If unions keep innovation from happening how can Sweden be considered one of the most innovative countries on Earth? Or how can Germany be a powerhouse of engineering and building the machines that build machines?

Your take is a regurgitation of the usual talking points that the elite class use to keep workers separated. Unions aren't forcing socialism, unions are there to build up labour power against employers, who have a much higher leverage in any working agreement you can think of.

Your comment is exactly what I hear for the past 20 years of my work life. Workers are, ultimately, the ones creating value, you are defending the class that has the means to take risks due to their accumulation of capital. The rare oddity of a self-made man is the carrot that those use to push you to regurgitate their points.

Technology leapfrogged everyone because it's an immense value, it's immensely useful, not because there weren't labour protections. That's such a sideways view of everything that's a bit laughable...

Probably a bit of each depending on the location/sector/etc.. However Sweden in particular has one of the highest levels of wealth inequality in the word (even a bit higher than the US)...

What was invented in Sweden that is so groundbreaking they're the most innovative country on the planet?

Regarding technology, it happened in a country unencumbered by unions at every step. Yeah, the US sucks at a lot of things, but at least it's crazy bent on have unions everywhere.

I think that if you're good enough you have all the leverage that you need to be successful. You don't need to join an union for this.

Although I don't know which country is the most innovative on the planet, I think it should be noted that Sweden has a fairly small population (smaller than some cities), so we should probably consider whether Sweden's inventions are in proportion with its population.

I think of Sweden as the home of Volvo, Saab, Skype, Sictus Prolog, Spotify, Minecraft, seatbelts, dynamite and Angstrom's spectroscopy. Don't the Swedes punch above their weight?

Edit: Lots of medical inventions, too: pacemakers, local anesthetics, ECGs, ultrasounds and ventilators. And more computer technology: graphics cards and Bluetooth.

>All they want is for all workers to earn the same wage because equality and other BS like this

No, what they want is for all workers _of the same job_ to earn a fair wage, at the very least. Not a single time has a union prevented people from having a higher wage than their colleagues.

>stifle the company from firing people when they're not needed anymore and so on.

Are a human being with a life, feelings and a family or a fucking object to be tossed away when you're drained dry ? Once again, unions don't prevent companies from firing people. They ask that it be done properly and respectfully. In most of the world, you get indemnities for being fired.

>As an employee you need to be able to earn as much as possible and climb the ladder as high as possible

So you can reach the glass ceiling because you're just yet another drone to your higher ups, that will do everything in their power to keep you as just that, a salaried man while they reap the fruits of _your_ labor ?

>And yes, be the next tech mogul that can build great things.

You won't be. You won't be because you're not part of them already. You won't get into YC because you're not a part of the cool kids club. You won't be because they make damn sure of it. And sure, you can make a bit of money. But you'll still be a prole to them, and to the world. But now you get to spit on those poorer than you, and think you're in any way superior to them while they laugh.

>Equality is a socialist fairytale

"Hard work gets rewarded" is the poisonous thought put into place by men who haven't worked a day in their lives. Your trash collector works harder than you ever will, and it's not unions holding him back.

That's not really true though is it? I mean unless you assume companies have an infinite amount of income to distribute...

And who decides what is a fair wage? And even considering this is what they want, then why should then the ranges be public and tight for a specific job? There are a lot of people here saying it is not in the spirit of the law to say a position pays between 100k and 900k.

> Are a human being with a life, feelings and a family or a fucking object to be tossed away when you're drained dry ? Once again, unions don't prevent companies from firing people. They ask that it be done properly and respectfully. In most of the world, you get indemnities for being fired.

You are basically a cog in a machine. Yes, its callous, but it is what it is. This is why you have unemployment benefits in care you're fired. And do you mean fired properly and respectfully? A red carpet when you leave the premises?

> So you can reach the glass ceiling because you're just yet another drone to your higher ups, that will do everything in their power to keep you as just that, a salaried man while they reap the fruits of _your_ labor ?

This is laughable, it's the kind of socialist speech that has no basis in reality. This is why you are paid in the first place, to do some work that someone else designed for you. If you want to reap the fruits of your labor, start a company and sell your product(s).

> You won't be. You won't be because you're not part of them already. You won't get into YC because you're not a part of the cool kids club. You won't be because they make damn sure of it. And sure, you can make a bit of money. But you'll still be a prole to them, and to the world. But now you get to spit on those poorer than you, and think you're in any way superior to them while they laugh.

I don't know if you know, but there are a lot of stories about people quitting their jobs to start successful companies. And some of them joined YC and so on. Just because most people don't do it its because they prefer the perceived confort of a job to the stress of being an entrepreneur.

> "Hard work gets rewarded" is the poisonous thought put into place by men who haven't worked a day in their lives. Your trash collector works harder than you ever will, and it's not unions holding him back.

I worked hard and got rewarded. And it works. Regading your comment: It is simply the perceived value of the physical work that is put in. That's why you have a lot of low paying jobs: their perceived value to other people.

The U.S. has long profited from being able to leverage plentiful natural resources and a dominating international position into being attractive to well-educated people from around the world and thus never having to fully rely on its own broadly abysmal but narrowly elite education system and other social services.

That is probably something you see as a victory, but it is also the definition of unsustainability: at some point the stresses introduced by this approach will start to crack the social fabric. Arguably, it already has.

Wealth inequality is still huge in Scandinavia (especially Sweden which is even worse than the US in that regard), Germany and the Benelux (especially when compared to many other European countries which might not have very strong unions..). So unions didn't really help that much with that...

Also, there is plenty of actual research that backs this up, i.e.:

- https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-help-reduce-dispariti...

Every single socialist European nation (including the Scandinavian ones) has a better wealth distribution than the USA.

> So unions didn't really help that much with that...

Can you back your statement up with facts instead of hand-waving away paragraphs of meaningful discussion that came before this comment?

Credit Suisse says otherwise when measured using Gini:

https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...

Of course they are possible not the most trustworthy source given the recent events..

To be fair I don't know how to explain the disparity, the report even says this: "For all other countries, except the United States, the wealth shares of the top groups are expected to be understated"

The most financially successful innovations in US tech this century have arguably been business models based on venture capital and barely regulated corporations achieving monopoly/oligopoly levels of control and engaging in exploitative behaviours at a larger scale than ever before. Is that really the kind of free market, light regulation economics to be proud of?

i have a lot of questions. what do you mean by technology and what are the other domains? when did technology leapfrog those other domains? what are technology's innovations with respect to those other domains? why was technology free to innovate so fast? why were other domains not?

at a very basic level, the tech sector advancing must corrispond to advances in other sectors because tech only advances by advancing other sectors. if it doesn't advance other sectors of the economy, then it's just a waste of time and energy, which is a fair characterization of the tech sector for the last couple decades. in contrast, the advancement of tech happening now is nothing compared to the 1920s to the 1940s, when unions were a lot bigger in the united states.

not that that has anything to do with it. in truth technological breakthroughs happen every once in a while, take several decades to be fully exploited, after which point there's no real development for who knows how long until the next breakthrough happens, and it doesn't really make a difference (for technological development) how work is organized.