Sen. Wyden's "free choice" vouchers would have provided some alternatives for workers. Perhaps not surprisingly, unions would have none of that. And they killed it. Not clear free choice vouchers were a good deal, economically, for the nation. But that's not the point. Unions actually opposed vouchers, because it reduced their control over workers and gave the workers INDEPENDENCE from union bosses.
Sen. Reid held the knife. Why would anyone believe that private union bosses want to help workers?
For that matter, why would anyone believe that democracy helps citizens? Mencken had it right:
I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself - that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can't make out is how any man can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are debauched and made a show of. How can any man be a democrat who is sincerely a democrat?
ATSRTWT
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