[Fmpro] "if musicians went on strike?" - FMPRO Digest, Vol 32, Issue 8

[Rick Blanc]

 As with any marketplace supply/demand question there a two polarities: command economies and free-market economies.  Command/communist/socialist
 economic questions are decided by a centralized authority.  Free-market economies function dynamically through supply and demand, with individuals making
 decisions.  Unions tend toward communist, centralized control.  

 As usual in a discussion of this nature we're stuck in between somewhere.  Our system of government protects private property and marketplace mobility such that
 it is difficult to centralize control.  And workers have the right to associate freely and form collective bargaining units.  And they fight it out.  Unfortunately for those
 who would further centralize control over the marketplace not all workers are interested in collective bargaining.  Among musicians in the United States I'm sure only
 a small percentage are unionized.

 So what is good is often subjective.  If one can look at it impersonally one is likely to conclude that the greatest good is served by preserving the sovereign principle
 of market economics, namely, the mobility of the marketplace, which inures to the benefit of consumers.  This is why I almost always oppose unions, and is why
 private-sector unionism is in decline in the United States and Europe.

 Rick