I was subtly denied my vote today after getting off work. Went to my normal polling station and was immediately told that the stations was out of ballots and more were on the way, but the original call was made more than half an hour ago. Went I live in nearly walking distance of City Hall, I find this sort of cock-up appalling. I live in a precinct that actively votes and votes Democratic. The proposal that was bringing people to the station was one that riled liberal interests and made traditional businessmen (re: conservative) jump with glee. So to find that near the end of the day, after most people left work and (like me) wanted to go vote, that we could not exercise our constitutional right due to a lack of paper in a high voting, liberal precinct, I became more than a little suspicious. I don't like it, particularly after pestering my friends to go vote themselves. There's something to be done here and some of you will have to help me.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
The Human Profit Margin
A More Perfect Union - Megan McArdle
The first question that springs to mind in McMegan's wrap-up is "what if the executives don't want to implement new production-enhancing techniques but wants to make the profit margin larger in quick order?" The obvious answer is, of course, to fire some employees. I'm not going to make the executives look like the big bad wolf here, because one part of what unions do that McArdle clearly misses is unions also seek to provide job security, which in turn lead to some absurd practices like auto workers who sit around simply because the company can't fire them. But this is just another instance where the interests of one party taken to an extreme can become an absurd boondoggle, thus making unions look absurd as well.
