Walter Block

Walter Block is a professor of economics at Loyola University, an anarcho-capitalist, and a senior fellow at the Von Mises Institute.

On Unions
"So what is to be done about the union menace? Simple, take away from them their illegitimate tool, trespass and restrictions on entry, and leave them with their one licit tactic, mass quits. It is contrary to libertarian principles to do anything else: to democratize them (ensure they use secret ballots), take away their right to support political candidates, or to forbid them by law to engage in freely made contractual agreements, such as union shops, closed shops, etc. We would be aghast if the chess club were prohibited from supporting political candidates, or were compelled to run according to democratic principles. The chess club is a legitimate organization, and thus, at least according to libertarianism, may do anything it wishes, provided, only, that it does not violate the NAP. Ditto for a properly defanged union movement; once it is fully legitimate, it may carry on in any way it wishes.

Forbidding political participation, compelling democracy, imposing right to work laws, etc., are all second best attempts to wrestle evil unionism to the ground. If it is politically possible to counter organized labor in any other way, these sorts of things may well be justified. But, if we are to properly apply libertarian principles to this arena, let us have no more of this "right to work" nonsense. We should leave off actually believing that voluntary agreements for union or closed shops for some strange reason are compulsory. Of course, they are not. They are merely an instance of monogamy in labor relations.

If we are to effectively promote libertarianism, we must start off by accurately understanding our own philosophy. Proponents of "right" to work legislation fail in this regard. At the very least, if they fully understood libertarianism, they would say something like: Of course, there is no "right" to work. However, rampant unionism is running amok, and the only way we can deal with this menace to civilization is via right to work legislation (or prohibiting them from engaging in the political process, or shoving democracy down their throats, etc.) We favor right to work laws not because they are just, per se, but due to the fact that they ward off a far greater evil."

On Feminism
"Another type of pinching or sexual harassment is that between a secretary and her boss. Although to many people, and especially to many people in the women’s liberation movement, there is no real difference between this pinching and the pinching that occurs on the street, the fact is that the pinching that takes place between a secretary and her boss, while objectionable to many women, is not a coercive action. It is not a coercive action like the pinching that takes place in the public sphere because it is part of a package deal: the secretary agrees to all aspects of the job when she agrees to accept the job and especially when she agrees to keep the job. A woman walking along a public sidewalk, on the other hand. can by no means be considered to have given her permission, or tacitly agreed to begin pinched. The street is not the complete private property of the pincher, as is the office. On the contrary, if the myths of democracy are to be given any credence at all, the streets belong to the people. All the people. Even including women.

There is a serious problem with considering pinching or sexual molestation in a privately owned office or store to be coercive. If an action is really and truly coercive, it ought to be outlawed. But if pinching and sexual molestation are outlawed in private places, this violates the rights of those who voluntarily wish to engage in such practices. And there is certainly nothing coercive about any voluntary sex practices between consenting adults. The proof of the voluntary nature of an act in a private place is that the person endangered (the woman, in the cases we have been considering) has no claim whatsoever to the private place in question, the office or the store. If she continues to patronize or work at a place where she is molested, it can only be voluntary. But in a public place, no such presumption exists. As we have seen, according to accepted theory at least, the public domain is owned by all, women included. It would be just as illegitimate to assume that a woman gave tacit agreement to being molested on the public street because she was walking there as it would be to assume that she gave tacit agreement to an assault in her own house, because she happened to be there."

"The U.S. government has just announced that women will be allowed to take on all roles in the military. No longer will they be banned from any of them. This will undoubtedly weaken this institution, as criteria for acceptance will be lowered, as Walter E. Williams has so brilliantly demonstrated. (A similar situation occurred when “firemen” became “firefighters” so that women who could not carry at person weighing 190 pounds up or down stairs to escape from fires were allowed to participate anyway). Then, too, biological imperatives for men to protect women will kick in even the more, instead of fighting the enemy. Also from this perspective the natural tendency of males to compete with each other for the attention and affection of females will further deflect them from the presumed goal of the army, to defeat the enemy. [...] There is another focus from which to view this new initiative of promoting female participation in the military other than the libertarian. This is the biological. Women are the limitation of population, and its growth. It is not for nothing that the farmer keeps 50 cows and one bull, rather than the reverse. If there were 50 bulls, 49 of them would be superfluous. If there were one cow, all the bulls in the world could not by one iota increase the size of the flock. In other words, females, at the margin, are much more important for increasing the size of the human race. They are the precious limitation on population growth. Why is the latter to be preferred? That is because in order to create another Mozart, or Mises, or Einstein, or Rothbard, or Salk, or Bach, or Gates, we need millions of new babies. The more of them the better."