> > Zap! Union Win at Verizon Jolts the New Economy
>
> Yawwwwnnn. Wake me up when the Verizon workers kick out management and
> start running the business as a worker-owned collective.
>
> Now that would be news.
Let's say Verizon becomes a worker-owned collective. Fine. But it's still in the capitalist marketplace. It still has to compete with capitalist outfits. Wouldn't it benefit if those firms were unionized? Then they couldn't use their advantage of labor exploitation to undersell Verizon and drive it out of business. The one thing most necessary in providing the right kind of climate for economic anarchism is labor regulation (not to mention eco and "consumer" regulation). This removes the unfair advantage of corporations, while we in our co-op commons get to retain our entirely legitimate advantage of not being insane.
Utopia doesn't appear overnight. It isn't given-- it's self-created. It starts out as spores which have to grow and mature in the context of the marketplace. Our little specks of worker's society will never transform into a syndicate if they have to do so in the face of an unfriendly marketplace. Government regulation is like putting an ozone in, plenty of nitrogen in the air, some rain clouds once in awhile. And it can work the other way too. The government can poison the air, and that's what it's doing at all times with its corporate welfare. This is why we need to support progressives in the voting booth (but only the real ones and hopefully at the expense of the fake ones).
Ted