An experiment in blogging -- reposted

[I'm about finished with a longer post that refers to this topic so I decided to do a repost. I apologize to long time readers.]

This will just take a minute of your time.

What follows is a passage from a popular blog, rewritten slightly to make it more general but otherwise unchanged. I'll post the original quote with some comments Monday or Tuesday. [later today for the repost -- Mark]

I'd appreciate it if you would take a look at this and give some thought both to the arguments proposed and to the larger belief system they suggest, then come back in a few days and see what effect learning the context has had on your initial impressions.

Thanks.

If you concede that employers need to be able to fire bad employees, then you can't fully defend the role of the unions. You can defend the concept of unions, and you can believe that some of the things unions do, like bargain for higher aggregate wages, help society. But most unions demonstrably make it very difficult to fire bad employees. That is currently a core function of unions, and something that must change. You're also going to need higher salaries to attract a better caliber employee into the workforce, and that's something unions could potentially help. But being "treated like professionals" has to mean both the opportunity to earn a good living if you do well and the potential to be fired if you fail.

I welcome comments but please don't include the source of the passage. Obviously that would undercut the point of the experiment.