Chapter 17

Me and Katrina: Weather Socialism

Here I was, sitting in my office at Loyola University, New Orleans, where I teach economics, very busy doing what I take to be the Lord’s work, and something unlikely as a wind on steroids rends asunder my work and life. It presented the denizens of New Orleans with a stark choice.

Chapter 18

Clean, Cool Private Water: Government Water Means Trouble

Two tragedies have recently occurred in Canada, one which has been given much publicity, the other only a little. As the wrong lessons have been drawn from both, we do well to reconsider each case, and to more carefully consider what they portend.

D. Labor Economics

Chapter 19

The Evil of Unions; In the Public As Well As the Private Sector

According to our friends on the left, the reason we need unions is because without them, employers would grind employees into the ground.

Chapter 20

Is There a Right To Unionize? It All Depends

I resist the notion that we have a “right to unionize” or that unionization is akin, or, worse, an implication of, the right to freely associate. Yes, theoretically, a labor organization could limit itself to organizing a mass quit unless they got what they wanted. That would indeed be an implication of the law of free association.

Chapter 21

In Defense of Scabs; The Limited Justification for Trade Unions

I wrote a piece called “Is There a Right to Unionize?“ (see chapter 20) and received dozens and dozens of responses. Many of them raised interesting points I did not address in that article, or, at least, not fully enough. Rather than responding to all these letters, substantively and in detail, I thought I would reply to some of the points in a second essay.

Chapter 22

The Yellow Dog Contract; Bring Back This Heroic Institution

The Yellow Dog Contract is an honorable contract. It states that one of the conditions of employment is that the worker agrees not to join a union. It is no different, in principle, from the requirement that if you come visit someone in his house at his invitation, you must wear a funny hat, or agree not to associate with anyone he specifies, say, an enemy of his.

Chapter 23

Stop Whining About Jobs; It’s Production That Counts

A Primer on Jobs and the Jobless

With the economics of employment and unemployment constantly discussed on the business pages and in political campaigns, let us turn our attention toward fundamentals and root out some fallacies.

A. Feminism

Chapter 24

Four Firemen Die in Socialist Fire; Worse, Two of Them Were Woman

The headline in the newspaper was a horrendous one: Wildfire kills 4 firefighters in N. Cascades.

Chapter 25

Arm the Coeds

According to police and newspaper reports there has been a spate of robberies and sexual assaults aimed at university coeds in uptown New Orleans. A single black man approaches girls walking in the street in pairs at night and then proceeds to rob, confine, and sexually assault them.