[lfcc]

I'm from Portugal (where we've had somewhat similar experiences to Spain with the mentality for unions).

When I was young I believed they were good as it was what I was taught and fell in the socialist-leaning mentality of much of the country.

Having started to learn about economics, entering the industry, and seeing the arguments many people make for unionization have definitely led to me to swing much harder to the "unions are evil" side of the argument.

That said I do believe they are a double edged sword of sorts. When the only employer for a certain profession is the government for example (i.e. not driven by profits and losses, or not a part of a competitive market) unions can actually help make things fair and get a point across that otherwise would not be visible. But in general they are much less efficient than profits and losses in a competitive market and in those situations will lead to a decline in growth that you would otherwise not get.

[jimcsharp]

Unions are just reverse corporations. They cannot be any more good or evil than a corporation.

[jtms]

A reverse corporation of sorts, but with only a single source of revenue. A corporation is a collective that works together to produce something. A union, on the other hand, seeks to extract as much value as is possible/reasonable from the host organization, but not so much that they destroy it.

[jimcsharp]

I'm not sure if I'm being poe's law'd or this is going to turn into a recursive thread but... this is also describing a corporation:

> seeks to extract as much value as is possible/reasonable from the host organization, but not so much that they destroy it

[jtms]

I guess my main points were that corporations differ in that their “host” is basically all of society and they must produce things of value or they die, but a union’s “host” is either a single corporation or industry and they do not directly produce things of value.

[anoncake]

Unions consume goods and use services to make a loss?