I bet newcomers to LewRockwell.com will be baffled as to why this piece (which excoriates Hollywood for its pro-communist propaganda, denounces left-wing thuggery, and soft-pedals right-wing thuggery) and this one (which excoriates Hollywood for its anti-communist propaganda, denounces right-wing thuggery, and soft-pedals left-wing thuggery) are both featured favourably on LRC today.
Well, you see, kiddies, once upon a time there was a man named Murray Rothbard ….
LOL! So true, Dr. Long, so true. Love the new site design, by the way.
Or, as a friend wrote me, “I have an alternative explanation: there are two writers, each of which have some good (but not perfect) libertarian insights, and a libertarian hero (Lew Rockwell) thought libertarians everywhere might want a chance to read the articles.”
I.e., why would anyone be baffled by someone … publishing articles?
How is this an “alternative” explanation?
Oh, those right wing reactionaries over at LRC. Wait…
Hey Roderick, did you know the eight hour day was brought to the US as part of the New Deal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States
I was fairly surprised by that; do you think in a free society people would voluntarily work 12-14 hour days?
Not addressed at me, but I’m going to run my mouth anyway…
Many of those of us that still have the right to work the hours we so choose work more than eight hour days now, especially early in our careers. Most FLSA provisions only apply to people low on the totem pole — and discriminate against those wanting to go the extra mile to get ahead in regulated jobs. Lots of professions (law, medicine, video games, “consulting”) require time commitments like that to get in the door at most firms.
Given that, what I would expect to see in a free society is greater diversity in the number of hours people work in their primary job; some would have “careers” that they put lots of hours into, some would put in less time at a job to make more room for “hobbies”, just like now, but with more deviation from what is currently an arbitrary norm picked for partial enforcement.
That’s the thing though, the 8-hour day was spearheaded by labor unions and socialists during the Industrial Revolution. It was originally a demand for a 10 hour day, but in most places coalesced into 8 hours. Before it was enacted by legislative fiat, it was something a lot of people seemed to be demanding. So it’s fine if there’s “diversity” in a libertarian society, but if that “diversity” means armies of wage-slaves having no other option than to work 12 hour days then it doesn’t sound very desirable or free. If people really want to that’s fine, but the point is they shouldn’t feel forced to, which was the point of the 8 hour struggle.
The point is also that they shouldn’t be forced to work less than 8, either. The larger point is that they shouldn’t be forced at all. But the overall tide of observation is not back towards 12 hour days of wage earning, but toward sub-35 hour weeks of wage earning and 60+ hour weeks of salary earning, all the while non-remunerative work generally shrinking — we spend a lot less time keeping house than we used to, and the improvements look a lot better if you count women’s work over the historical view. It is far more likely in the near future, given the status quo, that people will be able to contract less remunerative work on a wage basis than they would like than that they would be pushed to take more, and that just as bad if not possibly worse (and not just limits on hours worked matters here, but mandated benefits and taxes and the like). Look at France: deeper regulation of working hours seems to mean a lot of people that can’t work as many hours as they would like to get paid for and many others are pushed out of the market entirely by stringent labor regulations.
Nobody had ever proposed–or gotten–an eight-hour day before the New Deal. Never mind all that business with the Knights of Labor and the nationwide general strike in 1886.
BTW, the descriptions of the articles from the LRC front page (currently at http://www.lewrockwell.com/index-ss.html but not for much longer):
“Castro Did Not Improve the Lives of Cubans
Can you believe that Hollywood, etc. still echo commie propaganda? Article by Humberto Fontova.
Hollywood’s New Censors
Same as the old ones. Article by John Pilger.”