From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 10:56 PM
To: Franklin Schmidt
Cc: LPSM-Discuss@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [LPSM-Discuss] Re: Equality, Emotional Distress, Government
as Super-Corporation, etc.


From: Franklin Schmidt [mailto:fschmidt@digdb.com]

> It's ironic that as a libertarian, you are 
> defending antitrust law.

If you capitalized 'libertarian' you'd have a point. But I'm more of 
a small-L libertarian than a Libertarian or anarchist. Most economists 
who advocate free markets nevertheless admit that collusion can cause 
market failure (i.e. structural inefficiency).

> A union is a labor trust almost by definition since 
> it works by controlling the labor market

That's why trustbusters need to break up e.g. the UAW.  Just as GM 
isn't allowed to merge with Ford and Daimler, the UAW should not be 
allowed to monopolize the auto-laborer market.

> To apply antitrust law to unions is to effectively ban them.

No, it's to make them compete -- just as GM had to compete with Ford 
to sell me my car, and just as I had to compete with other engineers 
to get hired here at Yahoo.

> Antitrust law is clearly government intervention.

So is regulation of other market failures, like externalities (e.g. pollution). 

> I see no legitimate argument to apply antitrust to labor.

There is no difference from an economic perspective between monopolizing 
the automobile labor market and monopolizing the automobile market.

> Contracts made under duress should
> not be enforceable and I know that many 
> employees are under duress when they
> sign contracts with their employer.

Only because you would question-beggingly define duress, e.g. as not 
being independently wealthy. :-)

> I would go further and say that
> contracts that are clearly not in the 
> public interest should not be enforced
> by the state.

Who gets to define "the public interest" -- Franklin Schmidt, right?  
If we could agree on "the public interest", we'd eliminate markets and 
just have the Politburo write a Five Year Plan.

> An example would be a contract to sell oneself into slavery.

That's not an example, because there is no evidence that anywhere near 
enough people would do this to perceptibly threaten "the public interest". 
I doubt there's any evidence that anyone would seriously sell oneself 
into slavery, period.

> I believe that those contract provisions rendered 
> unenforceable by Norris-La
> Guardia were clearly not in the public interest

I believe otherwise.  Do you have some kind of public-interest-ometer 
to settle this dispute?  If so, we'll put you on the committee to draft 
the Five Year Plan... :-)

> Unions have not been able to expand into new 
> job areas because of
> Taft-Hartley and the general anti-union 
> legislative climate.

Taft-Hartley was enacted in 1947, but the decline of unions began in the 
1970s. The only "anti-union" legislation has been the industrial deregulation 
that simply removed the artificial barriers protecting unionized industries 
from internal and foreign competition.

> It will be interesting to see what labor 
> does in the coming bad economic years.

The coming years are going to be fine. If you disagree, feel free to waste 
your money investing in gold and other hedges against economic downturn. 
(Indeed, the continually declining price of gold is the market's way of 
disagreeing with your prediction here.)

brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net