There’s also the chance that they’d just hunker down and outlast it. Giving them a definite timeline gives them a light at the end of the tunnel. After 10 days, it’s just business as usual again. A general strike without a posted timeline would lead to capitulation within only a few days. It wouldn’t even take all 10 days.
Kidney stones don’t suck just because they hurt. They suck because you don’t know how long they’re going to hurt for. They hurt until you have passed the stone, and you have no idea how long that will take. The pain is analogous to a muscle cramp. People can grit their teeth and bear it if they know it’s just a muscle cramp and will end soon. But when it has been six days and you don’t have any idea how much longer it will last, it makes you desperate.
Ok, so they do that to everybody, and now the strike can’t end. This helps them how?
They likely won’t have to do it to everyone. Just enough people to make examples and frighten people into going back to work. Solidarity is not a magic word, but a state of enthusiasm that must be maintained.
If they do have to do it to entire workforce-sized populations, we get a cozy GULAG style labor system.
“They can’t arrest all of us” only works if there’s means of resistance other than passive. In liberal democracies, that’s typically protests, elections, and legal avenues; in less charming regimes, it comes down to internal dissent in the security apparatus or outright force from the oppressed. If you lack those means of negotiation, or the credible threat thereof, then they literally can arrest all of you, and will, given half a chance.
In this political climate a 10 day general strike would be dealt with by deploying the army.
There’s also the chance that they’d just hunker down and outlast it. Giving them a definite timeline gives them a light at the end of the tunnel. After 10 days, it’s just business as usual again. A general strike without a posted timeline would lead to capitulation within only a few days. It wouldn’t even take all 10 days.
Kidney stones don’t suck just because they hurt. They suck because you don’t know how long they’re going to hurt for. They hurt until you have passed the stone, and you have no idea how long that will take. The pain is analogous to a muscle cramp. People can grit their teeth and bear it if they know it’s just a muscle cramp and will end soon. But when it has been six days and you don’t have any idea how much longer it will last, it makes you desperate.
So what, they gonna come to my house and make me go to work?
Or do they show up at my work and do my job?
Neither. The army joins the strike.
Arrest you and toss you in a cell, more likely.
Ok, so they do that to everybody, and now the strike can’t end. This helps them how?
They likely won’t have to do it to everyone. Just enough people to make examples and frighten people into going back to work. Solidarity is not a magic word, but a state of enthusiasm that must be maintained.
If they do have to do it to entire workforce-sized populations, we get a cozy GULAG style labor system.
“They can’t arrest all of us” only works if there’s means of resistance other than passive. In liberal democracies, that’s typically protests, elections, and legal avenues; in less charming regimes, it comes down to internal dissent in the security apparatus or outright force from the oppressed. If you lack those means of negotiation, or the credible threat thereof, then they literally can arrest all of you, and will, given half a chance.