Free To Choose: a personal Statement

Who Protects the Consumer?
227
excitement to drinking that attracted many young persons. It did
suppress many of the disciplinary forces of the market that ordi-
narily protect the consumer from shoddy, adulterated, and danger-
ous products. It did corrupt the minions of the law and create a
decadent moral climate. It did not stop the consumption of
alcohol.
We are as yet a long way from that today, with the prohibition
of cyclamates, DDT, and laetrile. But that is the direction in
which we are headed. Something of a gray market already exists
in drugs that are prohibited by the FDA; citizens already go to
Canada or Mexico to buy drugs they cannot legally buy in the
United States—just as people did during Prohibition to get a legal
drink. Many a conscientious physician feels himself in a dilemma,
caught between what he regards as the welfare of his patient and
strict obedience to the law.
If we continue on this path, there is no doubt where it will end.
If the government has the responsibility of protecting us from
dangerous substances, the logic surely calls for prohibiting alcohol
and tobacco. If it is appropriate for the government to protect
us from using dangerous bicycles and cap guns, the logic calls for
prohibiting still more dangerous activities such as hang-gliding,
motorcycling, and skiing.
Even the people who administer the regulatory agencies are
appalled at this prospect and withdraw from it. As for the rest of
us, the reaction of the public to the more extreme attempts to
control our behavior—to the requirement of an interlock system
on automobiles or the proposed ban of saccharin—is ample evi-
dence that we want no part of it. Insofar as the government has
information not generally available about the merits or demerits
of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give
us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances
we want to take with our own lives.

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CHAPTER 8
Who Protects
the Worker?
Over the past two centuries the condition of the ordinary worker
in the United States and other economically advanced societies
has improved enormously. Hardly any worker today engages in
the kind of backbreaking labor that was common a century or so
ago and that is still common over most of the globe. Working
conditions are better; hours of work are shorter; vacations and
other fringe benefits are taken for granted. Earnings are far
higher, enabling the ordinary family to achieve a level of living
that only the affluent few could earlier enjoy.
If Gallup were to conduct a poll asking: "What accounts for
the improvement in the lot of the worker?" the most popular
answer would very likely be "labor unions," and the next, "gov-
ernment"—though perhaps "no one" or "don't know" or "no
opinion" would beat both. Yet the history of the United States
and other Western countries over the past two centuries demon-
strates that these answers are wrong.
During most of the period, unions were of little importance in
the United States. As late as 1900, only 3 percent of all workers
were members of unions. Even today fewer than one worker in
four is a member of a union. Unions were clearly not a major rea-
son for the improvement in the lot of the worker in the United
States.
Similarly, until the New Deal, regulation of and intervention
in economic arrangements by government, and especially cen-
tral government, were minimal. Government played an essential
role by providing a framework for a free market. But direct gov-
ernment action was clearly not the reason for the improvement
in the lot of the worker.
As to "no one" accounting for the improvement, the very lot
of the worker today belies that answer.
228

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Who Protects the Worker?
229
LABOR UNIONS
One of the most egregious misuses of language is the use of
"labor" as if it were synonymous with "labor unions"—as in
reports that "labor opposes" such and such a proposed law or that
the legislative program of "labor" is such and such. That is a
double error. In the first place, more than three out of four work-
ers in the United States are not members of labor unions. Even
in Great Britain, where labor unions have long been far stronger
than in the United States, most workers are not members of labor
unions. In the second place, it is an error to identify the interests
of a "labor union" with the interests of its members. There is a
connection, and a close connection, for most unions most of the
ti me. However, there are enough cases of union officials acting
to benefit themselves at the expense of their members, both in
legal ways and by misuse and misappropriation of union funds, to
warn against the automatic equating of the interests of "labor
unions" with the interests of "labor union members," let alone
with the interests of labor as a whole.
This misuse of language is both a cause and an effect of a gen-
eral tendency to overestimate the influence and role of labor
unions. Union actions are visible and newsworthy. They often
generate front-page headlines and full-scale coverage on the
nightly TV programs. "The higgling and bargaining of the mar-
ket"—as Adam Smith termed it—whereby the wages of most
workers in the United States are determined is far less visible,
draws less attention, and its importance is as a result greatly un-
derestimated.
The misuse of language contributes also to the belief that labor
unions are a product of modern industrial development. They are
nothing of the kind. On the contrary, they are a throwback to a
preindustrial period, to the guilds that were the characteristic
form of organization of both merchants and craftsmen in the
cities and city-states that grew out of the feudal period. Indeed,
the modern labor union can be traced back even further, nearly
2,500 years to
an
agreement reached among medical men in
Greece.

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230
FREE TO CHOOSE: A Personal Statement
Hippocrates, universally regarded as the father of modern
medicine, was born around 460
B.C.
on the island of Cos, one of
the Greek islands only a few miles away from the coast of Asia
Minor. At the time it was a thriving island, and already a medical
center. After studying medicine on Cos, Hippocrates traveled
widely, developing a great reputation as a physician, particularly
for his ability to end plagues and epidemics. After a time he re-
turned to Cos, where he established, or took charge of, a medical
school and healing center. He taught all who wished to learn—
so long as they paid the fees. His center became famous through-
out the Greek world, attracting students, patients, and physicians
from far and wide.
When Hippocrates died at the age of 104, or so legend has it,
Cos was full of medical people, his students and disciples. Com-
petition for patients was fierce and, not surprisingly, a concerted
movement apparently developed to do something about it—in
modern terminology, to "rationalize" the discipline in order to
eliminate "unfair competition."
Accordingly, some twenty years or so after Hippocrates died—
again, as legend has it—the medical people got together and
constructed a code of conduct. They named it the Hippocratic
Oath after their old teacher and master. Thereafter, on the island
of Cos and increasingly throughout the rest of the world, every
newly trained physician, before he could start practice, was re-
quired to subscribe to that oath. That custom continues today as