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First, I was out of line in my edit. It's not for me to say how you should post on HN, so I apologize. I'll stick to the addressing the content of what you wrote. The difference in our viewpoints seems to be that you have an "adversarial" understanding of the political system, where different interest groups try to get the best for themselves. On the other hand, I think that politics is mostly driven by ideology, not self-interest. If I can state an ideal set of laws, that should be sufficient and I don't need to concern myself with how special interest groups might try to manipulate the set of laws. I also think you conflate self-interest with what is right/wrong when you say " If enough people like strong worker protection laws, well, that's democracy, why shouldn't that stuff get encoded into law?". Do they like it because they think it's right, or because it's good for them? That's an important difference. On the specifics, I mostly believe in the free market. I don't consider the free market to be anti-worker (redistribution through taxation/welfare handles that aspect) or arbitrary. Classical economics shows that the free market should be considered the default position. I also support limited rights for unions, e.g. I don't think an employer should be able to fire you for joining a union, because the employers control of how people communicate in the workplace could be considered an unfair advantage. Re violence, do you disagree that union members do sometimes commit violence against so-called scabs, when they attempt to enter a worksite? And do you think that in general these acts are punished in the same way that other violent acts would be? |