"How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?" - Charles De Gaulle

***

The joys of unions:


"Fittingly, the 62-year-old Hartung is no stranger to the idea of rebellion. However glamorous Leonardo DiCaprio may have made it look in Catch Me If You Can, few conductors can lay claim (or would admit) to having seen the inside of a French jail cell. Hartung can, though he hardly looks like your garden-variety felon. Back in 2005, after a long concert in Strasbourg with the travelling Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra, he was hauled off-stage by the police, arrested and interrogated for two days. His crime? Paying his orchestra less than the minimum wage stipulated by the French musicians’ union.

As bad as that sounds, his orchestra was made up of freelancers who were happy to play for him at lower rates than usual, since it helped them sell cheaper tickets and thus attract bigger audiences. Union members retaliated, worried about compromising their livelihood. ‘It could only happen in Europe,’ says Hartung, who notes that he then went to court for his nonconformity – and won. ‘Musicians should have the liberty to choose to play and be paid at whichever rate they want, with whoever they want.’"


If you are against monopolies, I don't see why you wouldn't be against (conventional conceptions of) unions as well.