The International Longshoremen’s Association has delayed the dockworkers’ strike to January, but the ILA is still clearly committed to fighting the future, demanding an end to all new automation at East and Gulf Coast ports.
Why are so many Dem constituencies like this?
A dock strike could choke off our economic recovery, already hobbled and delayed by disastrous Biden-Harris economic policies.
Recent analysis suggests the strike might inflict as much as $5 billion in economic harm per day.
Why on earth do that just to fight against tech advancement?
Yes, we understand that the workers feel threatened by change.
And they’re not wrong to worry.
But any union’s job isn’t to stop the future from arriving; it’s to protect its members by making sure they’re ready for it through retraining and other efforts.
We’ll leave alone for the moment the question of the delay’s timing, which bumps it till after the election.
Even though it’s clearly an effort by the ILA chief, a gold-bedizened, tough-talking McMansion dweller named Harold Daggett (who earned more than $900,000 last year) to help Joe and Kam.
But the automation he hates is now standard practice among the most advanced major ports around the world.
Adopting it would drive down costs and help keep America competitive.
Did you see Daggett’s rant against E-ZPass for destroying union jobs?
All industries have to adapt.
Like those that supply the extremely cheap and abundant consumer goods and power the longshoremen enjoy.
But it is interesting how yet another favored Dem constituency seems to thrive only when holding back technological innovation.
Look at nuclear power.
Every rational person groks that it’s going to be the necessary energy source for the future if we want to mitigate the slow-moving risks of climate change.
Not solar and not wind, which are massively inefficient and massively unreliable.
You’d expect that Green New Dealers would be screaming themselves hoarse to build more nuke capacity.
Instead?
They do everything they can to shut it down, and leave it to giant corporations like Microsoft to jump-start buildouts of our capacity.
What about the tech sector?
Well, Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan has been unrelenting in her efforts to stymie the forward momentum of Silicon Valley — despite losing case after case after case as she strove to block mergers.
And Dems like ultraleft California state Sen. Scott Weiner have taken big swings at AI firms allegedly over safety concerns, but really because progressives can’t stand to see a booming sector without wrapping it in red tape.
And on and on and on.
It’s become such a rote response from the left that the “progressive” label — i.e. for those who move forward — no longer makes much sense for them.
The next time lefties harangue their opponents as backwards reactionaries, remember: They’re the ones slamming the brakes on all human advancement.
