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Comment by boomlinde | Hacker News Reader

> If it's really a problem for the employees, isn't that where the free labor market would allow them to quit their job and look for something more in tune with their preferences?

A free labor market would certainly allow workers to unionize to leverage their power and pursue their own capitalist goals by whatever means the market allows them. A free labor market should recognize the workers as important actors in that market. I'm not sure why unions seem like such an appalling idea to capitalist idealists.

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> I'm not sure why unions seem like such an appalling idea to capitalist idealists.

For the same reason capitalism was named "capitalism" by its critics (a name later adopted by its supporters) -- because it is a system in which society is ordered to serve the interests of capitalists first and foremost.

I think that when people argue against unions, they are usually implicitly arguing against the moral duty of the company to concede to the unions demands, or to allow the union to form (assuming they could legally prevent the union from forming). They are not arguing against the right of the union to try to achieve better wages or conditions, or arguing it is immoral to do so.

It is quite easy to be a principled proponent of free markets, no matter who they benefit in a particular instance. It is quite a stretch to say that anyone who claims to adhere to this principle is really an agent of the capitalists.

I'm not making a generalization about people who are opposed to unions (much less your clever interpretation about what people who are opposed yo unions are really opposed to, though I don't think that that interpretation is at all consistent with as NY of the anti-union arguments I've ever heard, much less a reasonable description of the general basis of such opposition). I was making a generaluzation about "capitalist idealists" and what it means to be one.

Because "capitalist idealists" is usually a covert concept for oligarch's ideals.

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