> Assume that the physician (the employee) goes on strike. His ultimatum: “You pay me twice the fee I am now getting or I quit! Moreover, I shall use force to prevent any other physician from attending to your ailment. Meet my demands or do without medical care from now on.”
fee.org is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Economic_Educat... which is a conservative think tank like the cato institute
Qualitatively, the two scenarios are the same, they differ only in degree. The action is the same, the outcome is only more destructive in one vs the other. But if there is a moral right to strike, it applies to both professions because a right is universal and absolute.
This is a ridiculous argument designed to strip away the only power working people have against corporations.
You may call that "opportunism", likely using the neutral definition "putting self-interest before other interests when there is an opportunity to do so, or flexibly adapting to changing circumstances to maximize self-interest" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunism .
If you have a problem with that, what then is the moral right to form a limited liability company? How are companies not just opportunism by the owners of the company?
Which brings us back to the topic at hand: striking is not a moral right either.
Okay, you have your definition and you can dream of some utopian world where everyone practices your own morality.
The thing is, all you've done is shift the topic to what 'injustice' means.
The US court case which established the right to strike, Commonwealth v. Hunt, specifically highlights how union action is not necessarily injustice but may have a "proper purpose". Quoting https://web.archive.org/web/20150123211142/http://www.lovkoa... :
"The manifest intent of the association is, to induce all those engaged in the same occupation to become members of it. Such a purpose is not unlawful. It would give them a power which might be exerted for useful and honorable purposes, or for dangerous and pernicious ones. If the latter were the real and actual object, and susceptible of proof, it should have been specially charged. Such an association might be used to afford each other assistance in times of poverty, sickness and distress; or to raise their intellectual, moral and social condition; or to make improvement in their art; or for other proper purposes. Or the association might be designed for purposes of oppression and injustice. But in order to charge all those, who become members of an association, with the guilt of a criminal conspiracy, it must be averred and proved that the actual, if not the avowed object of the association, was criminal."
The moral argument is that you have the right to do as you wish, limited to legal and moral restrictions. You need to demonstrate that the result causes injustice, not assume it exists.
> I personally am not an opportunistic person in that sense.
I personally find it very boring to have a discussion with people who make up their own non-standard definitions to justify their position.
> striking is not a moral right either
Then why should anyone care? Many legal things in the US are not based on moral rights. Where is the moral right to fire an employee? What is the moral right to restrict the presidency to persons 35 or older?
If it's a bad argument, it's a bad argument whether it's from a conservative think tank or from someone else. If it's a good argument, it's a good argument whether it's from a conservative think tank or from someone else.
It's up to you to show that is a good or bad argument, rather than committing the logical fallacy of poisoning the well.
This is the fallacy of circular reasoning.
>>It's a bad argument because it's a bad argument[, not because it came from Cato]
They also imply the bad of the argument is obvious. I do not entirely agree and believe their comment would be improved with just a bit of work.
They did not seriously intend to present a circular fallacy.
Just saying.
Also, you're being too generous to assume there's an unstated justification for why it's is a bad argument. Pretty obvious that there isn't, they just assume anything said by the authors must be bad because tribes.
That's a common speech pattern and often the intent is basically as I stated.
Cato does, in fact, produce many bad arguments. Now they don't get it all wrong. They have produced good material. That said, I personally do not consider them reputable.
And if we want to be pedantic, "especially the part where they claim that the source has a history of bad arguments" would make my "argument" an ad-hominem fallacy, or perhaps poisoning the well, but not circular reasoning. But again, as I said, the argument is bad independent of the people who made it.
It's a bad argument.
"Moreover, I shall use force to prevent any other physician from attending to your ailment".
It is a particularly bad argument when applied to physicians. The American Medical Association is effectively a labor union of doctors with monopoly control over licensing and legal practice of medicine --- the only such union in the country. Which helps explain why the average US physician earns over $350K a year.
Is it only illegal for physicians and not sanitation workers, baseball players, or actors?
During the baseball strike of 1994-95, MLB teams hired replacement players. No one used force to prevent it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_...
Union workers have a right to strike. They don't have the right to use force to prevent others from doing their job. In fact, lots of picket lines in recent years have featured a police presence to enforce this.
Can a scab walk past the picket line and take their job?
Yes --- legally, they absolutely can. And anyone who tries to use force to prevent them can be arrested.
Its a business group not a labor union (it has more in common with the Chamber of Commerce than the AFL-CIO), and it doesn’t have monopoly control over licensing or the legal practice of medicine (which is controlled by state agencies in each state.)
The National Board of Medical Examiners which administers the US Medical Licensing Exam just happens to be made up of AMA members. You can't get licensed in any state without passing this exam first.
Do you think someone else is responsible? Who would these mystery people be?
This test is the gateway to a license to practice medicine. No other union has this sort of legal control over their own industry.
They can easily use this test to limit the number of people who are licensed to practice medicine and thus keep salaries of their membership high.
Are you aware of the pass/fail rate on the license exams?
You don't even have to use force. Just erecting entry barriers is good enough. This is why business cartels can form even without using force (not even indirectly). Cartels are considered illegal conspiracies against the public. If unions didn't have protected rights in law, then they'd just be considered labour cartels and also rendered illegal.
Example? I'll wait.
Just erecting entry barriers is good enough.
A barrier that can prevent entry is the use of force --- and illegal.
There's no legal block to you creating your own company to compete with TSMC or Apple or Google, yet, you won't be able to do it. The sheer amount of effort it needs to compete makes it impractical. Entry barriers are usually created by the effectiveness of the incumbents and lack of any way to get customers when you're the worst option.