Greedy, selfish NYC transit workers threaten strike

[DanS]

Oh God, we've been reduced to quoting the dictionary.

In IR, hegemony merely means "dominance". The US doesn't have dominance in the current system. If you insist on defining it as dominance, it's weak ass dominance.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Actually in IR, it means a unipolar system. And the hegemon is the only pole in the unipolar system.

Furthermore you cannot deny the cultural dominance of the United States and the power the US possesses in the world, without any foil (and no Al Queda is not a valid foil).

In IR, the US would be considered a hegemon, and no professor of IR that I've learned from considers the US anything BUT the hegemon in the post Cold War era.

[Timexwatch]

I don't dispute that the trend among most Political Scientists is to say that the U.S. is a Global Hegemon, I agree with Dan that U.S. power is in no insignificant way a "bluff".

We may have set the rules post-WWII but U.S. soft power dominance began its decline somewhere around the end of Bretton-Woods. Hard power dominance spiked in the 80s but has since been severely reduced, IMHO.

[Adam Smith]

A few comments, further muddying the waters.

1. Independent economic studies show that unionized transit workers are overpaid. Generally, the most skilled workers (eg train operators) are paid about right. The less skilled workers are the most over paid. I am at home now, so I dont have any specific cites.

2. This is not to say that management is blameless. A friend who is an engineering consultant did a cost study for the NY subway system. He found, for example, that the NY system was paying extra for ties which met 1940's era engineering specifications and which caused the NY system to incur EPA liability for their disposal. Current spec ties would cost less and incur no EPA liability.

3. NY subway fares are pretty low. On Washington's system I pay $3.25 for a 15 mile trip, and consider it a bargain since I dont have to pay for parking and have an hour to use as I wish.

4. The best solution is to boost parking fees and gas taxes. This will help push people to more efficient transit. The $6 toll I paid to cross the GW bridge the last time is about right.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Adam Smith
4. The best solution is to boost parking fees and gas taxes. This will help push people to more efficient transit. The $6 toll I paid to cross the GW bridge the last time is about right.

Agree whole-heartedly, and would add that a small increase in transit fares would be a good idea, too.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Apparently you aren't familiar with negotiations. When the MTA says they will cut pay, you expect them to be happy about it?

So they say 24%. They meet somewhere in the middle. Bloomberg had better try to avert the strike through more than just whining about it.

And $40,000-$70,000, considering the cost of living of NYC and the health risks most MTA workers have on the job (would you want to breath subway fumes 8 hours a day?), I don't think they're getting a ridiculous salary.

The usual suspects are backing the right side... and vice versa...

[Ben Kenobi]

"Great Britain was the global hegemon because it set the rules in much of the world."

"Human rights is a US forced value."


I'm not sure what you mean by human rights Imran.

IIRC, one of the major influences of the British Empire was the abolition of slavery and the destruction of the slave trade. Britain only passed the abolition bill after they had a 'hegemony' over France after the defeat of Napoleon, and they could enforce the rules with their navy, thereby retaining a competitive advantage. If human rights include the abolition of slavery, then the US did not originate human rights!

[David Floyd]

A hegemon is a state that is so powerful that it dominates all other states in the system. No other state has the military capability to put up a serious fight against it. In essence it is and can only be the sole great power in the system. This is not the case in the global system today and the US is the only state to ever achieve the vaunted distinction of regional hegemon.

First of all, as Imran pointed out, that's a faulty definition.

Second, even if we use your definition, the US *IS* the only great power, and a power that cannot be militarily challenged. Unless you'd like to point out a country which, today, could actually put up a good fight against the US in a global war.

[Drake Tungsten]

My two cents.

DinoDoc is right about the definition of hegemony. To be the hegemon means that you are the only great power in the system. It implies that you cannot be effectively rivaled, at that point in time.

However, Imran is right about the US being a global hegemon at this time. While America's influence is indeed slipping, America is still far and away the most powerful state on Earth. No other state or group of states can effectively challenge the US right now.

[Timexwatch]

Originally posted by obiwan18
"Great Britain was the global hegemon because it set the rules in much of the world."

"Human rights is a US forced value."


I'm not sure what you mean by human rights Imran.

IIRC, one of the major influences of the British Empire was the abolition of slavery and the destruction of the slave trade. Britain only passed the abolition bill after they had a 'hegemony' over France after the defeat of Napoleon, and they could enforce the rules with their navy, thereby retaining a competitive advantage. If human rights include the abolition of slavery, then the US did not originate human rights!

I'm sorry, but you're a bit mistaken. The slave trade in the Empire was banned in 1807 and the practice of slavery was abolished in 1833. Yes, the British initiated their blockade in 1807, but before then the British themselves dominated the slave trade, especially since they gained the right of asiento during the War of Spanish Succession. I'm not sure why you're refering to a "competitive advantage" when the British totally dominated the market. Even after the abolition of slavery, the 'apprentice' system persisted in Jamaica and indentured laborers from India and China replaced slave imports as a source of manual labor. As to your claim that the British outlawed the slave trade for economic reasons, you're partially right. By the 1800s, the transistion from serfdom and indentured labor in Europe to "free" labor was already occuring. Also, well-connected Evangelical sects like the Methodists and the Clapham sect had already begun to exert huge influence the government. During his younger days, William Wilberforce was a close personal friend of Pitt. Abolition of the trade occured over the heavy objections of MPs on the payroll of plantation owners in the Carribean.

As to the origin of human rights, I'd guess the credit for articulating the early concepts the most would probably be the French, although I'm not well read in the Enlightenment. I'd give a date for the emergence of the idea at around 1740s. Collective human rights, from my studies, came before individual human rights in the intellectual development of the Enlightenment.

[Shi Huangdi]

AS: Wouldn't #4 unfairly make it much harder for the poor to drive as much?

John Tierney of the NY times has an opinion on this......

http://query.nytimes.com/search/article-page.html?res=9406E1D8153DF933A2575BC0A961958260

Man With a Van
By John Tierney

Vincent Cummins looks out from his van with the wary eyes of a hardened criminal. It is quiet this evening in downtown Brooklyn . . . too quiet.

''Watch my back for me!'' he barks into the microphone of his C.B. radio, addressing a fellow outlaw in a van who just drove by him on Livingston Street. He looks left and right. No police cars in sight. None of the usual unmarked cars, either. Cummins pauses for a second -- he has heard on the C.B. that cops have just busted two other drivers -- but he can't stop himself. ''Watch my back!'' he repeats into the radio as he ruthlessly pulls over to the curb.


Five seconds later, evil triumphs. A middle-aged woman with a shopping bag climbs into the van . . . and Cummins drives off with impunity! His new victim and the other passengers laugh when asked why they're riding this illegal jitney. What fool would pay $1.50 to stand on the bus or subway when you're guaranteed a seat here for $1? Unlike bus drivers, the van drivers make change and accept bills, and the vans run more frequently at every hour of the day. ''It takes me an hour to get home if I use the bus,'' explains Cynthia Peters, a nurse born in Trinidad. ''When I'm working late, it's very scary waiting in the dark for the bus and then walking the three blocks home. With Vincent's van, I get home in less than half an hour. He takes me right to the door and waits until I get inside.''

Cummins would prefer not to be an outlaw. A native of Barbados, he has been driving his van full time ever since an injury forced him to give up his job as a machinist. ''I could be collecting disability,'' he says, ''but it's better to work.'' He met Federal requirements to run an interstate van service, then spent years trying to get approval to operate in the city. His application, which included more than 900 supporting statements from riders, business groups and church leaders, was approved by the City Taxi and Limousine Commission as well as by the Department of Transportation. Mayor Giuliani supported him. But this summer the City Council rejected his application for a license, as it has rejected most applications over the past four years, which is why thousands of illegal drivers in Brooklyn and Queens are dodging the police.

Council members claim they're trying to prevent vans from causing accidents and traffic problems, although no one who rides the vans takes these protestations seriously. Vans with accredited and insured drivers like Cummins are no more dangerous or disruptive than taxis. The only danger they pose is to the public transit monopoly, whose union leaders have successfully led the campaign against them.

The van drivers have refuted two modern urban myths: that mass transit must lose money and that it must be a public enterprise. Entrepreneurs like Cummins are thriving today in other cities -- Seoul and Buenos Aires rely entirely on private, profitable bus companies -- and they once made New York the world leader in mass transit. The first horsecars and elevated trains were developed here by private companies. The first subway was partly financed with a loan from the city, but it was otherwise a private operation, built and run quite profitably with the fare set at a nickel -- the equivalent of less than a dollar today.

Eventually, though, New York's politicians drove most private transit companies out of business by refusing to adjust the fare for inflation. When the enterprises lost money in the 1920's, Mayor John Hylan offered to teach them efficient management. If the city ran the subway, he promised, it would make money while preserving the nickel fare and freeing New Yorkers from ''serfdom'' and the ''dictatorship'' of the ''grasping transportation monopolies.'' But expenses soared as soon as government merged the private systems into a true monopoly. The fare, which remained a nickel through seven decades of private transit, has risen 2,900 percent under public management -- and today the Metropolitan Transportation Authority still manages to lose about $2 per ride. Meanwhile, a jitney driver can provide better service at lower prices and still make a profit.

''Transit could be profitable again if entrepreneurs are given a chance,'' says Daniel B. Klein, an economist at Santa Clara University in California and the co-author of ''Curb Rights,'' a new book from the Brookings Institution on mass transit. ''Government has demonstrated that it has no more business producing transit than producing cornflakes. It should concentrate instead on establishing new rules to foster competition.'' To encourage private operators to make a long-term investment in regular service along a route, the Brookings researchers recommend selling them exclusive ''curb rights'' to pick up passengers waiting at certain stops along the route. That way part-time opportunists couldn't swoop in to steal regular customers from a long-term operator. But to encourage competition, at other corners along the route there should also be common stops where passengers could be picked up by any licensed jitney or bus.

Elements of this system already exist where jitneys have informally established their own stops separate from the regular buses, but the City Council is trying to eliminate these competitors. Besides denying licenses to new drivers like Cummins, the Council has forbidden veteran drivers with licenses to operate on bus routes. Unless these restrictions are overturned in court -- a suit on the drivers' behalf has been filed by the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm in Washington -- the vans can compete only by breaking the law. At this very moment, despite the best efforts of the police and the Transport Workers Union, somewhere in New York a serial predator like Cummins is luring another unsuspecting victim. He may even be making change for a $5 bill.

[GePap]

And bread used to cost less than a nickle a loaf: so what?

What is not being said is that NYC transit system is run by an Authority: a concotion of the Moses era which was design, in principle, to leave politics out of running the subways thorugh the creation of a somewhat independent public entity. Same with NYC ports and airports.

As for Private transit: I grew up in a city with totally private transit: Panama City: and I can tell you that in some respects, it is an utter failure there, so the notion that private service in invariably better is not true.

I do think that NYC transit needs soem reform, and that livery cab service and so forth should be allowed, but I don't see the trains being put under private companies ever again, and it is the trains that move the most people for the least money.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Agree whole-heartedly, and would add that a small increase in transit fares would be a good idea, too.

That depends, Boris -- do you want to encourage use of mass transit, or discourage it?

[Sava]

David... did I see what I think I saw? You said the Fire Department should be privatized? So if your house is on fire, they only come to put it out if you can pay for it?



What a stupid idea.

Wait! Maybe we should break the Fire Department up because they are a monopoly

Those kinds of Libertarian ideas just crack me up because they are so stupid.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If human rights include the abolition of slavery, then the US did not originate human rights!

I didn't say they originated human rights, but pushed for Western human rights over much of the rest of the world, which the colonizing powers did not do, even after the abolishion of slavery.

--

Furthermore, if hegemon is held to such a strong standard as DD wants it to be, then I guess I'll have to go to the liberal theorists (who dominate IR today... and no, they aren't the same as US liberals) and say their Hegemonic Stability Theory can never ever happen because DD says the US isn't a global hegemon, which basically means that no hegemon can exist. That's ludicrous! The Hegemonic Theory focuses on the United States and its power as hegemon. It is one of the cornerstones of liberal theory, which has long since supplanted realist theory in IR. It also focuses on regional hegemons like Rome and China back in their days.