Right to Work

So I have to take issue with Jon's line from a few days ago:

And in a truly free labor market, South Carolina's "Right to Work" law would be seen for what it truly is- a blatant infringement on the right to contract.

In a truly free market, anti-discrimination laws would also be seen as a blatant infringement on the right to contract. Rand Paul nearly ruined his political career arguing exactly that. But then, in a truly free market, both anti-discrimination and right to work laws would be redundant. There are obvious economic advantages to employing the best and brightest regardless of external constraints or the terror thereof. Yet the South managed (badly) without those economic advantages for a century.

Assuming the terror is legal (fear of losing union workers or white customers, rather than fear of violence) then you might be able to make a case for letting things totter along. But the fear isn't legal. I think it's reasonable to assume that in 1964 the proprietors of the Heart of Atlanta Motel didn't just dislike Black people, or fear the loss of white customers should they serve Blacks; they also feared that should they serve Blacks they might be found some morning dangling from their lovely and now surely uninsurable diving boards.

In the history of organized labor union members have been the victims of violence far more often than its perpetrators - but that's of small comfort to the victims when union members were the perpetrators.

The purpose of laws like this is to shift the social burden to the government. See, it's not my fault I have to let Black people sleep here, the government made me do it. See, you can't blame me or the scabs because I hired them, nor blame your fellow workers because I don't deduct union dues from their checks; the government said I could.

The latter argument is slightly different from the former, and hasn't worked quite as well - to my certain knowledge people who refuse to join some unions in Right to Work states still end up with slashed tires. But the anti-discrimination laws worked really, really well. Stop and consider for a moment the 50-year transformation of the American South and it's hard to know where we'd be if we'd tried to let the market be free - instead of making sure it was. The world just wasn't better served when Blacks effectively couldn't engage in commerce in a quarter of the country, and it just isn't better served when people who don't want to involuntarily donate to the Democratic Party (or in rare cases the Republican Party) are effectively barred from whole professions.