Utari's Puppies (Formerly Off-Topic Thread)

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
1288

How about we talk about the Caldari and unions, instead?

Relative to almost everybody else’s corporations, Caldari megacorps are … weird. They’re obviously for-profit corporate entities, but they also have the unique responsibility of acting as the governing body of the Caldari State. A normal corporation might regard itself as serving its shareholders first and foremost, but a Caldari megacorporation can’t claim such a thing: it’s responsible, first and foremost, to the Caldari people, specifically, to its citizens, and if it fails in that role then it’ll be removed from power, likely violently.

In this context, Ms. Priano’s correct about the nature of unions in Caldari society: ideally, there’s no need for them, and the megacorporations have strong reason not to tolerate them. Functionally, any union in this context can be understood as an incipient rebellion. Even the most cooperative union culture would still carry an implication the megacorps can’t possibly tolerate: that the Laborer and Technician castes have to defend their interests against those who rule them.

Within the State’s political culture, that’s a dire insult, and also arguably a death threat, because a leader who does not lead for the good of the Caldari is a leader the Caldari are not bound to follow-- and in fact may justly rise to remove. That kind of removal traditionally involves a certain tea.

Caldari culture is trusting and obedient to authority until that authority becomes self-interested, Arrendis. It’s pretty different from most other nations, but, then, its situation is unique to begin with. Within the State’s context, Ms. Priano was correct: unionization in State entities is a symptom of deeper illness, an indication something has gone terribly wrong. An immune reaction, you could say. But the unions don’t have to exist all the time to be effective when they need to appear, and if they’re around when the managerial castes are doing their jobs then the effect is maybe kind of like an autoimmune disorder.

Good rulership doesn’t require oversight; it will serve its purpose and will not benefit from second-guessing and mistrust (though a flow of good data is essential). Bad rulership will be torn down and replaced, either by rivals (in this context, other megacorporate leadership or even action by other megacorps) or, in the extreme case where most or all possible rivals are likewise tainted, by those it has failed.

Consequence provides the best oversight. Unions, in Caldari culture, are a consequence of poor leadership.

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1289

But isn’t that exactly the same thing? In the case of the Megas, the citizens are the de facto shareholders, even if not the de jure shareholders.

This would seem to indicate that any leaders can’t have advisory bodies. They can’t have people who are there to specifically give insight into how a particular subgroup’s lives are currently and potentially impacted, what that group would benefit from, or what their reactions (based on the group’s limited understanding of the big picture the leader is forced to see) would be.

No-one is omniscient. Unions and other advocacy groups serve the interests of those in power as much as they do their members: they provide a more complete understanding to those making the decisions, and a means of focused, targeted communication to subsets of the population.

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1290

Hmm … well, unions might indeed be useable for those things, Arrendis, but you’re lumping in those, frankly kind of secondary, purposes with the obvious primary: to strengthen labor’s negotiating position for hashing out things like wages and benefits with whoever the management happens to be. Such a thing makes excellent sense in a situation where the interests of management and labor are in tension, such as a typical private corporate entity.

The Caldari State places a high value on unity, and on the sacrifice of individual interests in service to the community. I’m sure unions have a wide variety of uses, but if the managerial castes are doing their jobs properly there’s little or no distinction between the good of the megacorporation and the good of its citizens.

Communications up and down the hierarchy of course have channels to move through. That’s not actually a problem it takes a union to solve. What would take a union, is if the megacorps begin advancing the interests of their elite at the expense of their subordinates. It is considered appropriate for the system to reward those who demonstrate merit, but not out of proportion to their role.

That last got to be a serious problem before the time of Executor Heth (the Caldari aren’t at all immune to greed, just strongly socialized against indulging it at their fellows’ expense). Actually one thing Heth did that most Caldari would agree was an unambiguous good was to introduce reforms at the managerial level to alleviate that particular problem.

Following his ouster (alleviating the problems he created to replace the problems he alleviated), the State’s probably in better shape politically than it has been in decades. Balance was restored. It’ll probably be a few decades (Caldari memories are long, though, so, optimistically, a few hundred years, fingers-crossed?) before the lessons of this time are forgotten, the Executive caste gets abusively greedy again, and Laborers and Technicans start talking over their options.

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1291

Well, a union’s primary purpose is to look after the interests of its members. Union leadership is selected (by whatever process the union chooses uses) because those individuals are trusted to be able to use their judgment in furtherance of that. Sometimes that doesn’t mean giving the members what they want. For example, if a union’s leadership knows that the corporation can’t afford a higher wage without reducing benefits that ultimately provide more return (healthcare, family leave, etc) than direct cash payments, then it’s the job of the union reps not to get the higher wages, but to make the membership understand the realities of the situation.

In a situation like you’re describing, the interests of labor and management aren’t in tension, but the desires might be. Labor doesn’t know what management knows. Management isn’t experiencing what labor is experiencing. Communications up and down the chain that runs through the corporate hierarchy are, by their nature, more responsive to the better-informed management than to labor. That’s inescapable.

People, even Caldari, are easily-aggrieved. Our limited perspective means we don’t often understand everything happening around or to us, and worse, we don’t understand what the gaps in our understanding are. Having channels for communication within the hierarchy is great, but someone has to know there’s an issue to communicate about before that communication can happen.

An isolated incident here or there is easy to look at as an isolated incident. A manager gets one report of a problem, it doesn’t recur, and it’s considered dealt with, no need to make people three or four levels higher aware of it. But if it’s a systemic issue, it’ll be repeated at a hundred, a thousand locations, and none of those locations will know about the others… so the evidence never collects, and the problem persists, degrading efficiency. By their very nature of stepping outside the hierarchy to look at commonality in a horizontal slice across multiple locations and divisions, unions allow for the collation of that kind of data that would otherwise slip through the cracks. That, too, is looking after the interests (not necessarily the desires) of the workers. When you only look at things from one perspective, you never get the full depth of what you’re seeing.

It’s like only having one eye.

The other thing that puzzles me about this, though… is this:

… and… wouldn’t the people in the Union also take that approach? After all… they’re Caldari, too. It’s not like they join a union and suddenly start screaming “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” or anything insane like that…

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1292

What you’re describing can, again, emerge in any number of ways, Arrendis. The Caldari take pride in the quality of their work-- and that includes those at every level. Having no union doesn’t mean you have no spokespeople, no coordinators or leaders. It’s not necessary to have something so dedicated to a thing like “collective bargaining,” when the inevitable structures, formal and informal, that will form within the community of Laborers or Technicians will do the job just as well.

If you want to take the community of worker caste persons at such-and-such a place as being like an informal union, you might not be wholly wrong, but they’ll still likely take offense if you suggest that they are or need one. They often may like to think of themselves much the way I often do: we have parts to play. We play them as best we can. It is not necessary for someone to have my best interests at heart for me to still do what I can to play my part, but if I am not well cared for I may fail before I needed to. And that might imply that someone was not doing their job very well. . . .

The Achura and Caldari are cultural kin, after all.

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1293

I don’t recall saying it was ‘necessary’. And unions aren’t purely entities for collective bargaining. They’re entities for collective pursuit, much like any other association. For example: trade unions often arrange and manage apprenticeship programs, competency certifications, specialized training programs for their members, etc, which are not aimed at collective bargaining, but rather for making sure their members are as capable and well-trained, and as a result, as well-positioned to succeed in their role, as possible.

As for ‘the inevitable structures [. . .] that will form within the community of Laborers or Technicians’… can you illustrate, please? What sorts of structures are you talking about, and—other than your emphasis on collective bargaining—how they differ from trade unions/associations?

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1294

So … let’s be clear, Arrendis: you had raised this in response to Ms. Priano mentioning unions in a negative way as part of her speech marking the Malkalen incident. After I explained why unions have a negative connotation in Caldari culture (and generally do not exist as collective bargaining entities until the working castes are on the verge of open revolt), you start talking about stuff like trade associations.

That kind of thing totally exists, in a bajillion forms. Well, at least several. Caldari: organized to an arguable fault.

There’s a reason I focused on the “increasing relative bargaining power through collective bargaining” aspect: that’s the only part the Caldari culturally have a problem with, and you don’t have to do that part in order to get the other stuff.

You can call it whatever you like, but when a Caldari person makes negative noises about “unions,” it’s normally not the question of training apprentices, for example, that they’re concerned with.

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1295

Ok. But since we’re keeping things in mind, I asked Makoto about “organized labor”, and the one who brought collective bargaining into things to begin with… was you.

Now, I know acutally pointing out that you introduced into the conversation the element that you’re arguing against is going to get me accused of being pedantic and playing semantics, but really, I’m trying to let you see this conversation from my perspective here: You narrowed your focus to one aspect of what unions do, and used that to argue against them, while I continually emphasized all of the other things that unions and other trade associations do.

In response, you seem to have utterly dismissed that, and insisted on addressing the one piece I started off conceding that unions would have no cause to engage in within the State.

It’s like if I asked ‘why don’t you like ice cream?’ and you answered ‘I’m allergic to strawberries’, and when I point out there are other flavors… you focus on the evil of strawberries and insist on telling me that not everybody likes strawberries, and for some people, they’re even dangerous. And there’s no way to say ‘ok, I get that, but that’s not all ice cream is’ without being accused of being pedantic and arguing for the sake of argument and ‘winning’, rather than discussing the topic.

A topic, I’d like to remind you, that I’d already shrugged and moved on from (Hey, Whatever III: The Shrugging Continues) before you specifically raised it again, but which I’m quite certain I’ll be blamed for not letting go of.

That said, I do totally get what you’re saying about collective bargaining, and if that’s all you’re going to focus on, I’m more than happy to just nod and leave it at that.

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1296

Only, I’m not even arguing against it. Just saying the State doesn’t generally go for it, and why.

It seems pretty sensible, if you’re in the Federation, or maybe the Republic. The Amarr have that feudal hierarchy thing going on, though, so that’s more like the State.

(Also, what I did was more like explaining why Ms. Priano wasn’t making wildly enthusiastic noises about strawberry ice cream. If there was a misunderstanding whereby you thought we were discussing ice cream generally, the explanation of why strawberry ice cream was an issue might have provided adequate information to assess whether I was talking about all ice cream generally or just strawberry in particular. I don’t need to be doing something silly for us to be talking about slightly different things.)

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1297

No, but I wanted to make sure the example itself wasn’t misunderstood. That’s all.

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1298

I see one Caldari opinion in this argument, and while I don’t disagree with Jenneth-haani, it seems as though it might be useful to flesh things out from the viewpoint of someone is still a citizen of a megacorp. I am part of Quafe, and people outside the State tend to laugh a bit about that but I am used to it. I take my stake in it seriously.

A union would be superfluous to my experience. This is because any corporation that has survived and gained enough footing to even hope to advance to Mega has long since learned that exploitation is a short-term benefit and fostering healthy, supportive personnel is simply the most effective use of resources. We have had a lot of time to experiment, to see failure, and gain this efficiency. In the event that short-term exploitation occurs, there are channels, and where channels fail there are greater corporate forces who absolutely have seen where it leads, over and over again. There is reason to trust that things will be corrected; they have been, on all scales, many times.

It’s understandable that especially among Matari, Gallente, and especially among Matari and Gallente capsuleers this trust feels alien and uneasy. I can only assure it is earned. Bad things do still happen, which is true everywhere. But workers forming gangs to become workers with less supervision is not something we–citizens and corporations all–have found to be useful in the State.

There. Now you know what a tiny facet of Quafe thinks.

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1299

I’m always impressed with the way people wield passive-aggression to complain about conversations following the natural ebb and flow that conversations naturally tend to have. The next time you’re hanging around talking with a few people, jot down the time and topic the conversation starts with. Then see if you’re talking about the same thing in thirty minutes.

But then, I doubt you’ll take people to task for ‘derailing’ the conversation by… you know… conversing.

Such monsters we are, that talking about one topic leads into talking about another in a natural, organic way that occurs literally every damned day all over the cluster.

I swear, I am so damned tired of the damned chat police lecturing people about daring to actually talk to one another like human beings, instead of following some pre-ordained script handed down by your most holy selves about what is and isn’t appropriate to talk about.

And now, @Aradina_Varren, I suppose this wasn’t laid back at all. But hey, trial and error assumes some error, right?

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1300

Pinging people also isn’t laid back.

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1301

I know, I just figured I’d let you know I was aware of it.

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1302

Which of you is trying to be laid back? Aradina is so laid back it is a problem to her sometimes, I think. I mean there have been many times when I am trying to talk about something nice and she just says “no you don’t” or “that doesn’t make sense” or something like that? And then I have to imagine her doing the face thing she does, where somehow her face doesn’t move at all and she looks dead a little.

Arrendis is not ever laid back and maybe that is what Aradina is trying to accomplish by providing a good example? I don’t know. Arrendis, if your clones were not terrible little teenagers it might be easier to find a moment of peace! I remember what it was like.

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1303

Thanks for the advice.

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1304

I am so serious though! Neural plasticity is overrated if they only live a month, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be better to be able to go seven minutes without being hungry or distracted by you know, romance things, or just to sit still? I swear.

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1305

Well, it’s actually kind of a cold-blooded decision, made after careful consideration. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve got an average life expectancy per clone of roughly 30 days. And, as I’ve also mentioned, basically 90% of my time is work, between my two administrative roles and actual fleet logistics.

So I normally get about two hours’ sleep a night, or less. As a result, it makes more sense to have the clone template artificially set to an age where the body chemistry can burn the candle at both ends and the middle for a month. The problem I’m running into right now is that I’m on Day 44 right now, and the chronic mistreatment is starting to have effects. So, I’m taking measures like, you know… not drinking… and trying to reduce stress by cultivating a bit more of a laid back approach, to try to reduce the wear and tear and let this body remain usable longer.

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1306

Always when I am thinking about these fried potato snacks, I get really good appetite. :potato::ok_hand:

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1307

It seems like some of the other traits of teenager-dom might cause a little trouble, though, Arrendis.

… rampaging hormones … not-fully-formed judgment centers … you get the stress-resistance but it feels like being stuck with the “folly of youth” in perpetuity would cause you a lot of trouble. I’m actually really impressed you can do your job operating like that. I wonder what you’d be like as a thirty-something.

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