Dear Tom,
You tantalize me. You say you’re going off to Singapore, but you don’t say why. Is the Baffler starting a special Singapore edition? I’d hate to be your distribution manager. Or maybe the AFL-CIO runs union discipline training sessions over there? Maybe you only say you are going to Singapore, but you’re actually going to Hong Kong to get some suits made in the context of a free market economy, and you’re ashamed to admit it to your friends (especially that guy at the next desk with the 40-ounce bottle of beer).
In any case, it’s been a pleasure. It’s always interesting and difficult for me to have a conversation with somebody who has fundamental doubts about capitalism. It’s interesting because never in American history has there been an era in which capitalism and business people had higher prestige, when there have been so few mortal enemies to capitalism. And so it’s good to hear from somebody outside that mainstream. I’m beginning to have serious doubts about consumerism, myself. When the mentality of shopping takes over everything–including religion and politics–then you are living in a shallow, bourgeois wasteland. Gone are the noble visions and the high ideals. This election bugged me because the candidates ran as if they were competing rate plans for cell phone companies: My plan gives you more choices. My plan gives you more prescription drugs on weekends and holidays.
But it’s difficult conversing with someone who fundamentally questions capitalism because I never know what the answer is to the question: As opposed to what? It’s like the Seattle WTO protesters. We know what they were against, but not what they’re for.
This always leaves me confused. For example, throughout our discussion you have come back several times to the question of union strength: Will unions get blamed for a coming recession, etc.
Like almost every conservative I know, I have nothing against unions. Unions are necessary parts of the economy in order to balance the interests of workers against the interests of employers. When a strike occurs, I simply have no political view as to which side to be on any more than I have a view about which side to be on when AOL merges with Time Warner. It’s a private contract process; it’s up to the parties to arrive at some mutually beneficial deal.
A few years ago, I was on a panel before a very left-wing audience, and I was asked which side I took on the UPS strike. I said I took no side. Why should I? But the people in the audience clearly saw a union victory in that strike (and every other strike) as one step toward something larger. Toward what? A workers’ paradise? That’s cloud coocoo land. Unions are capitalist enterprises just like any other.
Well, you can’t respond. You’re off on a plane, I hope flying business class.
Best,
David
