Samuel Bostaph wrote:
>As Mao Zedong once said: "Political power grows
>out of the barrel of a gun." I've never had a
>private employer point a gun at me to encourage
>either action or restraint from such.
Adam Smith was of a different opinion:
"It is not, however, difficult to foresee which
of the two parties must, upon all ordinary
occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and
force the other into a compliance with their
terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can
combine much more easily; and the law, besides,
authorises, or at least does not prohibit their
combinations,1 while it prohibits those of the
workmen.2 We have no acts of parliament against
combining to lower the price of work; but many
against combining to raise it. In all such
disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A
landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or
merchant, though they did not employ a single
workman, could generally live a year or two upon
the stocks which they have already acquired. Many
workmen could not subsist a week, few could
subsist a month, and scarce any a year without
employment. In the long-run the workman may be as
necessary to his master as his master is to him;
but the necessity is not so immediate."
John C. Médaille
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