The Proliferation of Unions

I think the steel man case for unions and the reason why they formed in the first place is because American industry was basically owned by an oligopoly. So if you have a monopoly of industries like US steel or standard oil, then there's not a competitive labor market. That's why the unions got started is you needed a basically monopoly of labor to face off against a monopoly of business. And I think in those conditions, we're talking about the early 1900s. You were losing limbs in factories. But now you're talking about much more competitive industries.