alt Hacker News> If one company is exploiting their workers in a competitive market, what prevents those workers from going to work for any of the other companies?
Depends, is there a labor shortage or a surplus? It might be cheaper for a company to train a replacement than it is to treat employees better. If there's a labor surplus, then the employer has a lot of power of the situation.
> Slavery is a government regulation that says that if someone pays a stranger money then you have to do work you never agreed to do.
Nope. In fact, slavery was contract/property law. There wasn't a government regulation or statute that established or regulated it. That was part of the problem. Slavery was the ultimate in libertarian ideology because it recognized that through whatever means, individuals could end up the property of other individuals. It further recognized children as the property of their parents (and thus property of the slave owners).
You can consider indentured servants, for example. Someone willingly signs themselves into slavery to pay off the debt (usually the boat ride to america). Slavery was a natural extension of that concept.
The only role the government served in this situation was enforcing the slave contracts.
> They're an attempt to monopolize the labor market in an industry.
That's not a refutation. Libertarian ideology (particularly the free market form) has no problems with a monopoly.
I do, which is why I think government regulations and actions to break up monopolies is a good thing.
But in a market without government protection for workers, unions forming a labor monopoly is the only solution which can counteract the inherent power imbalance between employer and employee.
I'd not classify them as "abusive" because far more people benefit from strong employee protections than the people harmed by those protections. The ultimate harm is it makes businesses less profitable.
> Depends, is there a labor shortage or a surplus?
That determines things like wages. It doesn't allow companies to do things like cause $1000 in damage to you in order to save $10, because then they'd have to pay you $1000 more than the company that isn't doing that or you'd still go work there instead.
Also, if there is a labor surplus then how is a union going to do any good? The company would just let them go on strike and hire replacements.
> In fact, slavery was contract/property law.
That seems to have the word "law" in it.
> It further recognized children as the property of their parents (and thus property of the slave owners).
Which is obviously not something the child consented to.
> You can consider indentured servants, for example. Someone willingly signs themselves into slavery to pay off the debt (usually the boat ride to america).
There are arguments to be made against this, but it's significantly more defensible than doing it without consent. Because then who is going to do it? And how is it really different than e.g. non-dischargeable student loans, a thing the government still does?
> The only role the government served in this situation was enforcing the slave contracts.
The only role the government serves in a contract to form a cartel is enforcing the contract too, which is why there are contracts the government shouldn't enforce.
> Libertarian ideology (particularly the free market form) has no problems with a monopoly.
Libertarian ideology assumes that monopolies form as a result of government rules. It obviously can't allow for unrestricted anti-competitive contracts because then someone with a monopoly on any necessity could force everyone into a contract to form a dictatorial government, which is anathema to the entire ideology. But contract law is the government. A government that didn't enforce contracts at all and only enforced laws against violence would be perfectly consistent with it, whereas a government that enforces contracts you never agreed to or that you were forced to sign under duress would not.
> But in a market without unions and government protection for workers, unions forming a labor monopoly is the only solution which can counteract the inherent power imbalance between employer and employee.
How is there an inherent power imbalance in a competitive market? They can choose a different employee and you can choose a different employer.
> I'd not classify them as "abusive" because far more people benefit from strong employee protections than the people harmed by those protections. The ultimate harm is it makes businesses less profitable.
The ultimate harm is that it makes the industry's products worse or more expensive to customers, or increases market consolidation if a union destroys a company in an industry with high barriers to entry and thereby causes there to be fewer of them.