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Um, no. Factory owners have a lot of power (lobbying, uniqueness, etc) when compared to factory workers. We're talking about a newly industrialized world, with a new working class. Their response was to form alliances with each other because they share common interests. There are many reasons why unions are failing now. Factory workers do not form 80% of the workforce (in the developed world) any more. People now work in various different positions and lines of work, so they don't feel that they have mutuals interests with many others. Power brings corruption. When the unions gathered a lot of power, we started seeing politicians emerging from the unions to take the power. And gradually they started betraying the people that voted for them and took the unions down with them. Also, there is now a more egoistic mentality in most people. People tend to believe that they're more worthy than the rest, which is all nice until you realize that that is what most people think and only a few of them are actually going to make it. There are many other explanations and possible causes on why unions failed: "The best they can do is fall back on the default explanation of people living in fallen civilizations" No, and we can also do better than a startup analogy that pretends that unions and strikes were anomalies in production that factory owners threw money at. There was a lot of blood spilled for the right to form unions, the 8hour work day, etc. No, most factory owners a couple of centuries ago were not just giving away money like a startup. They hired thugs, killers, had governors in their pockets and used the police, etc. |