This opinion reflects a particular kind of career and living situation. If you rent and work in a field that has many options per city, and/or remote work, things are fine. I've heard it said that programming is an industry that favors lateral movement.

On the other hand, if you own a house and the economy has tanked to where it's worth less than you owe on it, and you work for a large company that is a unique industry in that town, your options are limited. If they gouge you (see history on "the company store") you're screwed. Hence unions are far more important in certain industries than others.

I'm familiar with that argument. My take is that I don't make much of a distinction between a worker and an entrepreneur. I think the healthiest approach is for everyone to see their personal financial journey the same as if it were a business. The situation of owning (or rather heavy leveraging the purchase of) a house and working for a company that is unique in the town, etc. is the result of a series of risk/reward decisions that were made. Sometimes they're made well and pay off and sometimes they're not and end up biting you.

For those that have a particular lack of innate ability for making good decisions (for whatever reason), I would rather see the community have a sense of responsibility to work with them to provide assistance either proactively (to keep them out of trouble) or retroactively (to keep them afloat after disasters). Without the community approach, it seems like the alternative is to allow compromises to principles - in this case the temptation to manage the market. Theoretically that's not the end of the world, but in practice what I feel happens is that bad actors are hanging around these doors egging others to crack them open. And as soon as that happens, they rush in and take advantage of it.

A counter perspective to this: what is a company? Is it not a group of people organized with a central purpose? So to discourage or ban other forms of organizing that may overlap this organization is actually the compromise of principles in this case. A union is just another group of people making an agreement together. The difference is, the company is organized by, and empowers, the person at the top. The union is organized by, and empowers, the workers. I don't see how they're different or how it can be legal or ethical to silence one type of group. As to what particular actions either group can legally or ethically demand of its members, that's where the real discussion begins.

Edit to elaborate:

I'd go so far as to say that companies getting larger or merging is a form of collusion. Say you have 10 small companies that each need one programmer. They are in competition. They each have to pay a fair wage in hopes of snagging you. Say they all merge. Sure, there's a global marketplace for the hotshot programmers still, but they have drastically reduced the local competition. If they're still hiring 10 programmers, they have much more power now because there are 9 fewer alternatives to consider, both for bargaining power and for information about the market.

The solution to this, as companies get to, say, Amazon or Google size, is one of two things. You can have government regulation, like the antitrust suits or minimum wage laws, or you can have the workers do their own form of collusion by forming unions for collective bargaining. Of the two, the latter is much more libertarian in spirit.

Yes, a company is a group of people organized with a central purpose. However, companies are not allowed to coordinate with each other to fix pricing or availability or other terms. Nor are they allowed to take actions that shut non-coordinating companies out of the market. I may be wrong, but it is my understanding that unions do not have these constraints and, in fact, the reason they are even legal is due to statutory exemptions from anti-trust law that makes that combination of "purpose" an option. So to me, it's not an apple to apple comparison. And that's the problem of principle that I have. I don't think a market operates well when the ability to fix it is granted to some parts but not others.

The comparison to me would be operating only within a single company. I don't think there's anything stopping a group of employees from using whatever bargaining value they have to move the company in one direction or another - whether it's pay, working conditions, product development, etc.

What you say about unions having fewer constraints is interesting. I think it's important that both sides be made to play fair in such things, and the laws could use a review. I just think in principle unions are important in certain industries due to the structure of the industries themselves. Especially ones with a centralized nature, such as trains, electricity, cable TV, and fossil fuels. That unions are important in these areas is shown by them having a longer, stronger history of such.

I think you were composing your edit as I was composing my reply. I'm with you completely on companies that merge being a form of collusion in many cases. I believe that the US government needs to act on anti-trust way more than it does. Not a fan of wage controls because to me that's an indirect approach. But yea, collusion is really damaging - at whatever level.