I often hear from the mainstream that labor unions used to be needed back in the bad old days of the industrial revolution. But now that the things that unions fought for such as safer working environments, higher wages,etc are regular they have outgrown their necessity. What are your thoughts about this? Did unions help at all in improving working conditions?
here is a debate on unions… good read
This is just false. Safer working environments and higher wages arose naturally from Capital Accumulation, which in turn increases in Marginal Productivity dramatically. This is also why Child Labor has for the most part disappeared in the Western World (not because of government decree as the mainstream historians would have you believe).
Unions are just cartels, and fail just as they do. I know that Walter Block has spoken/written a lot about Unions in a Free Market as well (and how all modern Unions fail), but from a quick search I can’t seem to find the speeches/videos I am thinking of.
Some reading:
The Union Myth (DiLorenzo): http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=511
The Trouble With Child Labor (Tucker): http://mises.org/daily/2858
I often hear from the mainstream that labor unions used to be needed back in the bad old days of the industrial revolution. But now that the things that unions fought for such as safer working environments, higher wages,etc are regular they have outgrown their necessity. What are your thoughts about this? Did unions help at all in improving working conditions?
I’m more than happy to hear they don’t think they are necessary today. I wish I heard that more often. Unions can keep their fabricated history if they just go away.
Unions exist to restrict supply and extort employers. That is what a union is; a sort of quasi-Socialist version of a guild. There might be some role for information and mutual socities, but these really have nothing to do with unions; and whatever the Left-Libertarians want to cry about ‘collective bargaining’ is totally useless for affecting wages or working conditions without the violence of the strike-threat system.
I recommend reading William H. Hutt’s Theory of Collective Bargaining; he really smashes this union myth.
[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
here is a debate on unions… good read
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block64.html
[/quote]
Cool; the utter denial of all economics by the opponent of Block. 
One could even make a more nuanced critique of Block - I would disagree with it, probably, but sure - but that guy is just insane. What a surprise he’s not an economist.
I have noticed Block generally debates total cranks.
The school bully of economic cranks.
I can never decide if it’s funny or just embaressing (for the people he’s debating, not him). You know when you see someone saying something so dumb you just cringe and want to be like, “come on, dude, don’t make this worse on yourself. Just take your lollipop and go home.”
A relevant book may be “Labor Economics From A Free Market Perspective” by Walter Block:
http://www.4shared.com/document/9LBexH6q/BLOCK_Walter_Labor_economics_f.html
Cool, one of the books by Block I don’t have. I swear, he writes a book every twenty minutes. The man is a phenom.
Never even knew about the book until I was making a search to find information for this post. I then ran into an article saying it was now being sold at the Mises Store at a “steep discount”, but still very expensive. Now it doesn’t exist in the store any more (wonder what happened?), and it is on Amazon for the exhorbitant price of $65.
Before the Mises Store started selling them I had to pay around $60 a book to get Bohm-Bawerk’s stuff. Maybe Mises will be able to get the rights to publish the book.
Hutt’s books are the best on the subject I’ve read; though his style is a bit dense (someone once said he wrote in ‘Huttese’).
Unions have been useful for providing specimens for medical experiments.