[clavalle]

I'm not sure why my question came off as anti-union.

To me, the benefits seem obvious but I couldn't think of downsides. So I was, in fact, trying to broaden my views, just in the other direction, I suppose.

I've never felt the need to join a union but, fundamentally, I see nothing wrong with someone controlling their own capital (time, labor, and skills) and freely associating others to pool those resources into something that's more than the sum of their parts.

I can see where it might be a problem if a group ended up with a monopoly on some skill, but that's a problem with any kind of pooling of resources and we have tools to deal with such a distortion should it arise.