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Mises Wire Thomas J. DiLorenzo 10/03/2024 Labor unions are exempted from federal antitrust laws including the Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlaws “conspiracies in restraint of trade.” This is not a bad thing: Everyone should be exempted from antitrust laws. They are an assault on property rights and because their rulings are so arbitrary they are incompatible with justice and fairness. They are also a tool of rent-seeking businesses who practice “lawfare” by routinely suing their superior competitors for dropping their prices, improving their products, and serving their customers better than they do. When they can’t (or won’t) compete in the marketplace they resort to antitrust lawsuits to harass their competitors instead of better serving their customers. They have been a drag on the American economy for more than130 years. A strike by a labor union is nothing if not a restraint of trade. The media are all in a huff today about the dockworkers’ strike that has shut down all of the ports on the east coast from Maine to Texas. Billions of dollars of foreign imports of just about everything are sitting there, restraining trade! And when supply is reduced the effect is to make prices higher than they would otherwise be. It is essentially the same effect of a giant price-fixing conspiracy by American merchants. There is no such price-fixing conspiracy, but we will be observing the effects of one in some industries! The economic effects of the dockworkers’ strike are essentially the same as some of the effects of protectionist tariffs. The purpose of all protectionism is to restrain trade that comes from other countries, which is exactly what the dockworkers’ strike is doing. The purpose of the strike is to acquire higher wages (and to eliminate automation) and not protectionism, but it will have the effects of protectionism while it lasts.

by Stephan Kinsella October 1, 2024 The 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19, 2024 to Sept. 24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey) has recently concluded. Videos and audio for the presented speeches and panels will be provided shortly on the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist and Property and Freedom Podcast. Below is a video containing Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe‘s remarks on Javier Milei, excerpted from the panel discussion “Dürr, Müller, Fusillo, Bagus, Hoppe, Roundtable: What to Make of Milei” (Sat. Sept. 21, 2024).