Your response to my quote's a bit of a non sequiter. The essential point of union organizing is to raise wages uniformly across an industry so that the change is competitively neutral. Unions specialize in industries, and rely on free-market forces to bring all companies in an industry into line when it comes to wages. The principle is the same in a global economy, and as unions adopt the same global strategies as business they'll have a global impact.

The end result of raising wages generally is to more equitably distribute wealth. I know that that phrase raises your hackles, but I'd point to the disparity between rising productivity and stagnant wages to illustrate the point. Nobody would have any beef if the income of the people who produce the wealth rose roughly proportionately to the wealth of those who run the businesses. In other words, I'm holding you to the maxim that a rising tide should lift all boats.

As for the sinister characterization of the relationship between unions and the Democratic Party, once again you're simply confused about cause and effect. Unions weren't created by Democrats and they're not a Democratic plot to destroy America. Unions arose out of necessity and naturally gravitated to the Democrats for political support. You don't seriously think that any union or union member would feel any affinity at all for the GOP, do you? It's no more mysterious than the affinity of the wealthy for the Republican Party.

Let me try to ease your puzzlement about where I get my perspective. I'm doing well now, but I've been working for 35 years. I have breadth of experience, and I've experienced everything I describe. I started at the bottom and was treated like dirt. I've seen sleaze and corruption and unethical business practices, on balance more often than not. I've been dumped on the street to starve when my usefulness to a company was at an end.

When we talk politics we always talk in generalizations, so I should be clear that yes, there are good people in business, and I've known quite a few of those too. But the bad is too significant to simply sweep under the rug. I must conclude from my experience that all the pressures in our system of free market capitalism push in the direction of doing wrong, and only those with strength of character resist. In other words, once again you reverse cause and effect: Wealth is not an indicator of character, it reveals character flaws.

My recent experience of modern business supports my view that we're evolving toward a neofeudal, oligarchic system. You romanticize startups as a mixture of Horatio Alger and the two Steves in a garage, but those days are long gone. Modern business is organized, top to bottom, much along the lines of the Japanese zaibatsu. Startups are now seen as a way for big established companies to minimize risk by, essentially, outsourcing the risk of innovation, and harvesting the successes. Where do you think the majority of venture capital comes from these days? It's not stuffy bankers with pocket watches or eccentric billionaires, it's investment funds and VC firms set up by the big established companies. Every large company has an investment arm or subsidiary. The bloom is off the IPO rose, and the majority of startups that I know are positioning themselves for acquisition by a larger company.

Sorry, but it doesn't work to insult me by ascribing all my views to gullibly swallowing somebody else's propaganda. I've been there, done that, and I know whereof I speak. I probably work for more companies in a year or two than you've worked for in your entire life; and I've worked more in the mainstream of business than the eccentric area of aerospace and defense companies (though I've worked for a couple of those too).