RE: Laura/Margaret/Greg: A conflict in core beliefs

[Greg Peisert <gpeisert@jamesgregory.com>]

Margaret;

You wrote...
> Though i dislike to do so, Ed, i've been thinking uncharitable
> thoughts about Greg's intellectual honesty.  He has plenty capacity,
> i have to suppose, so his continued inability or unwillingness to do
> more than repeat, as it were, 'the bible's right and this i know /
> 'cos the bible tells me so' seems disingenuous at best.

  Hmmm...I thought that was what you were doing. Since, as Ed pointed out, 
these different philosophical positions stem from fundamentally different 
premises, it is understandable that both of us would at times question the 
intellectual honesty of the other. I don't think it is an issue of 
intellectual honesty as much as it is an issue of basic perspective. 
Indeed, I have openly wavered and debated with myself and with you both 
sides of an issue (witness the Clinton impeachment), and I have openly 
acknowledged when I feel I was wrong (witness the Microsoft case). I have 
yet to see you, Margaret, give an inch on a single issue. I guess you are 
always right (or is it "left"?).


> We can see a wonderful example of How Capitalism Works in the AA
> pilots' 'blue flu'.   The pilots have a business interest in getting
> their newly-purchased colleagues paid from the AA salaries scale.
> They use legal tactics to coerce the airline into doing that.  The
> airline responds by getting an injunction.  Note that the court
> didn't also enjoin the airline to integrate salaries.  Why not?
> Labor is forced to give up, capital is left to do as they please.
> Capitalists, naturally, think that this is exactly how things should
> work!   Government in bed with Capital: proto-fascism at its
> 'finest'.

  I don't doubt that the AA pilots may have a legitimate concern, although 
it is interesting to see you advocating for the "rights" of a bunch of 
older white guys who make $100k/year and more. I would think, based on 
previous correspondence, that you would conclude that "they make too much 
as it is" and that they should be perfectly willing to take a cut in 
salary. After all, who needs $100k a year!?

  More to the point, however, it is interesting to see you twist the 
pilots' position into one that is "legal" and the court's position into one 
that is "illegal." By what law? Certainly not by the law of contracts, 
which contract the pilots willingly signed when they took the job with 
American.

  Moreover, how can you legitimately argue that "capital [by that I assume 
you mean the company] is left to do as they please." No, they are not. They 
too must abide by the provisions of the contract with the pilots. Now, I 
suppose you view me as "intellectually dishonest" because I believe that 
contracts should be enforced by our judicial system.

  I wonder if you believe me when I claim that I don't CARE who comes out 
"ahead" in the struggle between the airline company and its pilots. I am 
not "pro company" or "pro pilot." I am "pro market" and "pro enforcement of 
contracts." If I were an AA pilot and I was seriously disgruntled with the 
company, I would be quietly checking out my options with other airlines. 
And I would not restrict my research to domestic carriers.

  I suppose you would view me as "intellectually dishonest" if I claim that 
the "value" or "worth" of an individual's labor is whatever that individual 
can trade for in exchange for that labor (e.g. so many dollars per hour, 
etc.). But, with all intellectual honesty, do not know how else to set the 
value of labor, or of goods. On what basis can we rationally assert that 
they are NOT "worth" what the market will exchange for them? Does that not 
extend from workers' wages to computers produced by Dell or Compaq to 
hand-painted figurines produced by a New England craftsman?

  That is why it's not that I don't AGREE with your "argument" above. It's 
that in all honesty, Margaret, I really and truly do not UNDERSTAND it! If 
it is not "legal" for the pilots to be held to a contract they willingly 
signed, then what IS "legal"?

--Greg