A response to “Matt Yglesias’s response”:http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/06/ten_theses_on_labor_market_regulation.html. I understand from email that his original post responding to me was intended to be read together with an “earlier post”:http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/04/labor_market_regulation_freedom_and_property_rights_are_red_herrings.html, where he separates out questions of freedom and economic efficiency, and argues, more or less, that the best way to increase the bargaining power of labour is by pushing full employment. This means that he does not, after all, treat market outcomes as being in some way natural. So consider those specific objections withdrawn. But I still think that there is something fundamentally wrongheaded about the way that he is analyzing these questions. And not only that – but Matt Yglesias himself (2004 vintage) would seem to agree with me.
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