Basil collins harlan county death

assignment 1

(1) After reading Chapter Three of Mancur Olson’s Rise and Decline of Nations, Watch Harlan County USA.

(a) Do the striking Eastover workers like Lois Scott use selective incentives? If so, what are they?

One of the characteristics of Harlan County that some of the labor organizers and strikers mention is that the government in Harlan County does not represent the workers’ interests. For instance, the “gun thug” who shoots Lawrence Jones gets off, the strikers believe that the sheriff treats the “gun thugs” better than they get treated, and the workers don’t respect the state police. Workers outnumber managers, so the democratic form of government seems to work in a counterintuitive way in Harlan County, Kentucky.

(b) How would Olson explain outcomes from democracy like those?

assignment 2

(1) Read this Economist article: http://www.economist.com/node/17849199 and this Japan Daily Press article: http://japandailypress.com/toyota-labor-group-to-push-for-base-wage-increase-in-japan-0540534/

Olson argues that a special interest group will be motivated to favor redistribution of wealth to itself unless the reduction in the value of society’s output is more than 1/P greater than the amount won by the special interest, where P is the proportion of the total economy that the special interest represents (so that if the special interest is 1% of the economy, it will only care about the ill effects of its demands on society as a whole if the ill effects are 100 times or more greater than the benefit it achieves by extracting gains through others through the political system. He adds: “The incentives facing an encompassing special-interest organization are dramatically different from those facing an organization that represents only a narrow segment of society. If an organization represents, say, a third of the income producing capacity of a county, its members will, on average, obtain about a third of the benefit from any effort to make the society more productive.”

(a) What are the implications of this insight for unions in smaller versus larger countries (Sweden versus the US)? In which kind of country are unions likely to be more concerned with society at large than with their members?

(b) What are the implications for Japanese enterprise unions (unions that are associated with a single firm such as the Federation of All Toyota Workers’ Union) versus British craft unions (unions that cover an entire craft in a region or nation like plumbers or mechanics) for their attitudes toward their employers? In a single British plant there are dozens of craft unions, but in a Japanese Toyota plant there is only the single Federation of All Toyota Workers' Union. Which type of union is likely to result in better cooperation between labor and management?

(c) Why might all-encompassing labor organizations or governments that say they favor labor’s interests, such as the former Soviet Union, fail to act in the interests of of the general public or of labor? Can we say that Olson's argument is inapplicable to totalitarian or nonpluralistic governments that have a monopoly of power? Why does it break down in that he argues that groups will be more concerned with society as a whole as they control a large proportion?

(A)The strike in Harlan County shows the battle between the coal miners and the company engaging in a shootout that left numerous people dead. Conditions at the work place were bad, as well as medical benefits and retirement was minimal and unreliable with union officials not showing any concern. There are some incentives to make the society in which they operate more successful, the incentive to redistribute income to members by having an interest to increase efficiency and productivity of the company (in this case the mine workers). As stated in the reading for this chapter, when a company has secured selective incentives to maintain themselves it will often survive even if the collective good is no longer needed.

(B) Olson would explain that, distributional coalitions slow down a society’s capacity to adopt new technologies and to reallocate resources in response to changing conditions, therefore reducing the rate of economic growth.

student answer

(a) Do the striking Eastover workers like Lois Scott use selective incentives? If so, what are they?

The striking Eastover workers like Lois Scott uses the selective incentive of her voice. Her speeches were the motivation that told the truth about how the mining company treated the miners. She told them how Eastover thought of the miners as animals and hired gun men to assist in the silencing of who ever was in alliance with the union. But what exactly made this a selective incentive was that she was breaking down the hardships that the miners were living through to her club, giving them a voice and a total understanding of what was happening, thus why the club needed to stay along side with the miners. At approximately one-hour-and-six-minutes in the film, Scott also mentioned to the club about how she was able to “get one”, possibly referring to being able to stop a scab. Her idea was that she was able to stop one person, it might have not been many, but if all the members participated and got “one” each, they would be successful. She also began to directly criticize the members of her club by calling them out during a meeting at the time frame of about one-hour-and-eight-minutes in the film. She told the audience that whoever was not going to be dependable for the cause, to leave, because the group was not going out to risk their lives with flaky members. By doing this, Scott was able to strengthen and boost morale of the group and showing that every single member, who did not leave, was on the same side. Her last speech was about Lawrence Jones death for the contract and that it should not be in vain, because it was his willpower to fight for what was for the good of the miners. She then reassures the group that the fight will continue on even after Jones’ death and that Harlan County will be UMWA Coal.

(b) How would Olson explain outcomes from democracy like those?

Olson would explain this counterintuitive way of democracy with the powers of lobbying and collusion. Olson tells us that “...any lobbying power must be used in part to get favorable governmental treatment of the business activity…” on page thirty-nine. Although there was not any evidence presented in the documentary, there were many thoughts of questionable actions from the public service side. For example, the murderer of Lawrence Jones is free to walk and the sheriff’s nonchalant arrest towards Basil Collins. It seems that there is some type of collusion occurring here and that is the product of lobbying powers. There is also evidence that Olson would refer to his ninth implication and that is the weaker groups will suffer because they have no selective incentive for them to organize, but the great firms will have a simpler time to organize. Since there is a greater amount of representation of the stronger groups, through the ease of organizing themselves, the laws in which that are created are generally more geared to them because there is less representation of the smaller groups. This is evident in the film at approximately twenty-three minutes, when a woman stands up in the court to testify that the laws were not made for the working class (weaker group) but for people like Carl Horn (stronger group) who is the President of Duke Power Company.

student answer

(a) Yes, Lois Scott and striking eastover workers used selective incentives. In this particular case we can argue that they used negative selective incentives imposed on those who did not want to take part in collective action. (b) I believe Olson would argue that : The economy's output that Duke Power Co. Was producing by keeping mine workers underpaid, was providing a larger share among distributional coalitions than it would be by regulating a fair and just salary for workers.