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Comment by missedthecue | Hacker News Reader

Demanding higher pay in exchange for increased efficiency is a negotiation.

Demanding higher pay in exchange for nothing is rent-seeking.

There's nothing wrong with wishing for a cozy dream rentier position, the problem is that ports are not really a healthy market. It's hard to open a new port, there are only a few ones that dominate the market, and they are all operated by the local government. There's no real incentive to do better, no profit motive to enter this market, to be more efficient, etc.

So naturally this should be regulated like a public service.

That said, just as regular public service jobs pay shit it's not surprising that there are regular conflicts due to disagreements about compensation.

I will remember that the next time I'm at the grocery store and prices go up without negotiation. Afterall I could just not buy food.

I don't think this is useful analogy. If Kroger raises prices for milk, you can cross the street and buy your milk from Walmart or Aldi or Costco or any of the other hundreds of places that sell groceries.

If the ILWU goes on a slowdown strike, the port authority cannot simply fire them all and hire replacements. Firstly, that is outright illegal in America and secondly, there is no competition anyway. The ILWU has a monopoly on the supply of longshoremen. If all the grocers were entered into a cartel agreement to not sell milk below a certain price, then you'd have a point. There's no evidence that this is the case.

But all longshoremen are entered into an agreement not to sell labor below a given price. This agreement is their union membership with the ILWU.

Setting aside the fact that stores only sell milk and all get it from the same set of farms which usually have their own trade group, monopoly if you will, why should regulatory capture favor your preference over theirs?

There's no milk monopoly. That's ridiculous. Farmer Joe is free to sell his milk at whatever price he wants.

Not exactly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Price_Support_Program

Worked on a project a while back for pricing different qualities of milk and the amount of federal programs, guidelines, and laws regulating dairy markets is extremely substantial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Farmers_of_America

~22% of the market if I understand correctly. Hardly a monopsony.

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