| I think it can work. I do not share the view that it will automatically work. Consider, for a moment, the US electoral system. In structure, it's largely representative democracy. The people who win the elections become the leaders. Those people make policy decisions, or appoint other people who make policy decisions, for a lot of people who then proceed to get very angry at those policy decisions. But at the same time, a lot of those angry people did agree with the concept of what a government is supposed to do for its citizens. They just think it's being done poorly or corruptly. Some of them give up on the ideal being achieveable at all, and greatly reduce their idea of what a government should do, possibly to zero, with the idea that individuals or groups can do it better for themselves. Some instead yell loudly about the things the government is doing wrong. Which of these groups is right is irrelevant; all I want you to see is how a reasonable person can get to any of those conclusions given the current state of the world. Now, back to unions. What some of us believe is that this issue of leaders not effectively representing people's interests is inherent to sufficiently large democratic systems - I'd tentatively put the threshold as "when you know more about the candidates from media than you do from knowing them personally", as that's the point where it becomes feasible to skew voters' opinions en masse. We don't see large unions as having sufficient protection against a charismatic but incompetent/evil person getting put in charge, and doing the usual things such people do with power. It's hard to get such people out of power; see your least favorite incumbent politician for an example. I do happen to be in favor of voluntary unions, because for some people that risk is acceptable for the benefits unions provide. I am very much not in favor of any form of "you must associate with this union in some way to work here" arrangements, because some unions are useless or actively bad, and removing the option to not participate in those removes the only feasible escape hatch for those who need it. |