At Law and Liberty, I took part in a symposium debating the libertarian scholar Richard Epstein’s comparison of labor unions to predatory monopolies, which he described as the “classical liberal” view. In my contribution, I pointed out that both Adam Smith and J.S. Mill, who were classical liberals by any definition, rejected the idea that wages were fixed by automatic market forces instead of what Smith called “higgling” or negotiation, and both Smith and Mill emphasized the inequality of bargaining power among employers and workers.
Recommended Reading
Reverse Class Psychology
Reagan convinced workers to care about business, but who will teach business owners that labor matters too?
Where Are the Secure Jobs?
In the American Conservative, Oren Cass discusses how the American labor market’s failure to produce family-supporting jobs is fundamental to the nation’s problems.
