Stately Homes II

Are they used socially in the best possible way?

After the success of What to do with Stately Homes?, I thought I better address the subject further.

Currently, quite small, individual families own these exceptionally lavish country houses, purely because they were left them by their parents. And, though some still have extensive "grounds", and even surrounding tenant farms, still owned by the occupants of The Big House, it is no longer the norm.

Now, most of these have permanently lost their Latifundia, and now seek to survive on inherited wealth, increasingly supplemented by the "House" earning-its-living, by hosting other peoples' weddings "in-temporary-opulence", or, maybe, grouse-shooting weekends, or even by paying-visitors getting guided tours around "maintained parts" of edifice and grounds.

It all began to decline, when the 1945 Labour Government decided to intervene by charging Death Duties upon inherited wealth. The owners began to sell off their tenant farms, and sack many of their servants. And, was it the Marquis of Bath, who turned part of his estate into a drive-through Lion Park? While another titled aristocrat assembled a Grand Collection of Valuable Automobiles to persuade paying-visitors to come to see them.

The Prize to be maintained, by all these means, was the Lavish Stately Home! But, even when most of the rooms were turned into storerooms for discarded furniture, the prized State Rooms were maintained "in the manner to which the Family had become accustomed". Indeed, some of these actually often house a family of 3, living like Kings in a few opulent rooms.

Where did their wealth come from?

But, surely, we also have to ask how were they ever even afforded, historically? The trouble is, "How far back do we want to go?"

Let us first take current ownerships. 

They are inherited from parents or other close relatives. But, clearly, the sizes of the owning-and-residing family, and the vastness of the stately home don't match!

We are informed that the size, historically, had to be large, to also house the considerable number of servants, looking after the family: but, that doesn't seem likely to be many - until that is you include the regular and large numbers of visiting families, who also stayed and needed both accommodation and servants too. Also, the hobbies and interests of the families involved often required large amounts of space, and involved many necessary serving workers, and, of course, stables for horses and kennels for the hunting dog packs. Indeed, some Stately Homes had to be big enough for Royalty, and their vast retinues to be housed when they visited too!

But, we are wrongly taking these Estates as given!

How did they actually originate?

They were initially the estates of the local Feudal Barons, achieved by force, but increasingly over the centuries confiscated and gifted-to-supporters by Royalty (who it seemed "owned everything").

What a disgusting legacy!

No wonder that Labour Government acted to dismantle such anachronisms.

Nobody should live like that, OR have the exceptional wealth to afford it: for none of it was ever earned. 

It was stolen in one form or another.

The task commenced in 1945 must be completed! Such resources must be socially available for the benefit of the whole population, and not some privileged recipients of inherited (and unearned) wealth.

Inequality in the UK

The inequalities of this distorted society, leave millions without the possibility of affording homes of their own, and a National Health Service and Elderly Care Service, both without the accommodation, physical resources, and funding that they so urgently require.

And, with increasing longevity, and ever increasing demands for supporting services, these vast edifices should be put into serving the elderly population, and People Services in general.

And, of course the demands for more affordable Housing, could also be helped by using associated Estates for building Council Houses in solubrious surroundings, with adequate Parks and Required Services.

Enough of this disgusting inequality!

Put such resources into what the People need.

What to do with Stately Homes?

How can these 'country houses' be made to serve the People?

Currently, the media are overflowing with programmes on the buying and selling of antiques, which always seem to centre around the magnificent palaces of the very rich - either as venues for "Valuation Extravaganzas", or as valuable sources for Antique Dealers, turning unwanted heirlooms into cash, by returning them to those who can both appreciate and afford them!

"Because", we are informed, "these Stately Homes cost absolute fortunes to maintain", you know, "so the hard-pressed owners have grave difficulties in trying to keep their palaces in the state to which they have become accustomed!"

They even have to open their House and Estate to the paying public on special days to help to maintain their required standards.

And, the diverse sub plots, woven into these various celebrations of Grandeur, are purposely included to entrance and con the watchers and the visitors.

"This is what success can deliver for you!"

I lived for a decade within yards of a busy auctioneers, and quickly learned how they fitted in to an overall scheme. On the one hand, they were to extract unrealised treasures from their uninformed owners, at the lowest possible prices, while on the other, the object was to achieve the highest possible prices from those who could afford them, to further boost one "stately" home or another.

These programmes are among the commonest on TV, and even infer that you might be able to even do better than the emerging celebrities, who all seem to appear on a whole range of different offerings, but with the very same purposes.

It has become like the football pools of the past, when it is added to all the above, and to the increasing number of Betting Companies selling their wares over the Internet, the impression is projected that, "the next big winner could be you!"

I'm afraid not.

No.

Its all a necessary myth, so that you come to admire rather than loath the super rich.

But, what a colossal waste!

Such 20, 50 or even 100 room palaces sitting close to so many villages, could become The Property of The People, and be used as Schools, Hospitals, parts of a University, Clinics, Old Peoples' Retirement Homes, Social Centres, Research Centres, and all the rest.

And the Estate Grounds instead of serving a tiny already over-privileged family, could be Public or Country Parks and Sports Venues, or whatever the People need!

Quantitative Easing – Printing Money

How long can they get away with it?

Recently, on this blog, we have been revealing the essential role of inflation in capitalism, and how remunerative it is to business, both in borrowing money and in paying wages. But, that general principle exists within a context of production. So, something useable and buyable gets produced – value is added to primary resources to deliver more valuable products. So, how does Quantitative Easing fit into the picture?

For Quantitative Easing is merely another name for printing money! And, doing that with absolutely NO real capital to back it: so, absolutely no existing value or created value is involved. It has merely been invented out of nothing. No one lent previously acquired value to finance things. It is just printed out of paper and ink, and expected to be useable as if it was a holder of real value.

So, what was the intention of those who did it, in the midst of a capitalist crisis?

In the 1930s, Public Works were the suggested answer, for though the wages involved were just printed paper; it put unemployed workers back to work, and produced something of value in the process.

But, that is not the case with Quantitative Easing!

Now, by merely printing money and lending it to people at very low interest from actual governments, you would expect to merely debase the currency. But how would that normally show itself? In a global slump, such as the one they are still attempting to extricate themselves from, the relations in value between the currencies will not immediately and generally reflect devaluing actions. Individual countries will exploit any temporary gains, at the expense of other countries, and the Money Markets will deliver confusing indicators of what is going on.

But, the rival nations won’t sit back bemoaning how they are being treated: they will retaliate.

Indeed, having initially refused to follow the Americans and the British, the European Union, has now decided to do likewise. Quantitative Easing is being tried by more and more countries.

The eventual results will not need a genius to predict! An eventual return to real value will cause an avalanche of devaluations. The essential “confidence” in the power of the dominant capitalists will inevitably evaporate!

In the past there has always been another area of the world to exploit, to re-steady the boat, but where are they to turn now?

This crisis occurred when they finally decided to try their usual tricks, but this time directly upon the working classes, via bound-to-fail mortgages to the poor, and the then deceitful repackaging and selling of these, worldwide, as lucrative investments. They expected to reclaim the properties many times as the short-time owners failed to fulfil their financial commitments, but when they tried to foreclose, they found they didn’t have the property: it had been wrecked! The bottom fell out of the whole scheme and the 2008 slump worldwide ensued.

So, who was left to screw? There simply wasn’t anybody! So, a more subtle means had to be both devised and employed.

One effective trick was to keep wages below inflation for FIVE years, which made ordinary workers everywhere pay significantly to help capitalism out of its crisis.

Also, by sacking vast numbers of public service workers, and then hiring them back into privately owned firms, at zero hours contracts, part-time jobs, and even encouraging “black economy” self-employment, the lie of the working class being safeguarded was erected.

But such tricks cannot be said to have worked globally. Indeed, we have been forced back into the rivalry between capitalist states, to get national advantages of one country over another. The anti Russian clamour is part of this (remember Russia is now back in the capitalist fold), but ploughing it’s own furrow in opposition to the old dominators of world capitalism, especially, of course, the USA.

Also, the cheap labour advantages of China and other capitalist or neo-capitalist economies must wane with the demands for appropriate wages in these countries, so the globalisation trick of getting your manufacturing done where labour is cheap cannot be maintained indefinitely, especially as it has also been necessary to impoverish and de-skill the western working classes, sometimes producing echoes of the past with sub-classes even in countries like the USA and the UK.

And the importation of ex-colonial and ex-communist-bloc workers to the West, as a cheap labour alternative to their own indigenous working classes, has led to increasing hostility among the native unemployed, and consequently the immigrants being blamed for the situations in the metropolitan countries. The radical Islamist movement, both in the ex-colonial countries and in immigrant populations is a symptom of the failure of this ploy.

And, there has been another crucial problem.

The middle class investors are getting little or no interest from their savings, and small or even no dividends from their investments, so a major source of investment capital is gradually drying up.

Another way of re-building a source for such investments is by diverting as much profit as possible to the already very rich. So, at the time when the poor are getting poorer, the rich must be made richer, or they too will just sit upon their cash.

Never has the gulf between rich and poor been this big – as 1% of the population now own as much as the other 99%.

But, the dynamics involved in all this are not planned. They are needed in various ways, to constantly re-steady the floundering boat. But, nothing seems to be solving the crisis!

Take the Euro Zone, the UK’s biggest market, it is teetering on the edge of a new deflationary recession once again, and the right-wing Tories and UKIP want to blame the slump on them, and hence want to leave the European Union (while keeping all the trading privileges, of course).

The methods now being used are getting exceptionally desperate.

The economic blockade of Russian capitalism has been stepped up to enormous proportions, and has been possible because of Russia's dependence upon selling Gas and Oil to other countries. But, on top of this, the price of oil has tumbled due to US Fracking and Saudi Arabian full-throttle selling, and these, along with the World Crisis have caused there to be more oil than is needed to be bought.

You can see that this is still a major crisis, with no end in sight.

So, what will Quantitative Easing do in the long term? The Americans have got away with it because of their dominance in world trade, while the UK also managed to employ it, because of their dominance in world finance.

But now the Europeans are about to try it too.

If it becomes universally applied, any advantages so far seen will vanish for everybody

Printing money on a global scale can only have one outcome. The value of all currencies will tumble – shown not in exchange rates, but in roaring inflation.

The crisis will get worse.

Why me must save the NHS!

Michael Sheen speaks on protecting the NHS - Bedwellty Park

Democracy: Services to and Control by the People

It is hard to disagree with the concept of the organisation of a Society for the benefit of its people – The Idea of Service. Just as it is similarly obvious that such an organisation be under the control of the populace – The Concept of Democracy. So, historically, it has been necessary for those in power to in some way subscribe to both of these principles (or at least pretend that they do).

Let us look, critically, at some significant examples.

The fabled properties of Democracy, both as the will of the people, and also their overall control, are, of course, total myths in current so-called “Democratic States”, and the evidence for these assertions can be found everywhere, and can show exactly whose wants and needs are serviced by this lauded system of rule. Of course, it must be where both wealth and power reside that has to be addressed, but, in a somewhat distorted way, for the nearest thing to what is desired is delivered, if only marginally, by Local Democracy, where known and accessible representatives do things that immediately affect people – that is in local or District Councils of various types.

For, one aspect of these organisations did take things out of the control of the oligarchs, and it was in the services owned and run by these elected Local Authorities. Of course, the composition of these Councils would represent the area, which elects it, and in affluent areas the local authority would see its task to serve that constituency, and its occupants. Whereas in a working class city, the majority would have very different priorities, and these would be, sometimes at least, evident in the actions of their elected Council.

But, that is Democracy, and a comparison of how such different Councils see their priorities is very interesting and informative, and always distorted by misleading comparisons such as in efficiency and expenditure priorities. Clearly a prosperous area would not need to allocate large resources to support the poor, nor would they have any sympathy for those Councils that did. They would compare expenditures and condemn the “high-spending” Council that have large populations of people needing all kinds of essential support.

Now, it is precisely these kinds of criticism, that are used to discredit “Serving Councils” for the affluent take pride in “paying their own way”, while assuming that those who cannot are lazy or worthless, while, at the same time, lavishing vastly more on their own ill family members than could ever be spent on a poor patient by a social service.

So, let us look objectively at certain social services, which have shown great contributions to the good of the populace, and were and occasionally, still are supplied by Local Democratic Organisations.

Public Transport

Let me start by giving an example from my own experience.

It also should be made clear that I am a working class person from the City of Manchester in England, and was born and brought up in a slum area called West Gorton. I am certain you would get a very different story from someone in Withington or the Stockbroker Belt in North West Cheshire, but their view is available everywhere, whereas the one I will give certainly isn’t.

Oh, and just in case the reader has already pigeonholed me. I finally retired some 20 years ago as a Professor in London University, so what I relate cannot be dismissed as sour grapes from a failure in our society (as is regularly slapped onto any working class critics).

In the 1950s I used to go, every fortnight, to watch my favourite football team, Manchester United, and an average home gate of around 53,000 spectators was got to the ground from all parts of the enormous conurbation by Manchester Corporation Transport in a large fleet of special buses, which were organised like clockwork. In a very short time literally all of these were delivered to the ground, and then removed, just as efficiently, at the end of the match. It was both cheap and vastly more efficient than private cars could ever be, and being a Local Authority Service NO profit was involved. Each and every double-decker bus was packed, and the flexibility of tailor made routes (only used for this purpose) was unachievable by any other means.

Indeed, such an effective and wide-ranging transport system was largely self-financing and economical for its users.

But now, after 60 years of “progress”, no such system exists. The bus companies are now privately owned, and work to a very different imperative, instead of being an efficient and economic service, they now must make a profit – without which they simply wouldn’t exist.

NOTE: Imagine how different hospitals would be if they too had to make a profit!

For example the evident virtues for both passengers and transport workers of the old Driver and Conductor arrangement have finally been completely dispensed with after privatisation was finally established as the universal method of provision. Such things as helping old people and mothers with children, on and off the bus were, to say the least, “not conducive to making profit”, so they were dispensed with. And the advantages for speed of service made possible by the collection of fares while on the move, has been replaced by the driver doing all that himself at every single stop and for every passenger, which, it has to be admitted, did wonders for the profit margins now available to the new owners.

Indeed, for a very long while, a significant part of the transport systems were entirely electrically driven in either Trams or Trolley buses, with vastly superior environmental effects than occur with present systems.

The care and maintenance of all these vehicles was undertaken by Council owned and run facilities – again a service with no profit involved. Both my uncle and my brother-in-law worked as bodybuilding specialists in one of the main garages, and were highly trained and well paid, having had apprenticeships, along with Tech-College linked courses. I worked for 10 years in such a College, and the quality of the lecturers and instructors, as well as the qualified engineers that they produced were second to none (I know this because I employed such people as technicians and they were a valuable contribution to the department).

NOTE: By the way, these Colleges were also a service, run by the Council, and, of course, non-profit making.

Funnily enough, all sorts of other, seemingly unconnected things declined too. For example the Public Service Vehicle license (PSV), which all public service vehicle drivers had to gain before they were allowed to drive such vehicles, were then clearly superior to what they are now. I wonder why?

Also behind the scenes in Public Transport mechanics, with similar rigorous training, kept the engines and safety systems up to scratch, while a large army of cleaners kept both the insides and outsides of the vehicles at an acceptable standard.

I’ll leave the reader to consider what has happened to all these aspects too, and for the very same reasons!

Whatever criticisms there were of Public Transport, there is also little doubt that the imperatives involved were for Service rather than Profit, and usually the workers unions were given much better access and facilities than are ever provided in most private companies.

Even local and national regulation was vastly more efficient, for one visit of an inspection team to the enormous garage where my relatives worked could cover far more and far better, than could be achieved in innumerable visits to multiple small transport companies, and their sub-contracted support firms too, as is the case now. Finally, the economies of scale also made the large publicly owned organisations superior to tiny shoestring alternative: there would be the right kit and an appropriate range of trained operatives, from those with years of experience down to apprentices constantly monitored and instructed in best practice.

All this is indeed a taster of Socialised Services, much better 60 years ago than they are now!

Yet, the directing of these services was NOT directly in the hands of the populace, or of their elected representatives in Local Government. The people did not elect the managers of these vast undertakings. They could vote off their known, local and available councillors, and could change the councillors in office at regular elections. But, such a system wasn’t naively bottom-up controlled and run. It required specialists to do that. But, nevertheless, if truly democratic control was in place, the electorate could act at the ballot box. The job of elected councillors was to establish the Service Ethos in their employees, from bottom to top. And even way back in my youth, there was ample evidence that this was achieved in many such organisations. To judge appropriately you merely have to compare then with now.

Do you really think that modern transport firms are run with the service approach? They wouldn’t last long today!

This brief visit to the past was not meant to define a Golden Age. It was never that. But, it showed here and there how Services should be run and most important of all BY WHOM!

Education

 Now, Public Transport may not be considered the most important area that involves services to the people, and I would agree.

In a long career in Education, with posts at every level from Junior Schools to Universities, I can speak authoritatively about these services, as by far the most important.

Now, it is in schools and colleges of all kinds that Local Democracy has a major role. And, once again, the differences between how this totally non profit making and countrywide service is delivered, and how it contrasts with organisations dedicated primarily and predominantly with the production of profits for those who have no other necessary qualification or general knowledge, but can extract profit, and hence do have the money to invest, is remarkable.

Once again, the quality involved in how such a service as Education was delivered to the Community, is vastly better than in any profit-making concern.

Indeed, there are no bonuses for teachers, and none desired, or expected. The calibre of those who choose such a demanding and worthwhile career is uniformly superior to any other organisation, if your criteria are to do with what is delivered to the community served, and for what reasons.

And, for some considerable time, now, whenever they got into power, the Tories, would make yet another assault upon State Education, while, of course, sending their own children to private, fee-paying schools, where they would receive, primarily, the appropriate social connections and command training for their future ruling roles in society.

For, the mass of the population are, in their eyes, only educated in such ways, and to such levels, to service the current economic system, Capitalism, and its essential role of producing ever-larger profits. For, unless what was done in such institutions was limited to such ends, such places would only foster discontent with the "Natural Order". Such totally unproductive educational content must be actively swept away, to produce the ideally prepared workers for this, “the only possible system”.

Indeed, it had been coming to their notice that in certain areas pupils were being educated in such a way that they would have happy and fulfilling lives, and that could certainly only “lead them astray”!
What is clear to these traditional rulers, is that educational institutions must be, primarily, to fit all their products to the needs and wants of their future employers, and concentrate all learning upon only what they will need in their assigned-for roles in society. Education that encouraged them in any other prospective futures was both unkind to them, and destructive to an ordered and healthy economic future for Society. Crucially, thinking for themselves and being creative, artistic or maybe politically active would be well beyond the Pale.

And, we must see all their changes in Educational Policy in this light.

Even the current attacks upon Birmingham Council, under the guise of attacking Moslem extremists, is basically yet another attempt to wrest this jewel of real Social Service out of the hands of Local Democracy, and into the hands of people who agree with their pro-capitalist policies.

Indeed, in a recent news programme on TV (June 2014), the ministers in Parliament, and even the newscasters, themselves, steadfastly refused to either ask, or answer, the Key Questions, and, in fact, purposely misled ordinary people as to both what was actually going on in 21 Birmingham Schools, who was responsible for them, and what their own agendas were for Education in particular, and Local Democracy, in general.

Clearly, Education should never be in the hands of those who don’t really care about anything but making a profit, and should demonstrate the most democratically controlled service of all!

To Serve and to STRIKE!

There is a great deal bandied about these days concerning the duty to serve.

Currently, the Tory Government is considering a new Law to jail people in the caring services, who “wilfully neglect” any patients in their care.

It is, of course, a major attempt to blame the servers for a quite evident decline in the quality of services during this particularly parlous current state of Capitalism, and, of course, the cuts meant to remedy the situation. You would think from the rhetoric that they, the Tories, are doing all they can to “serve” the community, but are being traitorously let down by the “soon-to-be-criminal” actions of our professional carers.

But surely, we have to ask, “In considering the provision of services to the mass of the people in general, we need to define who is best equipped to provide them, and why?”

Of course, to answer this we must first ask, “Can a service be provided effectively on the basis of delivering that service having to generate a worthwhile profit?"

Note: A profit is not wages! Over and above the payment of wages to those delivering the service, there is an added margin, paid to the owners of the facilities, which is The Profit!

The proponents of the Capitalist System do not only insist that it can, but they actually also say that it is the only effective way of doing it. Are they right? 

 

The crucial imperative in a capitalist system is that it is financed by people with large financial resources, who will invest the necessary wherewithall to allow businesses to be set up to provide various services, but only if they get both a regular dividend on their investment, and in addition can sell that investment for a different kind of profit too.

Clearly, the motivations of these crucial investors are by no means a philanthropic desire to “serve” society. It is a group of people who already possess quite considerable resources, but who ideally want those to provide a substantial income, without reducing their extractable initial investment, and without them having to actually do anything, apart from observing their investment carefully to ensure its profitability.

They are scarcely imbued with ”service to the community”!

They may interpret a current excitement or concern in the population as likely to produce a sufficient demand to allow investments in those areas to deliver what they are exclusively interested in – unearned income in as large amounts as possible, while still maintaining the value of their original investment for return when they think fit.

Some time ago I decided to look into the question as to how these people came to have such large disposable wealth, that they could then invest in the capitalist way. And it turned out that the main way had always been Theft! My researches turned into a rather long paper on the SHAPE Blog entitled Primitive Accumulation, and it was to become the most accessed SHAPE paper in the last five years.

Not one single capitalist accumulated their wealth by either saving earned wages, or by just making things and selling them. It always was, and still is, impossible to accumulate the vast sums involved by such means.

And, there is another kind of stealing, which is regarded as entirely legal.

It is acquiring what you know to be valuable, from people who are unaware of that value, by paying ridiculously low amounts to the owners, and then selling what you have acquired at something like its true value.

[Unsurprisingly, when negotiating to buy such things, they still force down the price as far as they can. Is that not stealing? Yet, it is not only regarded as entirely legal, but also both very clever and meritorious. So, “dishonest trading“ is a very good method too!]

“Conning the ignorant” is generally considered to be “good business”, and when coupled with bribes and “transactions of mutual benefit”, can also fleece public organisations in the very same way.

So, quite apart from explaining where investable capital was acquired, this investigation also demonstrated how very inappropriate such people are to provide services for the general population. They couldn’t be more in appropriate!

And, of course, to do it without a problem, you have to cultivate an extremely low opinion of the people you are conning. So these “dealers” are scarcely the group of people likely to conscientiously serve the community, are they?

Indeed, they also can have zero grasp of what services should be, and how much they should cost ordinary people. That is never really a major consideration, “For these are the people we con everyday for our wealth and status. Our only really important consideration must be how lucrative will an investment in such an undertaking be!”

Not quite the same is it?

They will be concerned... but it will be, “How can we organise it so that the return on our investment is satisfactory – that is – will it be big enough!”

No! No! No! No! No!

You can never trust such people to provide a Service!

They may deliver something passable to initially secure the deal, but as soon as possible it will be modified with the only important principle taking over “How do we milk this for maximum profit?”

Now, you may well wonder how they get away with it, but once such a division of society has been established, with all the wealth and influence on one side, and everyone else on the other, how can things be changed? Well, initially they certainly couldn’t! No one had the wherewithall to counter the power of the wealthy. For they not only owned the businesses, but also the means of disseminating the News. 

They quickly gained owning-possession of the newspapers, and then later, the Radio stations and even the Television stations too, so the public were only told what the owners wanted them to be told.

Making a difference seemed impossible!

But, who actually produced everything? Surely, that was what ordinary people did for a wage? And, if they didn’t produce, the owners would find themselves in dire straights. Investors would sell their shares in the affected company, and the value of the company and of the investments within it would plummet!

So, workers slowly began to build defensive organisations to counter the power of the rich. They first built Unions and then political parties.

How do you think the Labour Party got its name?

By acting together, pooling their meagre resources, but most of all by using the power of the Strike! 

They could withdraw their labour – refuse to work, and stop anyone else from stepping in and doing their jobs. The picketed Strike was born and was breathtakingly effective!

Yet, how would these same people be in service jobs?

They were certainly fully aware of the vast majority of the people they would have to serve. Before the Welfare State they did ALL the Service of ordinary people, and they did it for nothing!

In my street I had half a dozen “Mams” (or “Aunties” as they were called). If any family had some sort of calamity, people were round immediately asking what they could do.

Do you even have to ask who make the very best people in service jobs?

It is surely obvious.

And these are the very same people who went on Strike, who put out fires, and protected us from the criminal classes (who were NOT workers, by the way, but the lower end of the owning class, who were still accumulating in the original way by straight theft)

Indeed, perhaps the reason for the title of this paper is becoming clear. For, in providing an appropriate service, you have to fully appreciate what service should involve, when thinking about those being served. While being ready to strike when defending yourself against those who are usually in charge of such provision.

Yet, the Tories love to contrast these as incompatible opposites – claiming that workers strike because they ignore the service requirements that will be lost by such actions. But, of course, the real ignorers of those needing to be served are those who only see them as a means of making ever-larger profits.