of The Wall Street Journal The International Federation of Truck Drivers has reportedly so far refrained from giving its official endorsement to either of the two major political parties or presidential candidates in the upcoming elections (see “Some Teamsters backlash after boss praises TrumpA Teamsters spokesman declared:
Our support must be earned.
The meaning of this sentence is clear: the organization officially endorses candidates and parties that promise to give their members the greatest benefits in the form of coercive legal privileges and cash. The Brotherhood sells endorsements in exchange for privileges, and governments sell privileges in exchange for support. It’s a political deal between greedy tyrants.
What theory of the state could justify that? The cynical view is to think, “It’s our turn to get the privileges!” The angelic view of the state would think, rather than, “Oh, that’s bad, they (like me) should selflessly pursue the common good.” Other bundles of justifications contain many strands that argue that the rules we follow, or have decided to follow, allow for a certain degree of political interaction. Some (e.g., James Buchanan) are more defensible than others (e.g., Jean-Jacques Rousseau).
Economist and political philosopher Anthony de Jasay has proposed a different, anti-national approach. “Hostile nation” Or a discriminatory state that favors some citizens and disadvantages others. Among those living under the discriminatory state, those who are able to negotiate their support for the state most effectively will be the winners.
In a sense, Teamsters officials believe in a humane dictatorship of the proletariat, with the proletariat voting. But this is only a first approximation. In fact, many of their members (police officers and airline pilots, for example) are not proletarian; others are not poor. As the union’s logo suggests, the union was more proletarian in 1903, when its first members were carriage drivers (assuming that word has any meaning in a free market). Their hieroglyphics According to historian David Wittwer, although the Teamsters accepted and recruited blacks as full members, they were not immune to racism from the union and from white workers who resented competition with blacks (see Wittwer’s book Race Relations in the Early Teamsters). History of Labor 43-4 (2002).
Perhaps it should be emphasized that from a standard (classical) liberal or libertarian perspective, there is no reason to oppose collective bargaining as long as everyone in the “collective” (members) is a willing member and the other party is not forced by law to “negotiate”. As a matter of terminology, and in parallel with substantive “collectivism”, I suggest that “collective” should refer to a group that imposes its will on rebellious members. In that sense, free trade unions are group Not negotiation Collective Negotiations. A trade union, so long as it is voluntary and exercises no coercive privileges, is as useful as a voluntary association, and in some cases even more useful. In general, the way to know that an organization is useful in the economic sense of “efficient” is that it survives without legal privileges.
