Henry Farrell: evaluation

Transcript context

…Who or what will replace labor unions as the offsetting or special-interest group to oppose capitalism or capitalists? Can we really count on the urban professionals? Aren’t they a bunch of spoiled brats? I think labor unions are going to replace labor unions. Now, that said, this is a long-term bet, which could, of course, turn out to be completely wrong. But I think that it’s more or less impossible to imagine a world in which you have protection for large segments of the population that doesn’t roughly resemble labor unions. Now this may be very, very different, just as the platform economy involves a greater degree of disaggregation in standard work practices. One could imagine that we’re going to have to see labor unions being very, very different in form, but I think that they’re important. And it’s also very interesting to see people like Acemoglu and Robinson making a very important political case for labor unions, saying that if you’re an economist, you can’t think about labor unions as being a first-best solution because, clearly, they’re about distribution and distribution of stuff to their members. But if you’re thinking about maintaining the underlying conditions for a democracy, which presumably is a good thing for markets and for capital, then having something like labor unions is necessary. And I think that the way that Niskanen has moved and, in particular, the way that people like Brink Lindsey, together with Steve Teles, have moved towards endorsement, albeit with a certain amount of grudgery of labor unions, really points to the realization by smart people on the center right and on the libertarian-tinged center right that this is something that maybe libertarians have gotten wrong over the last couple of decades. Pseudoerasmus issued the following tweet a few weeks ago. It was something like, “Has any successful industrial policy been backed by a regime that took the side of labor rather than business?” You have a response?…

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