Progress

Progress is a pretty good thing. The range of things that make life better and easier is constantly expanding. People invent stuff and other people improve on inventions and find new applications for products. Who could argue? Well, there is one group that has been fighting progress for hundred of years. Once they were called guilds, now they are unions. Whatever the name, their main aim is to stand as a roadblock to progress.

The union stance is that they are insuring quality products by making sure that only qualified people do whatever the job it is they are protecting. “Qualified people” of course means members of the union.

There is no doubt that the stronger the union the higher the level of wages/benefits that can be obtained from the evil capitalist employer. That is good for the union members – in the short term – and bad for everyone else.

The bottom line is that jobs change over time. Most of jobs that people have now did not exist in 1900. Had the Amalgamated Buggy Whip Makers and the United Horseshoemen of America existed you can be sure they would have been violently opposed to the automobile. That would fit their purpose but it would not help. The examples are as numerous as the inventions. Setting up organizations whose primary focus is to make sure that they oppose change thwarts the creation of new jobs, blocks efficiency which distorts the market wages and prices. All this makes progress and job creation even harder to achieve.