After having an enormously long argument on another thread it seems that everyone here thinks that just about every single rule a government may think up to “interfere” with the “free market” is bound to be bad and make the economy worse… Now I have just finished reading “economics in one lesson” by Henry Hazlitt and noted that he talked rather disparagingly about the work of unions, so presumably Austrians disapprove on unions and would like to perhaps ban them or curb their powers (am I right?). But then we have a contradiction:- unions presumably can evolve right out of a free market, so one could say they are even part of a free market and the only thing that can be done to reduce their power is to let the government create some rules to suppress the unions… but then that’s like the government interfering with the free market… which so many people here say is a bad thing.
So how do you resolve that contradiction?
The obvious answer to me appears to be that maybe most things a government does to interfere with the free market are bead, but there are a few things that they should do.
there are free market compatible unions and unions that are not. if you conflate the two you will get the contradiction you highlight. if you understand the difference then you see there is no contradiction.
I don’t think your average Austrian would want to ban voluntary strikes or slow-downs, any more than he’d want to ban voluntary business cartels. Both are possible in a free market, but neither are, in practice, very effective, because the temptation to be a scab or a price-cutter are overwhelming.
The issue is not the right to form associations. It is whether or not any association of private citizens should be granted the privilege of resorting with impunity to violent action. It is the same problem that relates to the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.
Ok, so you’re suggesting that Austrians put up with unions because A) they don’t cause too much harm and B) any efforts to suppress their power would somehow do more harm than good.
I’m surprised you say that. I remember in the 70’s in the UK the unions were widely considered to be far too powerful and insisted an a vast number of restrictive working practices. Then along came Mrs Thatcher (who had Austrian leanings) and introduced some regulations to reduce their power. Presumably you disaprove of what Mrs Thatcher did.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the collective organization or workers in attempts to obtain higher wages, a more comfortable work environment or whatever else they want. The problem arises when these organizations are granted special privileges above and beyond that of other free market entities. When this happens voluntary transactions turn to coercion thus the Libertarian can no longer endorse it.
It’s all a matter of what you’re “suppressing”. Throughout to 20th century, especially, there have been laws that allowed unions to violate property rights. Insofar as Thatcher removed those laws, she did a good thing.
Unions never had significantly harmful power until the government began to support them.
Including cops, teachers, air traffic control, etc. That basically is not negotiation, but political control that has nothing to do with democracy or the market.
"Unions, therefore, are theoretically compatible with the existence of a purely free market. In actual fact, however, it is evident to any competent observer that unions acquire almost all their power through the wielding of force, specifically force against strikebreakers and against the property of employers. An implicit license to unions to commit violence against strikebreakers is practically universal. Police commonly either remain “neutral” when strikebreakers are molested or else blame the strikebreakers for “provoking” the attacks upon them. Certainly, few pretend that the institution of mass picketing by unions is simply a method of advertising the fact of a strike to anyone passing by.
When unions are permitted to resort to violence, the state or other enforcing agency has implicitly delegated this power to the unions. The unions, then, have become “private states.”"