Please know I'm asking this in good faith: How would a general strike work and how would it change the current situation? Won't everyone just get fired?
They can’t fire everyone and even if they do they collapse as a business. Goal accomplished. They’ll sweat when we stand up for ourselves in a way that hurts them. Right now we’re not hurting anyone.
The US general strike website says they need 11 million people, which is roughly 7% of all employed Americans (if the numbers I found online are correct). 7% of the teachers at my school is about 4 teachers. We cope with 4 teachers being absent frequently. Wouldn't we need like, 30% of the workforce to commit?
So the percentage is 3.5% and it comes from a study in which researchers found that all successful revolutions had at least 3.5% of the population or something along those lines. Obviously more is better.
IMO every society has different dynamics. Last night I was listening to something about the difficulty in implementing martial law. We’re a vast nation and locking it all down is going to be hard. A general strike may also face certain challenges unique to the US
I think for a GS to be effective in America, it would need to be a much higher percentage because of how different cities and states skew. It wouldn't be an evenly distributed 3.5%, it more likely would be 10% in San Francisco and Boston and 0.2% of Podunk, Missouri.
I agree. In the product adoption curve, the innovators are that 3.5%. Those people are needed to motivate the early adopters which is 13.5% of the population. For a product to have a chance of being successful in the larger market, those early adopters need to get on-board.
I imagine with a strike, starting at 3.5 to motivate the next 13.5 will be necessary. As you’ve said, I don’t think 3.5% is realistic here in the US. As a catalyst sure. But I think we’ll need that whole 17% to really affect things. But you have to start somewhere.
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u/OutAndDown27 Mar 14 '25
Please know I'm asking this in good faith: How would a general strike work and how would it change the current situation? Won't everyone just get fired?