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.
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.
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.