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The only reason labor unions are legal is that certain unions have outsized political clout, in a perfect world labor unions would be illegal under antitrust la
by greatscott404 7y ago
The only reason labor unions are legal is that certain unions have outsized political clout, in a perfect world labor unions would be illegal under antitrust laws as forcing companies to pay workers more than what a free market dictates inevitably increases prices.
- ganzuul 7y agoPrices increase regardless.
- lykr0n 7y agoSure. In a perfect world labor unions wouldn't need to exist because government regulations would make sure employees didn't abuse employees and employees have protections. Unions are the logical outcome of lax labor regulations.
- greatscott404 7y agoAre you suggesting that employee cartels squeezing money from consumers is justified? Want worker protections ask for that, no need to burden businesses any further.
- lykr0n 7y agoI suggested no such thing. The minimum wage is a burden for companies. Walmart having to pay their employees in USD and not Walmart credit is a burden. Workers having a lunch break and bathroom breaks are "burdens" as well. If you're presenting the argument that cheap products of slave labor is a good thing, then... I'll pray for you.
- nkrisc 7y agoWhat's the alternative? An individual employee negotiates one on one with... an entire company? The companies have all the power, unions are an attempt to not be completely trodden upon.
- joshuamorton 7y agoA union is just the free market at work. Much as a business is a collection of individuals working toward the common goal of supplying a product, a union is a collection of individuals working toward the common goal of supplying a product (labor). If you believe a union is a cartel that squeezes money from consumers, you must necessarily believe that a company is the same thing.
- quotemstr 7y ago> A union is just the free market at work. That's not the case. A union is an organization for extracting rents above those the market would ordinarily bear. Rent-seeking activity --- no matter who does it --- makes society as a whole worse off. Bastiat showed that a long time ago. When corporations organize to extract rents, we call them cartels and apply strict penalties under the law. Why should employees have a right to use these same tactics? The market for thee, but not for me?
- nprz 7y agoDoesn't the practice of minimum wage and labor rights also allow the worker to "extract rents above those the market would ordinarily bear"? Do those practices make society as a whole worse off?
- komali2 7y agoThe libertarian or whatever this person identifies as will claim yes, which kind of goes to show that we should reject these anti-human economic philosophies, never mind the fact that they're economically unsound anyway.
- tehjoker 7y agoExplain to me why region controls exist on digital products and then let's talk about "extracting rents above what the market would ordinarily bear". This is how markets function, and in our current state of affairs we need to benefit the lives of ordinary people that exist within a completely marketized existence.
- 7y ago
- Spooky23 7y agoI live in a free market and a free society. Why can't I democratically decide to associate with and democratically negotiate in a group and freely enter a contract with a third party? Isn't that what a free market is all about?
- missedthecue 7y agoSure you're more than welcome to do that. And unions should be free to go to the negotiating table. But it should be just that. A negotiation. They should offer something of value in exchange for more compensation other than "give us X or we shut down the business". That's a cartel. Imagine if businesses organized themselves into employers unions and refused to hire anyone above a certain wage? Cartels are bad. They are anti-free market
- alexpetralia 7y agoYour assumption of "free markets" is a mythical one.
- baddox 7y agoRegardless, labor unions would be a feature of any conceptualization of free markets I’ve ever heard of. In what sense is cooperation and organization not compatible with a free market?
- erik_seaberg 7y agoIf an employer could negotiate with unions competing for a contract, the outcome might be a market-clearing price for labor. Enforce a monopoly for a single union, and the only possible responses are capitulate or leave, with outcomes that look like Detroit.
- Kluny 7y agoFree markets are as real as perpetual motion machines.
- vernie 7y agoFeel better?
- shantly 7y agoCool cool. We can have our government stop recognizing the existence of corporations at the same time we outlaw unions. Deal?
- greatscott404 7y agoWhy? Corporations are largely great assets to a country, labor unions on the other hand are parasitic cartels.
- shantly 7y agoWell the high labor-rate negotiating power, relative to individuals, of corporations—legal entities created by our government(s)—is why we need unions, so I figure if we ditch one we can/should ditch the other, too.
- greatscott404 7y agoI'm opposed to throwing the proverbial baby with the bathwater.
- shantly 7y agoSure, then we can keep corporations around as long as we balance their government-enabled incredible labor rate negotiating position with something comparably effective for workers.
- greatscott404 7y agoWe have that it's called "supply and demand".
- shantly 7y agoCool then we can stop providing structures that make the demand side of labor much stronger at the negotiating table than the supply side. I'm in, let's do it.
- BiteCode_dev 7y agoInteresting account. Created 15 days ago, negative rep, and every comments are on the same nature: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=greatscott404 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=greatscott404
- greatscott404 7y agoAm I committing thought crimes?
- pjc50 7y agoIn the West we tend to believe in free association and the right of people to perform political activity without being beaten up by the police, at least most of the time.
- quotemstr 7y ago> In the West we tend to believe in free association and the right of people to perform political activity LOL
- greatscott404 7y agoWow. I myself hail for your fabled "west", and I'm not suggesting that free association should be scrapped nor that violence be committed against its practitioners.
- pjc50 7y agoYou literally started this thread by demanding that a policital association be banned. History tells us what that looks like in practice, and how much violence is involved in having the police break a strike.
- greatscott404 7y ago"literally"?
- nbp160130 7y agoExactly. We should repeal the minimum wage and the 13th amendment so no corporation should ever have to pay more than what a free market dictates.
- jayd16 7y agoDon't forget child labor. The market demands child labor.
- shantly 7y agoI daily chafe under the yoke of a government that restricts my right to sell myself into slavery. And they enforce that onerous infringement of my rights, ultimately, by threat of violence! Which clearly makes government the slavers, actually, the same way taxation makes them identical to muggers. (/s, in case it's not clear)
- sfink 7y agoI probably shouldn't say this here, but I'm a bit confused about child labor. The phrase brings to mind images of a crowd of muddy children sewing cheap shirts long after dark, and I strongly agree with regulations to prohibit that. At the same time, why is it a problem for children to work? I grew up helping my dad out in his job as a handyman. [To be clear, this is legal and not what I'm arguing about.] Not every parent has a job where that makes sense, so working for someone else who does makes sense to me. Sure, there need to be regulations to prevent it from being exploitative and harmful. But right now, the state says that children must be in school x>0 hours a day and working y=0 hours a day. Is that really the right answer for everyone's situation? Personally, I've decided that the value of x should be smaller and y higher (I'm homeschooling my kids, though admittedly we haven't figured out how to get them meaningful employment.) The idea is not to make them into better pawns of the capitalist state, it's kind of the opposite. I see value in work for making learning more meaningful, for teaching values well beyond what the artificial construct of "allowance" can support, among other things. I haven't actually run up against minimum employment age laws, and don't expect to for a while, but it does seem like a clumsy tool for preventing a variety of harms.
- jayd16 7y agoUsing anti-trust laws to ensure labor can't organize in a way it deems fit because that's free market...wow.
- kingkawn 7y agodemonstrative of the western world’s idea of freedom; anyone, with sufficient ruthlessness, can aspire to become the feudal lord.
- pmoriarty 7y ago"forcing companies to pay workers more than what a free market dictates inevitable increases prices" Does it inevitably increase prices, or could its millionaire/billionaire execs just maybe own a few less private jets and McMansions? Anyway, even if prices were increased, what's wrong with a market in which all participants earned a living wage? Or are the absolute minimum prices that markets can bear something we should be striving for even if it means those at the bottom can barely survive?
- missedthecue 7y ago>Anyway, even if prices were increased, what's wrong with a market in which all participants earned a living wage? Because if prices increase, what you thought would be a "living wage" is no longer a living wage
- EliRivers 7y agoin a perfect world labor unions would be illegal under antitrust laws as forcing companies to pay workers more than what a free market dictates inevitably increases prices. That's not a perfect world. That's just a world run in accordance with a bizarre selectively free-market economic masturbation fantasy. It's only "perfect" if you've got some kind of quasi-religious belief dictating a morality such that said selectively free-market economic masturbation fantasy is defined as "right", like some kind of madman who thinks Ayn Rand was God's final prophet.
- opportune 7y agoIn a perfect world, unions would be unnecessary. I think that would be a less controversial opinion. Wanting them to be illegal is more a moralization of your economic ideology - it would not be compatible with a belief that “labor is entitled to all it creates”. And stating it as matter of fact rather than as an opinion is kind of lame
- greatscott404 7y agoWhen corporations band together to extract higher profits we penalize them, same logic should apply to labor unions.
- jkrems 7y agoWell, all of Google's shareholders are banding together against thousands of individual workers. We don't penalize them banding together. We just call it "a company". Why is it any different when some of the workers band together to be on equal footing?
- dannypgh 7y agoI don't buy for a second that the wages absent a union are what a free market would predict. A free market requires freedom to participate, and most individuals are forced to sell their labor in exchange for food and shelter, let alone necessities like healthcare. Unions provide a framework where something closer to a free market wage (note: this is to say nothing of the morality of using markets for these purposes, a separate question) can be negotiated. Maybe in a world where people had a UBI they could live off of this could be argued, but that's not the world of today. You're cherry picking free market economics only where it suits you. Your assessment of antitrust law is also pretty far removed from reality. By that logic, mergers and acquisitions would be illegal in every instance. Or, for that matter, standards bodies. Corporations band together to increase profits all the damn time, and the overwhelming majority of this activity is legal.
- ElonMuskrat 7y agoGoogle has net income of almost $30.7 billion and payed only $4.2 billion in tax. If they gave all 2,300 cafeteria workers a raise of $25,000 that would reduce their net income from $30.7 billion to $30.64 billion. Google has become a social parasite - one that propels greater and greater wealth inequality. The parasite profits tremendously from public infrastructure and open source - while giving nothing back.