Well to be fair, I mentioned orphans and medicine, but only so much to say that people getting high end cars is not something that I think labor has any moral obligation to provide by comparison. And as I explained probably in too much length in my reply to them, even in healthcare labor there are limits to what labor can reasonably be asked, and beyond which not working is equally acceptable, because none of that industry even approaches a free market mechanism anywhere from any angle.

In essentially no country is there really a free market of hospitals. They are pretty much always built at the discretion of what we might term “benevolent” government sponsored cartels, to ensure that there isn’t overlap, because nowhere can support the expense of multiple competing hospitals, much like utilities even when they are private. So the part of “free market” where workers can shop around their labor doesn’t exist in most of healthcare, if they bargain it will always be against a de facto sole provider of the service in any area. So what you have is a one way street in labor disputes. Management can do essentially anything hostile to labor so long as it doesn’t go so far as bringing the public in and then the government. This means they can pay ridiculously bad wages, they can even force workers to provide terrible service, and the laborers have no recourse beyond striking in many places.

Which brings us full circle to where we started, because the public in sane countries like Sweden has long ago realized that striking is really not a good thing in critical industries. It is the sort of thing you want to avoid at all costs, so it is essential that companies in such critical industries do not try to play chicken with labor over things, instead they have a very reasonable system companies and labor work together practically by default.

Am I in sympathy with striking nurses, or other healthcare providers, even if them striking means patients suffer? Yes, entirely, because I know that these people care deeply about patients, it is invariably always difficult way too low paid work, and I have never seen an instance where they took any action like this except when the situation was forced by the actions of the company.

There was a lot of crowing by the anti-union crowd just a day ago with the interim decision. Regardless of how this works out in the end, I think this whole episode has made clear if it wasn’t already that the majority of EV buyers and enthusiasts, being upper income people, are remarkably anti-union.

It is truly baffling how people consider the actions of a bunch of rich people (i.e. management at a company) to be justified in anything they do. You will hear the line “They have an obligation to their stockholders”, or just “It’s their money, they can do what they want with it,” in pretty much any scenario where a business does something negative for society or the world at large.

But the second a bunch of workers exercise the absolutely most basic right there is in a free market, that of not working, they are excoriated by these same people. Some of the attitudes in the last thread were as though these workers were withholding medicine for orphans, not just choosing to not work for a company openly hostile to them. Again, Tesla has chosen to do business a certain way, and the workers are choosing to respond. You can debate the legality of both sides however much you want, but it is ridiculous how people put moral judgements out there as if Tesla is owed the labor of Swedish workers.

It’s funny. A rich company owner can do whatever they want, primarily by wielding the power that comes with having oodles of excess money. They could decide to shut down a factory, change rules to make people’s lives hell, do all sorts of things that are clearly coercive or arbitrary and people will just shrug and say “It’s their money, and it’s not illegal.”

But the second a bunch of workers get together and decide to wield the very double edged sword of foregoing their meager wages, i.e. to exercise their right in a free market to work or not work, people come out of the woodwork to complain that it is destroying the economy, that it is thuggish, that it is collusion and the end of free society. I guess poor people getting screwed over is just part of the plan, when the rich are inconvenienced it’s suddenly a major problem that must be dealt with forcefully.