Shorter story of the Wisconsin conflict over collective bargaining, Yglesias Depressing Version:
[T]he classic postwar American dynamic of an economy with a large minority of the workforce unionized is fundamentally unstable. In the long-run the two equilibria are toward a non-union economy or else toward the Nordic model where virtually everyone is in a union.
Matthew Yglesias, Labor Unions and Me.
This is an interesting (and un-Yglesias-like) confusion of "obvious equilibrium points" with the potential states of any system. Generally, political economy doesn't rest in equilibrium, and we should be comfortable working towards the states of disequilibrium that are best. Or, to put it another way, in the long run, Yglesias and I are both dead–and death is a very stable equilibrium. In the short run, I'll fight for unionization and I hope he will, too.
Interesting quote. “The classic postwar American dynamic of an economy with a large minority of the workforce unionized is fundamentally unstable,” and bifurcates by either going non-union, or union. Clear enough, right?
But — whether we agree or not — how does this confuse “obvious equilibrium points with the potential states of any system”? Even if union or non-union phase states are not stable, they can be thought of as social system attractors, right? In any case, stability is dependent upon the temporal dimension: micro-views are more stable (much more stable) than macro views. Thus, there is a unit of analysis question here as well.
There are numerous cellular simulations that attest to the lack of stable optima for large minorities; much depends upon the initial conditions.