Communists roused 3000 odd unemployed men to march on the Rouge works in Detroit, where several man were gunned down and others wounded.

This was the culmination of a concerted effort by union organizers to gain public sympathy- and the co-operation of Ford workers.

This is going to be long, so you might want to get a coffee and pee before reading below the fold. I’ll try to be as brief and as coherent as possible.

Ford workers at the time- and i know because I’m descended of them- lived under some pretty opressive conditions. The work was hard, the hours long, the conditions dangerous. And these were the best jobs to be had anywhere, at the time. People FOUGHT to get to work 12 hour days in factories that were boiling hot in summer and freezing cold in winter, on machinery that was intrinsically unsafe to operate. And they were- as my grandfather said- tickled to get those jobs, because they paid better than anything else, just about anywhere.

They had a right, however, to better conditions. And they needed a way to get them. And the only way that existed a the time was the unions.

I’ve had this discussion in the past with M alger, and dropped it because I had no desire to be contentious, especially not with someone I like and respect as much as Mark.

Bottomline was, and is, I’m correct, and I gave up the discussion at the time because of my lack of ability to articulate what I was talking about in an understandable manner.

Now, I think I’m ready.

Kim du Toit speaks of Elephants Stumbling, and I completely understand and concur- I hope I can be as eloquent in my description of my concept as he is of his.

See, as I discussed with Mark Alger, this was a time when industry had been in the habit of running roughshod over it’s employees, and there was zero reason to stop, because it was the depression, and if anyone complained, they got their asses fired, and they had their pick of thousands of people waiting outside to get the recently vacated job.

Mark maintained that the market would solve this problem. And he’s correct, the market would eventually have solved it, but would have done so on the backs of millions of Americans. IN that era, people starved to death. A lot of people.

The right looks at the “solutions” of the unions, of the communists, of the statists, of the socialists, and sneer. And rightfully so- because those “solutions” are- like unions- worse than the problems they solve, by orders of magnitude. It is unquestionable that the introduction of socialist trade unions have been the downfall of many of our best industries, and the cancerous spread of their influence has been worse than disastrous.

The problem is, while the left in general provides dangerous, stupid, self destructive and horrible solutions to problems, the right provides nothing whatsoever. The conventional conservative wisdom is that the market will solve about anything you can throw at it. And it will. But it doesn’t do a goddamned thing for the guy who lost both his hands feeding sheet metal to a press, and now cannot work and has zero protection and no barrier between himself and his family, and starvation. Will the market eventually figure this out? Sure. Will the average joe- whether he believes it to be correct or not- wait for that resolution? Fuck no!!!

SO here is Og’s third law. I think I’ve covered enough of the basics to make this understandable:

When the left offers bad short term solutions and the right offers no short term solutions to a given problem, the right deliberately abandons the reins of power to the left.

(Here’s one and two, for newcomers)

because as Mrs D wisely says here:

“We’ve had these discussions so many times on this website. People, in general (and in a significant majority) DO NOT CARE. They do not care, as long as they get their can of beans three cents cheaper. They don’t care if that savings puts 7 people out of work in their hometown, causes their neighbors to become unemployed, or enables unfair or unscrupulous business practices. “

People will vote for the candidate, or union, or organization, that saves them three cents on the can of beans. People will always opt for the short term solution instead of the long term market based solution, because right this very minute, the short term (and DEMONSTRABLY) worse solution improves their lives right away.

As i said in those old discussions with Mark Alger, there has to be a better way.

And there is. It was staring me in the face all along, so close I literally touched it every day.

In 1932, Henry Ford had become so damned bullheaded- so convinced his employees owed him their lives because he provided them with employment, that he chose to fight instead of try to compromise.

The Japanese, after WW2, chose to compromise. They learned the lessons of W Edwards Deming where we did not- and they put them in place. IN almost every Japanese manufacturing facility there is an Employee council, whose job is to act as mediator in company/employee disputes, crosstrain employees so they can be moved easily from one job to another, and work with the company to find ways to be more productive and profitable.

The Japanese model- actually, the Deming model- is a good one, though not the best for everything- but it proves that even the toughest problems can have solutions.

One of the battles we’re fighting now is healthcare- and anyone with two brain cells understands that socialized medicine is a disaster of biblical proportions- but guess what? if the American public has to decide between Iraq “free health care” Osama and “Just wait a while, the healthcare system will eventually get more efficient and affordable” Guess which one will win?

There IS a better way. There is ALWAYS a better way. And if we don’t make an effort to find it, and impliment it, in a way that the American public finds palatable, and which also allows for improved efficiency and reduced government simultaneously, we are dropping the reins of power, and forcing them into the grip of our enemies. We have PROVED that this WILL HAPPEN over, and over, and over, and over again.