Libertarianism Declared Dead

[Darth Rotor]

The Walsch-Healy Act (1936) restricted regular working hours to no more than eight a day and prohibited child labor generally.

While Federal law does not require meal breaks, most states do. In particular, California Code of Regulations, Title 8, §11040 demands "no employer shall employ any person for a work period of more than five (5) hours without a meal period of not less than 30 minutes." Similarly, OSHA regulations (29 CFR 1910.141(c)(l)(i)) require that employers offer regular toilet breaks, something that was not often offered in the 19th century (although not often discussed, either).

The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 would outlaw working in such hazardous conditions.

Mandatory employer-funded workman's comp and disability insurance -- the number of laws relating to this are so profuse I won't bother with citations -- would have kept her out of the poorhouse as the employer would have been required by law to continue to pay her.

So, yes, almost ALL of the abuses described would have been --- and indeed, have been -- directly dealt with by government intervention.

As a follow up to those points, I don't see a lot of discussion here about unions. Unions are a collective enterprise as a co-op, or a collective bargaining unit, or more, and as such were able to act as advocates in the cases of worker endangerment. While the laws are certainly there, I am not convinced that government would have enacted as many as it did without a pattern of union leverage, votes if you will, being used against legislators.

Does a Libertarian agree that a union is an association of free men (and or women) who band together for common cause, that of an economic benefit? I have asked this of a few self proclaimed libertarians, and not gotten an answer that makes sense. Isn't a union's activity yet another part of the market, in terms of the labor market and its internal characteristics?

From a libertarian, please, how do you see where unions fit into the market?

DR

 

[Darat]

More lack of argument.

Yes, working conditions sucked. Really sucked.

But did you present any evidence that any regulation actually improved working conditions at all?

...snip...

You mean you weren't joking? That you really do believe that government "regulation" did not substantially improve the working conditions for people in the 19th century?

 

[Darth Rotor]

You mean you weren't joking? That you really do believe that government "regulation" did not substantially improve the working conditions for people in the 19th century?

Not so sure about Europe, Darat, but the Progressives didn't get their momentum rolling in the US until the early 20th century. Will get back to you with a few details, you have piqued my curiousity. My brief scan shows that child labor laws were indeed cropping up in the US in the 19th century, but I don't find that to be relevant to the point under discussion, particularly given the past century's aggregation of those laws into societal assumptions.

I find this early American federal law of some interest, evn though it flies in the face of "the Iron Law of Wages," and how labor markets have been exploited, globally, for the past few decades.

[*] The Clayton Act

In response to pressure to clarify labor's position under untitrust laws, Congress, in 1914, enacted the Clayton Act, which included several major provisions protective of organized labor.

The Act stated that "the labor of a human being is not commodity or article of commerce," and provided further that nothing contained in the Federal antitrust laws:
shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of
labor... organizations... nor shall such organizations, or the
members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or
conspiracies in restraint of trade under the anti-trust laws.

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/emp26.htm

DR

 

[Suddenly]

Not to mention some reforms were gained as a result of open warfare between groups of employees and goons hired by coal mine (and in some cases steel factory) owners. A lot of reforms were caused by public outrage, but as many were an attempt to prevent bloodshed in the streets.

Free market forces are like gravity. They exist, and any attempt to put together a society that denies they exist is doomed to failure.

However, just like gravity, free market forces are completely morally neutral. Gravity does good things like keeping water in my glass, but it does bad things like breaking the glass if it slides off the table.

We have learned to take measures to avoid the problems gravity creates. Likewise, we take measures to avoid the problems a free market creates. One of these is exploitation of labor in a surplus labor market leading to outrage and social unrest.

 

[Francesca R]

We have learned to take measures to avoid the problems gravity creates. Likewise, we take measures to avoid the problems a free market creates. One of these is exploitation of labor in a surplus labor market leading to outrage and social unrest.

In Libertopia markets don't fail, ever. Some kids falling into a machine and getting mangled are a price well worth paying to keep the wages up and/or the jobs available for the other luckier kids. It's a pareto-efficient outcome to libertarians. Danged gubmint meddling would just throw all those kids back onto the farms.

 

[Darat]

Not so sure about Europe, Darat, but the Progressives didn't get their momentum rolling in the US until the early 20th century. Will get back to you with a few details, you have piqued my curiousity.

DR

It's probably because the industrial revolution kicked off over here that our reforms started earlier. The first major legislation (with teeth) that covered factories was in 1833. However it would take until the 20th century before the general framework that enforces the rights of workers to a safe workplace and so on was firmly in place.

 

[Mister Agenda]

As a follow up to those points, I don't see a lot of discussion here about unions. Unions are a collective enterprise as a co-op, or a collective bargaining unit, or more, and as such were able to act as advocates in the cases of worker endangerment. While the laws are certainly there, I am not convinced that government would have enacted as many as it did without a pattern of union leverage, votes if you will, being used against legislators.

Does a Libertarian agree that a union is an association of free men (and or women) who band together for common cause, that of an economic benefit? I have asked this of a few self proclaimed libertarians, and not gotten an answer that makes sense. Isn't a union's activity yet another part of the market, in terms of the labor market and its internal characteristics?

From a libertarian, please, how do you see where unions fit into the market?

DR

Nothing wrong with voluntary labor unions. I may have issues with the occasional violence associated with them or specific laws they've lobbied for, but I also have issues with the historic violence employed against them and some specific laws management has lobbied for. Most unions are pretty close to what their constituents want them to be: a way to bargain with management.

 

[SaulOhio]

You mean you weren't joking? That you really do believe that government "regulation" did not substantially improve the working conditions for people in the 19th century?

The regulations may have had some causal effect, but at most like a transmission turns the tires of a car to make it go. Its the engine, however, that provides the motive force. In the economic example, economic progress is the engine. In the absence of the government regulations, competition between employers would have been the "transmission".

In Libertopia markets don't fail, ever. Some kids falling into a machine and getting mangled are a price well worth paying to keep the wages up and/or the jobs available for the other luckier kids. It's a pareto-efficient outcome to libertarians. Danged gubmint meddling would just throw all those kids back onto the farms.

Another strawman. Free market economists don't claim that markets never fail. In fact, they argue that markets are a means for dealing with failure.

And there may be a need for government intervention when an employer's negligence causes injuries to employees. That could be considered a kind of initiation of force. That would certainly be the case in the example cited by Darat, and when children are injured by machines. Regulation? I wouldn't call it that.

You keep arguing against strawmen.

 

[Suddenly]

From a libertarian, please, how do you see where unions fit into the market?

DR

I addressed this a bit in my above post, but I feel the need to expand and don't want to get back to work right now.

This was something I struggled with during my libertarian phase, and actually had long e-mail discussions with people in the national LP about it, and it was part of why I'm no longer anywhere near a libertarian.

A union in a libertarian world would be a legal entity, but rather useless as to unskilled labor or in any surplus labor market.

The original "unions," when divorced from the morality of horrible exploitation, were protection rackets. If all of your coal miners get together and strike, what keeps the mine from just hiring another set of miners? Sooner or later in a large labor pool, capital will find someone willing to take just a bit less than the union wants, and this destroys the union.

There are three ways around this. First, a tight labor pool due to a lack of people in general or people with necessary skills. The problem is that these people probably have no real desperate need for a union, but still get value out of it. Baseball players, for example.

The second way is an appeal to the public to boycott products made with non-union labor. May have some effect as to grapes, or even cars, but good luck with raw materials unless you have the time and energy to figure out where the coal dug to fire up the steel mill who made the steel your car was made with came from... and boycotting one's electric company is tricky.

The third way is force. This is clearly against libertarian principles, but the only realistic method out there. We get together and demand wages, ownership tells us to stick it and hires replacement workers, and we use force to keep that from happening. Today we throw eggs at busses and call people scabs and maybe kick the crap out of someone. Back then we grabbed guns and had pitched battles with pinkertons and the occasional national guard unit.

In reality, people realize that the third is inevitable and that instead of putting a union in a place where the only reasonable useful tool is force, government would simply quietly back the protection racket, forcing companies to deal with the union on equal terms. This avoids a lot of waste of lives, time, resources, and such, and also gets rid of the potential for profound social unrest.

Libertarians would just shrug and expect union members to respect the market and accept their conditions under the fiction they have a choice and bargaining power that often doesn't exist in reality. Today we have the regulations, labor mobility, and safety net in place that makes serious unrest seem absurd, but this should not be taken for granted.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

In Libertopia markets don't fail, ever. Some kids falling into a machine and getting mangled are a price well worth paying to keep the wages up and/or the jobs available for the other luckier kids. It's a pareto-efficient outcome to libertarians. Danged gubmint meddling would just throw all those kids back onto the farms.

No, no, no! Don't you see? After enough kids fell into machines and got maimed or killed, no one would want to go to work for that company anymore, and they would go out of business. And if they are out of business, then no kids can get maimed. It works perfectly! Libertopia is a great place for kids, at least the ones who don't get maimed or killed.

This is why Libertarians are laughed at.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Just for the record, I also don't see a problem with employers being held accountable for negligence in providing appropriate safety precautions. I think there's lots of room for improvement of OSHA regulations and methods, but there will always be a need for inspections to ensure facilities are actually safe and an agency workers can approach with safety concerns their management won't address.

 

[Francesca R]

The regulations may have had some causal effect, but at most like a transmission turns the tires of a car to make it go. Its the engine, however, that provides the motive force. In the economic example, economic progress is the engine. In the absence of the government regulations, competition between employers would have been the "transmission".

What a lovely analogy. So libertarianism would leave us with a bunch of engines sitting on the ground generating heat and noise and nobody going anywhere. Thank you.

Another strawman. Free market economists don't claim that markets never fail. In fact, they argue that markets are a means for dealing with failure.

Contradictory. Let's all use flame throwers to put out fires!

And there may be a need for government intervention when an employer's negligence causes injuries to employees. That could be considered a kind of initiation of force. That would certainly be the case in the example cited by Darat, and when children are injured by machines. Regulation? I wouldn't call it that.

So you will adopt all the regulations you like (or need to have in an attempt to survive an argument) and then redefine them as not regulation? Fantastic.

 

[Suddenly]

And there may be a need for government intervention when an employer's negligence causes injuries to employees. That could be considered a kind of initiation of force. That would certainly be the case in the example cited by Darat, and when children are injured by machines. Regulation? I wouldn't call it that.

You keep arguing against strawmen.

What about when the injury in a dangerous industry is a pure accident or otherwise not a result of employer negligence?

The girl in Darat's example "freely chose" to work at a physically demanding job at a stated rate. It was her physical inability to do the work that caused the injury. She could have "chosen" to quit, but did not. She "freely contracted" to do the work, so how can we take the employer's property to compensate her when we can not "blame" the employer?

What we do is recognize all the words in quotation marks are BS, regulate safety, use of child labor and force the employer to insure the employee against all workplace injury.

 

[Darth Rotor]

It's probably because the industrial revolution kicked off over here that our reforms started earlier. The first major legislation (with teeth) that covered factories was in 1833. However it would take until the 20th century before the general framework that enforces the rights of workers to a safe workplace and so on was firmly in place.

Not to mention a half century of blood and iron in the streets.

In the FWIW department:

From here: An Eclectic List of Events in U_S_ Labor History

July 1903
Labor organizer Mary Harris ("Mother") Jones leads child workers in demanding a 55 hour work week.​

Also:

5 January 1914
The Ford Motor Company raised its basic wage from $2.40 for a nine hour day to $5 for an eight hour day. ​

Luxury.

DR

 

[drkitten]

The regulations may have had some causal effect, but at most like a transmission turns the tires of a car to make it go. Its the engine, however, that provides the motive force. In the economic example, economic progress is the engine. In the absence of the government regulations, competition between employers would have been the "transmission".

Then why wasn't it?

Again, you're misrepresenting history.

In 1935, before the Walsch-Healy Act was passed, an 8-hour day was unusual. In 1937, it was the norm.

Funny how "competition between employers" chose that exact instant to cause employers to freely choose to reduce mandatory workdays down to the length that Federal law demanded.

Of course, a more sensible analysis would point out that competition between employers wasn't sufficient in 1935 to cause a reduction in the workday, that competition in 1936 wasn't sufficient, and that competition in 1937 would not have been enough until the Fed stepped in with force majeure.

And there may be a need for government intervention when an employer's negligence causes injuries to employees.

How about when an employer creates a clearly hazardous situation, but that situation has not (yet) caused injuries?

Do we have to wait until children are actually injured before we put safety regulations in place?

 

[Darat]

We might be closer in opinion than you think. I've found the arguments of anarchists interesting but unconvincing. The thing about minarchy is that we acknowledge the need for government, which is acknowledgment of some degree of need for force: for military defense and rule of law, for instance. We can argue about where to draw the line on how much government we need, but we ought to be able to cooperate when we agree on reducing or eliminating a specific aspect of government, like the Patriot Act or prevention of aggressive war.

Are you sure you're not a liberal who is bad at spelling?

 

[Mister Agenda]

Not to mention a half century of blood and iron in the streets.

In the FWIW department:

From here: An Eclectic List of Events in U_S_ Labor History

July 1903
Labor organizer Mary Harris ("Mother") Jones leads child workers in demanding a 55 hour work week.​

Also:

5 January 1914
The Ford Motor Company raised its basic wage from $2.40 for a nine hour day to $5 for an eight hour day. ​

Luxury.

DR

About $13.12 an hour adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars.

 

[drkitten]

Just for the record, I also don't see a problem with employers being held accountable for negligence in providing appropriate safety precautions.

Words have meanings, Mister Agenda. In particular, "negligence" has a specific legal meaning that involves actual harm to a participant. As I asked Saul, do you insist that we need to wait for actual harm before we hold employers accountable?

As an example -- and a not particularly unusual one, since this is something that OSHA has cited companies for -- suppose that I run a fireworks factory, and I lock the workers in so that they can't decide to slip off during the day when they're supposed to be working.

In other words, if one of the machines throws a spark and sets the whole place on fire, there are NO functioning exits and every one of my workers, without exception, will die.

Can you, as a member of the libertarian public, demand that I provide fire exits now? Or do we need to wait until people die, at which point I file for bankruptcy and leave the widows and orphans not only in mourning, but penniless?

 

[Darat]

The regulations may have had some causal effect, but at most like a transmission turns the tires of a car to make it go. Its the engine, however, that provides the motive force. In the economic example, economic progress is the engine. In the absence of the government regulations, competition between employers would have been the "transmission".

...snip...

It will sound condescending no matter how I put it so I'll be blunt: have you ever read anything about the actual history of labour and workplace regulations during the industrial revolution?

 

[Darat]

...snip...

and leave the widows and orphans not only in mourning, but penniless?

You don't need to worry about any orphans and widows - the whole family would have been in the factory!