Friday, September 9, 2011

Unions of Peace

Joe Biden, Labor Day:
"We've been through a lot of fights, but this is a different kind of fight," he told an annual Labor Day gathering of the Cincinnati AFL-CIO. "This is a fight for the heart and soul of the labor movement. This is a fight literally for our right to exist. Don't misunderstand what this is. … You are the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gates."

From the NYT yesterday:
About 500 longshoremen stormed the new $200 million terminal in Longview before sunrise Thursday, carrying baseball bats, smashing windows, damaging rail cars and dumping tons of grain from the cars, police and company officials said.

von Mises noted that unions were based on coercion and monopoly, sources of inefficiency and simple injustice in most scenarios, but, they're populist, so it's always tempting to rationalize them in some way.

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