Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's column this week is about the labor dispute at Carnegie Hall:
The union leaders and their backers, who tout the wage increases and benefit packages from successful actions, do not recognize the heavy toll that their actions impose on everyone else. In today's intellectual climate, unrepentant progressives like New York's mayoral apparent Bill de Blasio continue to prime the pump and garner ecstatic union endorsements, by speaking as if their progressive agenda has a proven track record of success in rehabilitating the fortunes of the middle-class.
Don't believe it. Happily I am not running for public office, so I am not reluctant to note this singular truth about labor relations. Forget the searing populist rhetoric; competitive markets that allow for free entry and continuous wage and benefit adjustments will produce far better results over the long haul than monopolistic unions that say they advance so-called social justice. It is foolish to think that this current form of regulated toe-to-toe combat can be tamed with some subtle tweak in labor law. The entire system has to be dismantled root and branch to prevent the Minnesota meltdown, the stagehand strangulation, and, more ominously, the coming disintegration of New York City.