trackmenot

2 + 2 = 4. If you don't agree with me then you are an idiot. Yes, union representatives look after their own self-interest. That's the point of unions! Their self-interest is getting reelected and they aren't reelected unless they look after the self-interests of the union members. What you are arguing for is that people should lie and obscure the fact that someone who denies that 2 + 2 = 4 is an idiot. I don't think people are such snowflakes.

> Why do people call others dumb (and let's not kid ourselves, that's just what these phrases are a cultured, genteel way of saying) and then are surprised when said others don't vote for the causes they believe in?

How does calling people dumb affect the way they vote? In fact, if me and others calling people who vote against unionization dumb makes them more likely to vote against unionization, it clearly means that they are not primarily considering their self-interest, since whatever I and other leftists say or think is completely irrelevant.

If I say "you're an idiot for voting for Trump" and that makes you more likely to vote for Trump, then, I'm sorry to say, you proved my point.

> Digging a two mile tunnel eats half of the state budget?Police refuses to wear body cams? Schools are slow to reopen after covid? Rightly or not, in many people's minds unions are to blame.

If you were a contractor to a state and you scored a contract worth half the state's budget, would you consider that a success or a failure?

You would consider it a success! The examples you give show exactly how unions work in the self-interest of their members. If the tunnel costs half the state's budget, the tunnel workers are surely well-paid, police officers rather not wear body cams so that they can whack people with their batons without being prosecuted, and teachers rather not return to schools as long as the epidemic is ongoing.

My theory is that rich people and well-educated people vote according to self-interest, but poor and non-educated people according to identity. Billionaires votes for whoever lowers their taxes, academics for whoever secures them, often tax-funded, jobs, but poor people for whoever they like personally.

I'm positive that education was strongly correlated with voting in favor of unionization. This is something the left everywhere struggles with enormously. When poor people are too dumb to vote according to their own self-interest, the left's worldview falls down. The left then claims that poor people are brainwashed by capitalist propaganda. Yeah, maybe, but it can't explain completely disastrous results like this unionization vote.

Misguided people will claim that unionization is not in the self-interest of most workers. Those people are wrong as there are about a billion studies showing that unionization improves both salaries and working conditions. For example: https://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/ The science is incredibly clear-cut and these workers who voted against unionization voted against their own self-interest.