The unionized professional baseball (and basketball, hockey, football, etc…) players seem to be doing okay.

The NFLPA and NBAPA are wildly ineffective and are unable to adequately advocate for their players’ needs.

However, I would chalk that up to immature and young guys not voting for their best interests. When you’re up against the best leaders and lawyers money can buy, your union is bound to seem ineffective.

It's also an unsympathetic postion from the outsider. These are multi-million dollar salaries that are making complaints about locker room amenities and what not. Complaining about having to play 3 days out of 7 also falls on deaf ears a bit. You're being paid to play a game at the most elite levels purely for entertainment purposes. Rather than complaining about playing time, how about asking "are you not entertained?" If you're too tired, sit on the bench and let someone else play.

Yep, funny how that works.

So how does COSTCO thrive?

COSTCO is 1/5th the size of Amazon, even though the company has been around about 20 years longer.

This is like saying your restaurant chain is unsuccessful because it only has 1/5 the locations as McDonalds.

That's still a _lot_ of freakin' restaurants my guy. Costco is the only counterexample that I know of to "all workplaces need unions in order to guarantee workers' quality of life", but I think they might be the exception that proves the rule. That they've grown to be that big and treated their employees that well is a testament to how good economically, long term, it is to treat your employees as the valuable assets they are.

They also only sell goods to members, and don't offer have a cloud service.

I also trust Costco a lot more than Amazon, even though Costco is not as convenient to use due to their smaller number of SKUs.

smaller number of SKUs and not consistent. you can find something on a visit, and then it is not available on a subsequent visit. but i now know this going in, and still benefit from the items that are available

It's intentional. See https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7...

The idea is that if you see something that interests you, you buy it now, and there's always something new on each visit. It's annoying for certain things, but at the same time it allows them to avoid having the same stock on the floor because people are on the fence about a purchase.

> 1/5th the size of Amazon

So pretty freaking big?

Depends on how you look at it. Costco had a 20 year head start, and with the way returns compound they should really be MUCH bigger than Amazon if capitalism worked well for the working class.

Personally I spend most of my money at Costco when I can because I prefer giving money to companies that treat their workers better (or at least better than Amazon).

I'm saying that capitalism is designed to enrich the owning class at the expense of the working class. It's just a system to transfer wealth toward those who already have it.

The "rising tide lifts all boats" reaganomics argument is not wrong, but if it reaches the point (where it has now) where the working class is not seeing an inflation-adjusted increase in wealth, then they are (by definition) becoming poorer over time.

Not sure how this squares with your assertion upthread that it's hard to imagine a company that treats its workers well succeeding...

which system other than capitalism has worked better, historically? Because the alternatives seem to be worse.

The issue isn't capitalism its the political leadership who aren't interested in creating an environment where workers are rewarded in line with their productivity.

Socialism seems to be working out far better for pretty much the entire EU.

Not a single country in the EU uses socialism, so you'd be mistaken. They are all capitalist countries.

and yet when anyone in the US suggests single player healthcare, higher income taxes, or more restraints on corporations, they get accused of being socialist.

so because random people in the US are wrong, you'd like to be as well?