Practices that work during a growth phase rarely work effectively when an organization (business, country, etc) has reached the latter states of its lifecycle.
One example is unions: they organized and protected workers in a period when companies were maturing.
The growth phase is over. Now that such protections have been augmented by retirement funds and pensions, businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits. Unions prevent those businesses from being able to maintain competitive pricing in global markets due to labor costs, so those obligations eventually put the company out of business or force it to move operations - normally out of sheer survival since other companies in the space will be doing the same.
The end result is that, in a mature market, unions can strangle a business until both that business and the retirements of employees are lost.
Many other points exist that may seem counterintuitive without understanding the perspective of both the employer and employee as well as international capital flows and cycles.
One example is unions: they organized and protected workers in a period when companies were maturing.
The growth phase is over. Now that such protections have been augmented by retirement funds and pensions, businesses have little room to maneuver when an economic downturn hits. Unions prevent those businesses from being able to maintain competitive pricing in global markets due to labor costs, so those obligations eventually put the company out of business or force it to move operations - normally out of sheer survival since other companies in the space will be doing the same.
The end result is that, in a mature market, unions can strangle a business until both that business and the retirements of employees are lost.
Many other points exist that may seem counterintuitive without understanding the perspective of both the employer and employee as well as international capital flows and cycles.