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FrostedFlake -> RE: Ooooops! The Bill Comes! (5/24/2013 11:39:17 AM)
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Is it the Unionized Labor that is upset or is it the Union itself that is feeling sorta like dead weight and hoping no one notices?
Wouldn't it be more constructive to find a better thing to fight for, rather than insist on being allowed to continue a fight already won?
Full benefits for part timers.
32 hour week.
24 hour week and two jobs.
College tuition.
There is always something else that needs doing. Unions are a powerful way for working people to help define their society. Unions should look forward and attempt to remain relevant.
quote:
David John Marotta, Forbes Magazine
What is Rent Seeking Behavior?
Voluntary trade benefits both sides. Unless both parties believe they will benefit from the exchange, they will not consent.
In most exchanges both parties can produce the item they are trading more efficiently than they can produce what they are receiving. Producing a surplus of one item provides each party something to trade for someone else’s surplus. Having more than your family needs opens the opportunity to trade the excess for profit.
Unfortunately, when property rights are weakened and the ownership of someone’s wealth or goods is debatable, people can gain more by trying to appropriate that wealth than by producing themselves. This behavior is called rent-seeking.
Rent-seeking frequently requires spending your own resources so you own someone else’s surplus in the end. In the public sector, for example, government lobbyists are hired to sway public policy to benefit their companies and punish their competitors. Although hiring lobbyists clearly benefits the company they represent, the work of lobbyists does not add value to the larger marketplace. If property rights on the surplus the company seeks had been more stable, such roles for lobbyists would never have been created.
Rent-seeking doesn’t add any national value. It is coerced trade and benefits only one side. Rent-seeking can include piracy, lobbying the government or even just giving away money.
Imagine a thriving sea trade in which ships carrying cargo receive a 20% profit on the value of the goods. Now imagine the first pirate who arms his boat with cannons and rent-seeks the profit. The pirates are not producing any value of their own but are spending their own resources to capture the surplus of the shipping trade.
If the pirate ship captures just one in every hundred ships, the average profit for the traders will drop to 19%. Meanwhile the pirate ship is seizing a 100% profit. There is incentive to join the rent-seeking pirate trade. By the time 10 pirates are competing for plunder, the profit of honest merchants has dropped to just 10%. At 20 pirates, there would be no profit remaining and no incentive to engage in the shipping trade.
And he goes on.
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