I watched The Godfather movies again recently. Its story touches on the gangs’ hidden relationships with elected officials, and how the gangs manipulate the government to achieve their goals. Ironically, at the end of the film’s credits appeared the ubiquitous sentence “This film made under the jurisdiction of the AFL-CIO” under the IATSE logo (pictured here).

Ironic because one could easily replace the character of Michael Corleone with most any modern union kingpin and the story would be the same: how people deal with one another by force, instead of voluntary free trade. Today’s unions have deeply permeated the government and routinely use the government’s monopoly on the use of force (courts, law enforcement, guns) to force individuals to give union members unearned wealth, and more government power.

Mobsters offer people “protection” for fees and allegiance (or else). Unions offer people unearned wealth for fees and allegiance. They obtain that wealth from anyone and everyone who doesn’t join the union (e.g., in the form of artificially expensive automobiles, films, and steel). Like mobsters, unions don’t engage in running businesses, they simply engage in malignantly looting businesses until they collapse (as with the American auto industry).

Since the unions are so embedded in to governments, they no longer need new businesses to loot, they simply convince government officials to tax and/or print more money, thus robbing society at large—particularly the most productive people.

Unions are also deeply embedded in the education and film industries. Because of this, you will almost never hear a disparaging word about unions, their means, or their purposes. Imagine a film-maker trying to produce a film critical about unions. Can you imagine Dom Corleone or any union official “allowing” such a film to get made?

There has been some effort recently to get Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged adapted to a feature film. Given the novel’s defense of individual rights and voluntary free trade (as opposed to force), I bet that for the unions to allow it to get produced, the screenwriter will have to severely deform its message.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.