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A question regarding Atlas Shrugged

Is it OK for businesses to strike

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Lord of Planar

Lord of Planar

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If it's OK for workers to strike when they are unfairly treated by business, then is it OK for businesses to strike when unfairly treated by government?

I didn't read the book, and only saw the first two "Atlas Shrugged" movies, but in both, major corporations just shut down, on strike, when the government kept pushing them.

I thought about this idea after seeing the Walmart strike thread.
 
Lord of Planar said:
If it's OK for workers to strike when they are unfairly treated by business, then is it OK for businesses to strike when unfairly treated by government?
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No, because they have a democratic level of participation in the government. In a democratic society where there are peaceful mechanisms to change the law, It hardly makes sense. Also You are using the word 'business' as if a business is a type of person that can protest. Only the people that run a business can protest something, not the business itself. A 'business' is just a concept.

I also want to know your definition of "unfair".
 
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ThesisQuasar said:
No, because they have a democratic level of participation in the government. In a democratic society where there are peaceful mechanisms to change the law, It hardly makes sense. Also You are using the word 'business' as if a business is a type of person that can protest. Only the people that run a business can protest something, not the business itself. A 'business' is just a concept.
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So it would amount to the decision of the CEO, stock holders, etc. A group of people make such a decision, like a group who strikes.

Right?
 
Lord of Planar said:
If it's OK for workers to strike when they are unfairly treated by business, then is it OK for businesses to strike when unfairly treated by government?

I didn't read the book, and only saw the first two "Atlas Shrugged" movies, but in both, major corporations just shut down, on strike, when the government kept pushing them.

I thought about this idea after seeing the Walmart strike thread.
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?? OK for the business to simply shut down until the government quits pushing them?

Of course they have that right. No business has to stay open.

Now, should a significant portion of business simply say, "We're closing our doors for a couple of days to protest government intrusion," they just might get people's attention.

But, like an employee strike, they'd have to be unified and have to have a significant percentage of cooperation.
 
Lord of Planar said:
If it's OK for workers to strike when they are unfairly treated by business, then is it OK for businesses to strike when unfairly treated by government?

I didn't read the book, and only saw the first two "Atlas Shrugged" movies, but in both, major corporations just shut down, on strike, when the government kept pushing them.

I thought about this idea after seeing the Walmart strike thread.
Click to expand...

I read the book back in the late 70's - I didn't see what the big deal was about it then...and I still don't, because it's obvious that the author assumed that only those who thought as she did would ever be productive citizens. To me, it's a less sensible version of the Morlocks and Eloi in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine".

And while any business should be able to strike, have we really ever seen major businesses strike? Ever? Not to my recollection. We've seen employees of businesses strike, but not the businesses themselves.

I would say it's a lot more sensible to address what DOES happen - employees of a business striking against that business...and don't waste one's time worrying about what does NOT happen - a business striking against the government.
 
Dittohead not! said:
But, like an employee strike, they'd have to be unified and have to have a significant percentage of cooperation.
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You mean like the several that did in Atlas Shrugged?
 
Dittohead not! said:
?? OK for the business to simply shut down until the government quits pushing them?

Of course they have that right. No business has to stay open.

Now, should a significant portion of business simply say, "We're closing our doors for a couple of days to protest government intrusion," they just might get people's attention.

But, like an employee strike, they'd have to be unified and have to have a significant percentage of cooperation.
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Which is essentially what happened in the book.
 
Lord of Planar said:
So it would amount to the decision of the CEO, stock holders, etc. A group of people make such a decision, like a group who strikes.

Right?
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Technically, anyone can protest anything given that it's peaceful. The better question is what basis is being used to justify the protest? Is the basis valid and well backed?

The idea of businesses mass protesting seems to be a remarkably unlikely scenario though. Consider: Stock holders are detached from the business and will just pull stock at the first sign of trouble, there can easily be internal conflict within a business, workers may dislike the business or disagree with the premise that the protest is based on. It's also difficult for businesses to connect with each other in any unified fashion - especially among competitors. A business shouldn't have to be viewed as something that needs love and care in a similar manner to a person, it should simply be viewed as a concept, and who ever likes a given business, likes it. As for the strike itself, it probably would not be very big at all.
 
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ThesisQuasar said:
No, because they have a democratic level of participation in the government. In a democratic society where there are peaceful mechanisms to change the law, It hardly makes sense. Also You are using the word 'business' as if a business is a type of person that can protest. Only the people that run a business can protest something, not the business itself. A 'business' is just a concept.

I also want to know your definition of "unfair".
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They own the business, so when the owner decides to go on strike and shut his doors they have taken whatever service the business provided with them. If enough businesses actually closed their doors even for a short time society itself would crumble pretty quickly. A real unified strike of businesses would be extremely effective.
 
ThesisQuasar said:
Technically, anyone can protest anything given that it's peaceful. The better question is what basis is being used to justify the protest? Is the basis valid and well backed?

The idea of businesses mass protesting seems to be a remarkably unlikely scenario though. Consider: Stock holders are detached from the business and will just pull stock at the first sign of trouble, there can easily be internal conflict within a business, workers may dislike the business or disagree with the premise that the protest is based on. It's also difficult for businesses to connect with each other in any unified fashion - especially among competitors. A business shouldn't have to be viewed as something that needs love and care in a similar manner to a person, it should simply be viewed as a concept, and who ever likes a given business, likes it. As for the strike itself, it probably would not be very big at all.
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A business is property of someone, and respecting their property rights is something the government shouldn't just ignore like they commonly do. Just because I'm running a business doesn't mean that I somehow don't matter.

As for the rest of your argument, they would clearly have to go into it with it knowing that all employees would either have to be fired or not paid for however long the strike takes place. If it was actually a unified strike the workers would have pretty much no choice but to deal with it.
 
Henrin said:
They own the business, so when the owner decides to go on strike and shut his doors they have taken whatever service the business provided with them. If enough businesses actually closed their doors even for a short time society itself would crumble pretty quickly. A real unified strike of businesses would be extremely effective.
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1. You probably realize that such a scenario is highly unlikely due to Numerous factors such as disunity among businesses, and that many would simply remain in business.

2. Competitors, and new companies would just continue to stay in business to try and get an economic edge.

3. Even if such an unlikely scenario came true, it would only produce short term effects for the most part - other than being remembered as a really big event. It would provide the public reasons to vote on more publicly managed businesses that would reliably offer services, thus creating some opposite effects of what the business owners wanted in the first place, and it would be significantly more competitive.

I had an urge to discuss GDP in depth (Not that I view GDP as being a good indicator of prosperity), but that would be off topic.
 
Lord of Planar said:
If it's OK for workers to strike when they are unfairly treated by business, then is it OK for businesses to strike when unfairly treated by government?

I didn't read the book, and only saw the first two "Atlas Shrugged" movies, but in both, major corporations just shut down, on strike, when the government kept pushing them.

I thought about this idea after seeing the Walmart strike thread.
Click to expand...

It is legal as far as I know, but doomed to failure. Some other business will swoop in and pick up the slack and the added profits. Atlas Shrugged was terribly naive, much like libertarianism.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
I read the book back in the late 70's - I didn't see what the big deal was about it then...and I still don't, because it's obvious that the author assumed that only those who thought as she did would ever be productive citizens. To me, it's a less sensible version of the Morlocks and Eloi in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine".

And while any business should be able to strike, have we really ever seen major businesses strike? Ever? Not to my recollection. We've seen employees of businesses strike, but not the businesses themselves.

I would say it's a lot more sensible to address what DOES happen - employees of a business striking against that business...and don't waste one's time worrying about what does NOT happen - a business striking against the government.
Click to expand...

The beauty of Atlas Shrugged was that it did NOT portray class as success. Several of the people who were rich were corrupt and not personally successful (the parasites). Several of the people who went on strike and left society were hard workers but hardly affluent or influential. Rand was making the point that personal accomplishment, however slight, was the measure of success. The problem that she voiced was the seizing of another's accomplishment by force, especially by those who had no skill or ability to create on their own.
 
Redress said:
It is legal as far as I know, but doomed to failure. Some other business will swoop in and pick up the slack and the added profits. Atlas Shrugged was terribly naive, much like libertarianism.
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This has nothing to do with libertarianism. As the government has crafted the laws and warped the market certain industries would not do much of anything for some time if all the players left the field of play. Other industries would be different, but in this day and age that doesn't include that many industries. That isn't even considering that businesses take time and money to get off the ground and if what we are talking were to ever happen there would be a huge depression going on and a massive increase in crime.
 
Henrin said:
This has nothing to do with libertarianism. As the government has crafted the laws and warped the market certain industries would not do much of anything for some time if all the players left the field of play. Other industries would be different, but in this day and age we are not talking about a lot of industries.
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I did not say they where the same thing or had to do with one another. Reading is gud!
 
Redress said:
I did not say they where the same thing or had to do with one another. Reading is gud!
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Again, your argument states outright that businesses would pick up the slack. We are talking about entire industries no longer existing and you actually think businesses would just pick up the slack? There is no one in the industry. It literally doesn't exist anymore. Other players would have to come into the field which would take time and a considerable amount of money. Do you actually think you can just say, oh, we can deal with the crushing starvation and wait around for someone else to enter the field?
 
ThesisQuasar said:
1. You probably realize that such a scenario is highly unlikely due to Numerous factors such as disunity among businesses, and that many would simply remain in business.
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Absolutely.

3. Even if such an unlikely scenario came true, it would only produce short term effects for the most part - other than being remembered as a really big event. It would provide the public reasons to vote on more publicly managed businesses that would reliably offer services, thus creating some opposite effects of what the business owners wanted in the first place, and it would be significantly more competitive.
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Publicly managed businesses? You might like government run operations? If businesses went on strike the government wouldn't have the revenue to do anything, let alone start their own competitors in certain fields. Furthermore, the government competing with private enterprise is actually a terrible idea as they are the same party that sets the rules for the industry and thus have a competitive advantage from the start. They also steal their revenue from the public instead of relying on revenue created by sales, so if their sales were down, they could just use public funds to keep themselves up and running.
 
Henrin said:
A business is property of someone, and respecting their property rights is something the government shouldn't just ignore like they commonly do. Just because I'm running a business doesn't mean that I somehow don't matter.
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I never made claims to the alternative, and this is off topic, and does not address anything I explicitly stated.

Besides that, Business owners/the board, shouldn't use a business in such a way as to harm members of society or harm the planet (Such as pollution, unsustainable destruction of nature, etc). Businesses should also be fair to workers, and when it comes to businesses, I have a very strict definition of fairness. You see, a business and employee should be seen as a mutually beneficial relationship, as one cannot benefit without the other. With that in mind, Workers rights should be ensured, and wages should be much higher among most classes of workers to reflect a relatively balanced (but not equal) split of the profit down the chain of the business, from Business owner to the most basic employees. all of this gets into a meta-political discussion and is relatively off-topic.

Henrin said:
As for the rest of your argument, they would clearly have to go into it with it knowing that all employees would either have to be fired or not paid for however long the strike takes place. If it was actually a unified strike the workers would have pretty much no choice but to deal with it.
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And that directly creates an incentive for the employees to counter protest, Join the competitors, attempt to form a new business/company as a form of protest, and/or deliberately quit. I also view this scenario as revealing the lack of balance of power between business and employees. I don't think it's right that good workers should be fired on a whim without a very good, legitimate reason. At the very least, the employees should be moved under a different employeer under such circumstances.
 
tomkat364 said:
The beauty of Atlas Shrugged was that it did NOT portray class as success. Several of the people who were rich were corrupt and not personally successful (the parasites). Several of the people who went on strike and left society were hard workers but hardly affluent or influential. Rand was making the point that personal accomplishment, however slight, was the measure of success. The problem that she voiced was the seizing of another's accomplishment by force, especially by those who had no skill or ability to create on their own.
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That may have been one side issue of the book...but the main thrust of the book was "us vs. them"...and the 'us' were she portrayed as the right-thinking people, as opposed to the 'them', the lazy good-for-nothings who were running the world into the ground.
 
Henrin said:
Publicly managed businesses? You might like government run operations? If businesses went on strike the government wouldn't have the revenue to do anything, let alone start their own competitors in certain fields. Furthermore, the government competing with private enterprise is actually a terrible idea as they are the same party that sets the rules for the industry and thus have a competitive advantage from the start. They also steal their revenue from the public instead of relying on revenue created by sales, so if their sales were down, they could just use public funds to keep themselves up and running.
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It's going to take a bit too long to educate you on the concept of GDP. This is not an offense to you, there are just many things about your comments that don't reflect a good knowledge base of how an economy works relative to a GDP.

Who says that those type of businesses can only be publicly managed? They can also be privately managed and given a funding incentive by the government based on how well they do. To level the playing field, such businesses could give much more back to the government (most of their profit). I view it this way, with such a system in place, people with much less initial funds can start a business and the success rate of businesses would go up. There would be much more competition and innovation. Prices would even begin to go down for the consumer in the long run. Monopolies would be reduced to be impractical, allowing for diverse sectors of innovation and goods.
 
Henrin said:
Again, your argument states outright that businesses would pick up the slack. We are talking about entire industries no longer existing and you actually think businesses would just pick up the slack? There is no one in the industry. It literally doesn't exist anymore. Other players would have to come into the field which would take time and a considerable amount of money. Do you actually think you can just say, oh, we can deal with the crushing starvation and wait around for someone else to enter the field?
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Where there is demand, there are always people who will supply that demand.
 
Lord of Planar said:
If it's OK for workers to strike when they are unfairly treated by business, then is it OK for businesses to strike when unfairly treated by government?

I didn't read the book, and only saw the first two "Atlas Shrugged" movies, but in both, major corporations just shut down, on strike, when the government kept pushing them.

I thought about this idea after seeing the Walmart strike thread.
Click to expand...

When has business been treated unfairly treated by government?
 
Glen Contrarian said:
That may have been one side issue of the book...but the main thrust of the book was "us vs. them"...and the 'us' were she portrayed as the right-thinking people, as opposed to the 'them', the lazy good-for-nothings who were running the world into the ground.
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There may be some truth in that.

What I have seen over the last several decades, is that voters don't vote for what is best for society as much as they vote for what is best for them. I believe to protect from the lazy harming the world, we need to regulate voting. My libertarian side hates regulation until they become necessary, and I believe this may become necessary. We need to disallow voting by people who rely on subsidies. All they ever vote for are politicians and measures that give them more of other people's money.

I have been saying for years that the America I knew and grew up with is doomed to fail. My reasons are because of the "me, me, me" attitude of voters.
 
Redress said:
Where there is demand, there are always people who will supply that demand.
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Yes, but should one large business close it's doors, how long until others can pick up the slack?

What type of lead time do you think there is?
 
Winchester said:
When has business been treated unfairly treated by government?
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Are you serious?

Often, regulations and taxes. How many businesses fail just because they cannot compete with cheaper imports? Imports have added shipping costs, but lower costs bringing products to market.
 
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