How Unions Exploit Anti-Competitive, Private Interest Law-Making
11th October 2010
Occupational licensing laws aren’t the only realm in which government deprives us of the freedom of economic choice simply to serve private interest groups. Consider the United Food and Commercial Workers’ war on non-union grocery stores like Wal-Mart.
In many communities, union supporters persuade local officials to use zoning restrictions to bar the opening of Wal-Mart Supercenters or other stores, often using rhetoric about preserving the “local feeing” of “small towns.” In reality, these laws exist to force you to pay more for groceries, not to advance the public good, but to promote the interests of unions that can’t compete fairly in the labor market. This special-interest legislation, however, is allowed by courts that simply look the other way under the “rational basis” test.
Most government intervention in economic matters is in pursuit of stifling free competition.