own initiative

And again, you miss my point. Given equal amounts of initiative, statistically speaking, children of wealthy parents will have a greater chance of ending up in their parent's socio-economic bracket than children of poor parents (and I accept a reasonable number of exceptions to that). This has the effect of producing a self-perpetuating class of the rich and powerful (with a certain amount of mixing). Resentment builds...

This sort of thinking is based on the Socialist zero-sum fuzzy math that holds that one person's success can only come at someone else's expense. This is ignorant nonsense, of course, because wealth is essentially unlimited, and it doesn't matter how much someone else has when you have an equal opportunity to be as wealthy as anyone else if you have it in you to do so.

This sort of ignorant "class warfare" rhetoric is classic Marxist propaganda.

In actual fact, in a capitalist society, the "class of the rich" is open to everyone, and its existence provides hope and motivation to those who are willing to put forth the effort to improve their economic condition. It does so by demonstrating that being part of the "class of the rich" is possible for literally anyone. There are no class barriers or restrictions in the law that prevent even the lowliest person from rising to the top both economically and socially, as CES's list of people who have come from the bottom and clawed their way to the top proves.

There is no aristocracy or hereditary rights that privilege one person or family above another, it's a meritocracy where anyone at all can play the game and win if they have it in them to do so.

This is unlike socialism, where anyone who excels and improves his economic or social position will be hammered back into proletarian conformity because socialism cannot permit anyone to succeed, lest those who don't have the ability to succeed become angry that they are not getting according to their need and "the rich class" is not being taken from according to their ability.

Capitalism doesn't care who you are, where you came from, whether your parents were rich or poor, or what your name is, it cares only that you have what it takes to succeed in the free market. If you do, you too can be a wealthy as Warren Buffett or Bill Gates.

Later in your post you gave some grudging support to my plea for more educational assistance for disadvantaged students, albeit delivered in a rather patronising tone...

There is something to be said for educating the lower classes so as to give them better tools to economically advance themselves. However, how much education is required, and upon whom to bestow such public effort, is not amenable to pat, generalized answers.

[/quote]

[Jason]

Moreover, people who make a lot of money are generally doing something that you and I can't do. You think it's "easy" and "do nothing" to be a CEO of a major bank? That seems to me to be a gross understatement of what it takes to become and be a successful banker.

I know a successful banker, we grew up together actually. So yes I do.

Now ask me about the person on state financial support who does nothing to earn the money they receive and will do so for life. Go ahead.

Why would I do that? Does it have something to do with whether that person should be allowed to open up a lemonade stand, or sell hot dogs?

It was a rhetorical question meant to make you think.

[Seth]

So what? What makes you think that life it fair?

The reason life isn't fair is because of assholes who make sure it stays that way by saying "life just isn't fair" rather than doing something/demanding something be done about it.

The reason life isn't fair is because people have differing skills and abilities, and not everyone is well-suited to being economically or socially successful, and nature doesn't give a flying fuck whether you live or die.

Sure, Marxism can "do something" about life's unfairness, but only by making everyone equally miserable and destitute, not by letting people forge their own happiness and success according to their abilities and desires. Marxist "fairness" is seen in places like the USSR and Cuba, where everyone (except the ruling class) is miserable, poor, deprived and unhappy and any attempt to escape the drudgery and oppression of socialism is brutally repressed by the ruling class so that it can maintain power and control.

If you want to "do something" about life's unfairness, by all means do so, but do it yourself, for yourself, and let others be free to find their own happiness and fairness as they see fit, and quit advocating the murder of people who have it better than you do because they worked for it.

Nobody owes you fairness because no one but you can achieve it. It can't be gifted to you by government without making life unfair for those from whom the government steals labor and property to redistribute it to you.

Quit being such a baby about it and accept the fact that your own limitations and lack of work ethic are what keep you poor, not some other person who has worked hard to be a success.

[Seth]

So, to make it fair, one of the things you would advocate doing is to make it illegal for a person to do the following:

(1) Buy a bunch of sugar, ice, lemons, water, set up a table somewhere, and sell lemonade at a price higher than the capital invested in the materials and/or not allow the person setting up the lemonade stand to make or keep any money in excess of that capital investment? Or,
(2) Buy a bunch of hot dogs, heat them up, put them on buns and sell them at a profit and retain the profit?

To you - people who set up businesses like that are "assholes" and they are keeping you down? They make life unfair, and if they make money and build a successful business

It's inequitable is what it is. What of the person who hasn't the means to do either 1 or 2 (both of which require expensive licenses, fees, and are subject to regulation by the way)? What of the person who does 1 or 2, but barely gets by while a person who is a do nothing CEO of a major bank receives a 50 million dollar bonus because they saw a better than expected profit from the labours of people like him/her? Is that equitable?

Now ask me about the person on state financial support who does nothing to earn the money they receive and will do so for life. Go ahead.

Now you're changing the goalposts by using the word "equitable" rather than "fair." But the answer is the same, yes, it is equitable because the fact that one person makes 50 million dollars in no way prevents another person from making another 50 million. It's not a zero-sum game, you see. That's a Socialist fallacy. It's both fair and equitable because the person who made a 50 million dollar bonus earned it by doing his job well and by earning his investors much more than that through his skills at creating wealth.

The person who doesn't have money for a permit or lemons is not disbarred by capitalism from becoming successful, and while it may be more difficult for him to do so it's not inequitable that he doesn't have things easy because he still has the opportunity to try to succeed and his reward if he does well is literally unlimited under capitalism, which is what induces him to go out and present a business plan for a lemonade stand to a capital-owner who might be willing to invest in the venture if there is profit to be made for all.

Nobody said getting rich is easy, but it's in no way inequitable or unfair that some people have what it takes to be successful and others don't. You can throw money at unqualified, incompetent, lazy dependent-class drones all you want and most of them will never use that money to raise their economic and social status, most of them will use it to by cheeseburgers and crack because they'd rather sit around eating cheeseburgers and smoking crack than put forth the kind of effort that it takes to become wealthy.

Ever notice how the "poor" in America don't look like the "poor" in Sudan? In Sudan the poor cannot ever hope to succeed because there is no economy or free markets for them to exploit and they are starving to death. But the poor in America are suffering from, as Hillary Clinton puts it, a plague of obesity, which is not a sign of a dearth of free-market opportunity for success, it's a sign of disinterest in the work required to succeed in favor of government cheese and welfare payments.

In other words, in America, most people are poor by choice, and usually the choice is "I don't want to work that hard, and I don't want to move to where the work is, so I'll just take the welfare and smoke crack instead."

Their problem is not "equity" or "fairness," it's laziness, sloth and dependency-culture mind-set.

[MattShizzle]

Whatever, Fascist.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

There is no aristocracy or hereditary rights that privilege one person or family above another, it's a meritocracy where anyone at all can play the game and win if they have it in them to do so.

Problem is, in reality (as opposed to the fantasy capitalism you described) there are real barriers. Sure, they are not the old ones of class, and a certain number of people do achieve great wealth and power from humble beginnings. But you missed the essence of my point, which was a statistical one. It is simply more likely that the children of wealthy parents will gain the required qualifications, or be apponted to the best jobs. Both the money available and the networking of their parents will tend to achieve that. My response is modest, and would no doubt be sneered at by the dogmatic left; simply provide more opportunities for higher education to capable students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to bring the reality a little closer to your meritocratic fantasy...

[Seth]

Whatever, Fascist.

How....erudite.

[charlou]

I don't know what it's like where you are, Coito, but I suspect it's not that different to Australia, wherein personally negotiating pay rates is not possible for most employment positions. The types of jobs where it is possible to do so are fewer than those where it isn't possible. Okay, you can say that if people want the privilege of negoting pay rates then they can just go and seek those jobs ... That's fine and dandy ... but the point is there only so many of those jobs ... and it still leaves a large number of people vieing for all those positions where such negotiations are not possible, and having to settle for what is on offer.

Indeed. So what? If the work available is common labor requiring only basic common skills, why should an employer pay more for such labor than what the average qualified applicant will accept for the work? When you're in competition for a job, you have to either ask for less or prove you're worth more in order to be offered more. So what? That's how business works. You seem to think that the employer owes you something. He doesn't.

If someone is hired to do a job, in Australia the pay is commensurate with the work and time, regardless who is hired. Same work, same pay .. qualifications have nothing to do with that aspect of it. Qualifications only come into it where/when a company/organisiation prefers qualified people for a job, in which case they wouldn't hire an unqualified person for it in the first place ... or where/when the government imposes a minimum standard of qualification, in which case the company/organisation are compelled to hire qualified people, by law.

Here, at least, we have workers unions to negotiate rates and working conditions on behalf of a bloc of employees.

I have no particular quibble with private-sector unions, so long as they don't misuse government power to give them an advantage in the negotiations (as they do under the National Labor Relations Board regulations here in the US). Banding together to negotiate with an employer is perfectly appropriate, so long as the employer is free to say "no thanks" and boot all union members out and hire non-union workers. That way, it's a free and equal negotiation in which the employer seeks to obtain skilled employees who will all work for a negotiated wage/work structure without his having to negotiate with each employee, and the employees will have a representative negotiator to look after their interests, but with the understanding that if they ask for too much, they may ALL be fired and replaced.

I can only disagree that it's better if companies can dictate employment terms, along with the notion that people are there to serve a company and that it's not an engagement of mutual cooperation.

This balance of power works pretty well when government doesn't put its thumb on the scale one way or the other.

It works well for companies who have the power, and the politicians they have in their pocket.

I prefer a government who is employed by the people, for the people ... not the puppet of corporate interests.

Public-sector unions...that's another thing entirely and ought to be utterly illegal.

Illegal? Where's the freedom in that?

[Hermit]

Seth wrote:

There is no aristocracy or hereditary rights that privilege one person or family above another, it's a meritocracy where anyone at all can play the game and win if they have it in them to do so.

Problem is, in reality (as opposed to the fantasy capitalism you described) there are real barriers. Sure, they are not the old ones of class, and a certain number of people do achieve great wealth and power from humble beginnings. But you missed the essence of my point, which was a statistical one. It is simply more likely that the children of wealthy parents will gain the required qualifications, or be apponted to the best jobs. Both the money available and the networking of their parents will tend to achieve that. My response is modest, and would no doubt be sneered at by the dogmatic left; simply provide more opportunities for higher education to capable students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to bring the reality a little closer to your meritocratic fantasy...

Regarding the bolded bit, I am afraid that Seth dismisses the relevance of statistics whenever they look like demolishing his ideology. For example: "The statistical argument is completely fallacious and immoral because..." If he thinks statistics help his cause, he will, of course, ask for them to be provided. For example: "Um, care to look up the statistics on complications of abortion and get back to us...?"

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

There is no aristocracy or hereditary rights that privilege one person or family above another, it's a meritocracy where anyone at all can play the game and win if they have it in them to do so.

Problem is, in reality (as opposed to the fantasy capitalism you described) there are real barriers.

Of course there are barriers. There's incompetence, stupidity, ignorance, laziness, cupidity, greed, and all manner of personal failings and incapacities that people have to overcome in order to be successful. So what? That's how life is. You have to overcome your inadequacies and fears in order to prevail and succeed. It's the struggle against inadequacy that makes us better people, which is one of the keys to success. Nobody said it was easy, and those who are lazy or afraid will live their lives in mediocrity and will not reap the rewards of courage and risk. And that's just how it should be. The mediocre take no risks and live their lives in mediocrity and the courageous prevail and are rewarded.

When you reward mediocrity, you just get more mediocrity, and that's not how society advances, that's how it decays and is destroyed. If you want to be mediocre, that's fine, but you don't get to enjoy the rewards that come to those who work hard and put themselves at risk.

Sure, they are not the old ones of class,

And that's what's important. The barriers are barriers created by the abilities or inadequacies of the individual, and if they can overcome their inadequacies, they can succeed.

and a certain number of people do achieve great wealth and power from humble beginnings.

Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum.

But you missed the essence of my point, which was a statistical one.

I didn't miss it, I ignored it. There will be a bell-curve of economic and social status no matter what because there are some people who are doers and some people who aren't, and those who aren't don't deserve to enjoy the same economic and social benefits that accrue to those who work hard to achieve success. If you give economic success to people who haven't earned it, they won't value it, they will fritter it away, and they will end up right back where they were to begin with, or worse. And the only way you can do that anyway is to steal what SOMEONE ELSE has earned in order to gift it to the inadequate, who don't deserve it because they haven't earned it for themselves.

It is simply more likely that the children of wealthy parents will gain the required qualifications, or be apponted to the best jobs.

So what? Would you have the incompetent, slothful, indolent and inadequate running things? They tried that in the USSR. Didn't work, did it?

Both the money available and the networking of their parents will tend to achieve that.

So what? They are the best qualified and everyone benefits when the qualified and competent run things, as opposed to the unqualified and incompetent.

My response is modest, and would no doubt be sneered at by the dogmatic left; simply provide more opportunities for higher education to capable students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to bring the reality a little closer to your meritocratic fantasy...

I'm fine with giving those from disadvantaged backgrounds educational opportunities, but ONLY those who are willing to work hard to prove that they are worth the investment. I do not agree that merely because someone comes from an economically disadvantaged (or even the scion of the economically advantaged) that they are worthy of public investment in their futures. We have to have a weeding-out process that reserves our higher education facilities for those who both deserve them and are willing to work hard to take advantage of the gift and not waste it.

For one thing, I'd boot ANY college student who gets caught intoxicated on anything right out on his or her ass without a second thought. I'd also boot out anyone who cannot maintain a C average at all times. The below-average student has no business consuming valuable college educational resources and needs to transfer to a trade school and learn to be a plumber or electrician or bus driver instead.

And I wouldn't admit to college anyone that has less than a 3.5 GPA coming out of high school, because a lower score shows an incapacity and lack of aptitude for paying attention to the importance of a free public education, and we don't need ingrates and lazy slobs in our colleges.

[Coito ergo sum]

Moreover, people who make a lot of money are generally doing something that you and I can't do. You think it's "easy" and "do nothing" to be a CEO of a major bank? That seems to me to be a gross understatement of what it takes to become and be a successful banker.

I know a successful banker, we grew up together actually. So yes I do.

Well, it's the rare individual who is just handed money. People with money tend not to part with it easily. That's how they stay wealthy.

To suggest that it's "easy" to go out and make millions or become a CEO of a bank by doing "nothing" is a crock of shit. The average CEO works far more than an 8 hour day, and they also accomplish more than some others do. Most of us wouldn't know the first thing about it. I have a professional career in a different field than banking - I worked for 20 years where a 40 hour week seemed like taking time off. I've only now started slowing down. If someone wants to try to tell me my road to some comfort level was "easy" and "lucky" - they can go fuck themselves. The only "luck" I've had was bad, and I've had to overcome it.

Now ask me about the person on state financial support who does nothing to earn the money they receive and will do so for life. Go ahead.

Why would I do that? Does it have something to do with whether that person should be allowed to open up a lemonade stand, or sell hot dogs?

It was a rhetorical question meant to make you think.

Why don't you think about it?

I reject your assumption that people who are CEOs and other high-level positions don't work. Do you think a guy like, say Steve Jobs, a CEO didn't work? I guarantee you that he sacrificed a good deal of his "life" to building Apple. Do you think that someone can build something like Apple by not doing incredible amounts of work himself?

Every entrepreneur I know works their ass off -- they're up late nights working. They pull all-nighters. The have worked 80 and 100 hour weeks to build what they are trying to build, and most without 1/1000th of the success that someone like Jobs had.

So, you're argument is - CEOs of banks don't work hard, and get paid millions. So, you ask me to now talk about someone staying home on the dole. What do you want me to say about that person? I am all for helping people who are down on their luck, or have a problem that keeps them from handling their own affairs. You'd have to be specific about what this person is up to -- is he able bodied and able minded? Did he just suffer a job setback and is struggling to get back on his feet? Is he just laying on the couch all day doing nothing and not worrying about it?

[Seth]

I don't know what it's like where you are, Coito, but I suspect it's not that different to Australia, wherein personally negotiating pay rates is not possible for most employment positions. The types of jobs where it is possible to do so are fewer than those where it isn't possible. Okay, you can say that if people want the privilege of negoting pay rates then they can just go and seek those jobs ... That's fine and dandy ... but the point is there only so many of those jobs ... and it still leaves a large number of people vieing for all those positions where such negotiations are not possible, and having to settle for what is on offer.

Indeed. So what? If the work available is common labor requiring only basic common skills, why should an employer pay more for such labor than what the average qualified applicant will accept for the work? When you're in competition for a job, you have to either ask for less or prove you're worth more in order to be offered more. So what? That's how business works. You seem to think that the employer owes you something. He doesn't.

If someone is hired to do a job, in Australia the pay is commensurate with the work and time, regardless who is hired. Same work, same pay .. qualifications have nothing to do with that aspect of it. Qualifications only come into it where/when a company/organisiation prefers qualified people for a job, in which case they wouldn't hire an unqualified person for it in the first place ... or where/when the government imposes a minimum standard of qualification, in which case the company/organisation are compelled to hire qualified people, by law.

Well, qualifications have everything to do with it. If I hire two people to assemble widgets, they are both doing the "same work," right? But if one person can assemble 40 widgets per hour and the other can only assemble 10 widgets per hour, why should I pay the latter the same as I pay the former? Obviously the latter is less qualified than the former, and deserves a lower pay rate as a result, since the whole point of hiring either of them is so that I can get widgets assembled with maximum efficiency at the lowest possible labor cost. The former worker is worth more to me as an employer and deserves to be paid more even though he does the "same work" as the latter.

Here, at least, we have workers unions to negotiate rates and working conditions on behalf of a bloc of employees.

I have no particular quibble with private-sector unions, so long as they don't misuse government power to give them an advantage in the negotiations (as they do under the National Labor Relations Board regulations here in the US). Banding together to negotiate with an employer is perfectly appropriate, so long as the employer is free to say "no thanks" and boot all union members out and hire non-union workers. That way, it's a free and equal negotiation in which the employer seeks to obtain skilled employees who will all work for a negotiated wage/work structure without his having to negotiate with each employee, and the employees will have a representative negotiator to look after their interests, but with the understanding that if they ask for too much, they may ALL be fired and replaced.

I can only disagree that it's better if companies can dictate employment terms, along with the notion that people are there to serve a company and that it's not an engagement of mutual cooperation.

Why? They are there to serve the company. They are there to do work the company needs done in exchange for a negotiated wage/benefit package. The mutuality is that the employer needs qualified workers to produce widgets at a cost-per-widget that allows the employer to make a profit and the worker needs a job so he can feed his family and pay his rent. But if the worker demands more in wages and compensation than the employer can afford to pay while still making a profit marketing widgets, then the employer must say no to the wage demand and he must find another employee who is willing to do the required work for less money. The employer/employee relationship is not a family relationship, it's a business relationship. The worker has a skill set to sell and the employer needs that skill set. It's no different than the relationship between the employer and his customers.

Business and commerce are not some sort of social welfare system that obligates the business owner to create a lifetime social and familial relationship with a worker that binds the employer to looking after the employee's welfare.

This balance of power works pretty well when government doesn't put its thumb on the scale one way or the other.

It works well for companies who have the power, and the politicians they have in their pocket.

Yes, that's a problem, but that's not a function of either capitalism or free markets, that's a distortion and abuse of both.

I prefer a government who is employed by the people, for the people ... not the puppet of corporate interests.

I do to, but what you're describing has nothing whatever to do with capitalism or free markets.

Public-sector unions...that's another thing entirely and ought to be utterly illegal.

Illegal? Where's the freedom in that?

Public sector employees are not free, they are servants of the people, and they work at the pleasure of the people for whatever the people think they are worth. The problem with public sector unions is that the people who negotiate the compensation packages on behalf of the people have no direct interest in saving the public's money because they get paid no matter what sort of contract they negotiate. This leads to inflation of wage and benefit packages for public employees (like schoolteacher, police and firefighters) far beyond their free-market value, which costs the public more money than they should be paying for those services.

In the free market of commercial labor negotiations, the business owner has a bottom line, and if he pays his workers too much, he makes no profit and goes out of business. This means he has an absolute limit beyond which he cannot go in paying wages and benefits, and the unions know this, and know that if their demands are too high, they will have no jobs at all. This balance of power works reasonably well in the private sector.

But in the public sector, there is no absolute limit to what the government negotiator can agree to because the public's wallet is very deep. And since the government negotiator has no dog in the hunt, he has no real interest in preventing the public employee union from soaking the public for far more than the services purchased are worth. That's why we end up with bloated government payrolls and gold-plated public employee benefits that are bankrupting cities all across the planet.

[charlou]

I don't know what it's like where you are, Coito, but I suspect it's not that different to Australia, wherein personally negotiating pay rates is not possible for most employment positions. The types of jobs where it is possible to do so are fewer than those where it isn't possible. Okay, you can say that if people want the privilege of negoting pay rates then they can just go and seek those jobs ... That's fine and dandy ... but the point is there only so many of those jobs ... and it still leaves a large number of people vieing for all those positions where such negotiations are not possible, and having to settle for what is on offer.

Indeed. So what? If the work available is common labor requiring only basic common skills, why should an employer pay more for such labor than what the average qualified applicant will accept for the work? When you're in competition for a job, you have to either ask for less or prove you're worth more in order to be offered more. So what? That's how business works. You seem to think that the employer owes you something. He doesn't.

If someone is hired to do a job, in Australia the pay is commensurate with the work and time, regardless who is hired. Same work, same pay .. qualifications have nothing to do with that aspect of it. Qualifications only come into it where/when a company/organisiation prefers qualified people for a job, in which case they wouldn't hire an unqualified person for it in the first place ... or where/when the government imposes a minimum standard of qualification, in which case the company/organisation are compelled to hire qualified people, by law.

Well, qualifications have everything to do with it. If I hire two people to assemble widgets, they are both doing the "same work," right? But if one person can assemble 40 widgets per hour and the other can only assemble 10 widgets per hour, why should I pay the latter the same as I pay the former? Obviously the latter is less qualified than the former, and deserves a lower pay rate as a result, since the whole point of hiring either of them is so that I can get widgets assembled with maximum efficiency at the lowest possible labor cost. The former worker is worth more to me as an employer and deserves to be paid more even though he does the "same work" as the latter.

You're describing productivity here ... quite a different consideration to whether an employee is qualified.

Here, at least, we have workers unions to negotiate rates and working conditions on behalf of a bloc of employees.

I have no particular quibble with private-sector unions, so long as they don't misuse government power to give them an advantage in the negotiations (as they do under the National Labor Relations Board regulations here in the US). Banding together to negotiate with an employer is perfectly appropriate, so long as the employer is free to say "no thanks" and boot all union members out and hire non-union workers. That way, it's a free and equal negotiation in which the employer seeks to obtain skilled employees who will all work for a negotiated wage/work structure without his having to negotiate with each employee, and the employees will have a representative negotiator to look after their interests, but with the understanding that if they ask for too much, they may ALL be fired and replaced.

I can only disagree that it's better if companies can dictate employment terms, along with the notion that people are there to serve a company and that it's not an engagement of mutual cooperation.

Why? They are there to serve the company. They are there to do work the company needs done in exchange for a negotiated wage/benefit package. The mutuality is that the employer needs qualified workers to produce widgets at a cost-per-widget that allows the employer to make a profit and the worker needs a job so he can feed his family and pay his rent. But if the worker demands more in wages and compensation than the employer can afford to pay while still making a profit marketing widgets, then the employer must say no to the wage demand and he must find another employee who is willing to do the required work for less money. The employer/employee relationship is not a family relationship, it's a business relationship. The worker has a skill set to sell and the employer needs that skill set. It's no different than the relationship between the employer and his customers.

The employer needs that employee and should pay an equitable rate for his services.

As for customers, they are employers and employees too ... and employees are customers, as are employers. It's a big old case of mutual necessity keeping things going ... everything else aside, for that alone, we are all equal.

Business and commerce are not some sort of social welfare system that obligates the business owner to create a lifetime social and familial relationship with a worker that binds the employer to looking after the employee's welfare.

Extremist arguments, eh? Okay ... Are you in favour of slave labour?