Begin with the innocent assumption that the government derives it’s legitimacy from the consent of the people—the government cannot be justified exercising power over citizens if it lack their consent, broadly speaking. That consent may come in the form of direct democracy, or indirectly in the form of elected officials who are tasked with doing the biding of voters (and citizens).
So, then, we may wonder to what extent, if any, a government lacks moral legitimacy when its operations are no longer subject to the will of the people, in some reasonable sense, but instead are dictated by a small group of individuals who have grabbed the levers of power. Imagine that Tony Soprano and his mafia family bribed, threatened, and otherwise cajoled their way into controlling both the governorship and state legislature of New Jersey—few, if any, laws could be passed or implemented without the explicit consent of Tony Soprano and his Capos. This would presumably not only undercut the moral and democratic legitimacy of New Jersey, it would mean too that Tony Soprano and his mafia family are morally corrupting.
Unfortunately, this example is wholly hypothetical. As it happens, public unions have, over the course of decades, lobbied to be a similar situation in many states. As a result of a number of states passing laws that would empower public unions with the ability to codetermine how agents of the state—police officers, teachers, etc.—are not only compensated, but managed. Furthermore, the reach of the public unions, in many states, extends to power over the operational decisions made by the public agencies populated by public union members. As attorney and author, Howard K. Philip writes in his recent book, NOT Accountable,
Elected executives—the president, governors, and mayors—no longer have effective authority over the operations of government. Nor do their appointees. Nor do public supervisors, such as school principals, police captains, and crew chiefs on highway repair teams.
This is situation echoes the Tony Soprano example. Just like Tony Soprano and his mafia family would lack the legitimacy to govern New Jersey—not only was he not elected by voters, but voters have no clear mechanism to remove Tony Soprano and his associates from power—so too do public unions.
If public unions undermine legitimate democratic rule, then they are morally corrupting—they were neither elected to lead, nor is there a mechanism for removing them from the levers of power. And so, it looks like, public unions are, for the most part, morally bankrupt. And perhaps this is fitting since many of them are financially bankrupt too, or nearly so.
Great read thankyou!
https://justindaws.substack.com/p/on-poking-freedom-influencers
An extract-
"What sort of new hell would be created by these newbies (newly born out of the matrix) ? I can tell you that it would be EXACTLY LIKE THE OLD HELL. The hell that true dissidents have lived in all their lives and have no intention of returning to. Do these influencers of the freedom toilet understand that this is a SERIOUS GAME with anonymous tyrants and psychopaths and blood drinkers (NOT JOKING), and that in this psychological amusement park, the NBs are the porns being shuffled and sacrificed along with their newly formed flocks, being used to steer and divert the energies of real dissidents who spend ( waste) valuable time trying to get the NBs to understand the diversions, and maybe that 1984 isn't the only dissidents handbook, and is also being used a psych- ops propaganda weapon- the handbook of a human failure and the pointlessness of resisting."