Mike Hammock, an Economics Professors who I respect and have read for years, wrote a great piece about unions inspired in part by the current writers strike.

I agree with everything he says and he makes important points most do not take into account or know. Here is a great part from the long post:

Unions can serve an important role in communicating information from low-tier workers to upper management. They may have lower transactions costs of coordinating certain kinds of worker activity than other forms of organization in some industries. If left to the competitive marketplace, we would only expect unions to survive in those areas where they are socially beneficial (again, absent any special protections).

He then goes on to blast the idea that "Unions we have in the USA" = "automatically good".

I encourage everyone to read it.

::: Update :::
A follow-up post has been posted. I am not finished reading all of it, but, so far, this has been the most interesting thought:

Bryan Caplan argues that it can be rational for you to hold incorrect beliefs, because there is no consequence for being wrong, and holding a belief can make you feel good. For example, it might feel good to believe that businesses are part of a conspiracy to oppress workers, and that only unions can counter them. It is wrong, but why should you bother to have a different view? Holding a more nuanced view (that labor unions are sometimes valuable, and sometimes not, and that worker exploitation is not likely to happen in competitive labor markets) would require costly study on your part. It might also make you less liked by your friends, or cause you to feel guilty for giving up your support for the little guy. (As it happens, I support the little guy too, but I don't think unions are the way to help him).

This is from the book "The Millionaire Next Door". I read it a few years ago and this is the one part that really stuck with me, or at least that I have shared with more people then any other part. I got into an online discussion about money this evening and so I decided to add this piece here:

The Millionaire Next Door

Thomas J. Stanley

A professor once asked a group of sixty MBA students who were executives of public corporations this question.

What is risk?

One student replied:

Being an entrepreneur!

His fellow students agreed. Then the professor answered his own question with a quote from an entrepreneur:

What is risk? Having one source of income. Employees are at risk.... They have a single source of income. What about the entrepreneur who sells janitorial services to your employers? He has hundreds of customers ... hundreds and hundreds of sources of income.