What do you do when all the best-paying companies in your industry lobby for things you don't like, leaving you few, poor, options for employment? If we must solve this problem for unions, it's surely at least as important to solve it for companies.

As for closed shop:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_shop#United_States

It's illegal, so's the similar "union shop", and you can opt out such that you still pay dues but they may only go toward collective bargaining activities and services to members, which appears to solve this "I'm being forced to support the only viable political party that wants to make anything whatsoever better" problem. Maybe leaving others, sure, but this issue's... not an issue. Unlike employers. I can't sign a piece of paper banning them from using profit derived from my labor for political activity.

> What do you do when all the best-paying companies in your industry lobby for things you don't like, leaving you few, poor, options for employment? If we must solve this problem for unions, it's surely at least as important to solve it for companies.

But the thousands of companies I could work for have healthy competition and diversity of approach to issues. An industry-wide union has no competition and no diversity.

> Maybe leaving others, sure, but this issue's... not an issue.

Say you were a Green supporter, and had a strong conviction against military intervention. How would you feel funding a union leadership that campaigns for Labour, following Iraq?

Kickstarter's in the US, no? Did you check out that WP link? I don't mean this as a "did you even read the article" jab, but you mention Labour, but this is about the US and the laws in the US mandate that those working under union labor agreements may be required to pay dues, yes, but may also be allowed to (effectively) specify that their funds may not go toward (most forms of) political spending, but only bargaining and member services.

Money is fungible; every dollar they get from you for bargaining and services, is a dollar they don't have to spend from other members, and can allocate to political lobbying.

> "I'm being forced to support the only viable political party that wants to make anything whatsoever better"

Wow, I can tell you evaluate statements in an unbiased manner. What happens when you realize the idea of "better" turns out to depend on some pretty big assumptions that you no longer believe are true? Additionally, if the only two "viable" political parties are abhorrent like the ones in the US, giving any money to either of them is still morally fucked up if you truly disagree with them and vote 3rd party.

Wasn't trying to be unbiased there and it's not especially relevant to the broader point—I just find the "I want to be free to keep punching myself in the face!" POV funny and couldn't resist a poke. As for evaluating statements, I evaluate everything with bias, of course. FWIW I'm pretty much single-issue on fixing our healthcare system until that's done, and only one viable party's even sort-of trying to do that. Anyway, the post that started this thread was written by one "mises" so I'm not worried about ruffling feathers—that was inevitable.

At any rate, the two-party thing's how our (the US's) system's structured. It stabilizes there. A third party replacing one of the big two, as has happened occasionally in the past, would assuredly acquire a good bit of distasteful cruft along the way. Effective political action revolves around trying to help a 3rd party replace one of them despite that likely outcome (and accepting an even smaller voice in policy than most voters have, in the meantime); participation in one of the big two parties themselves (much, much large effect than just voting in elections, though still usually tiny); or working to reform our system to break the two-party stability point. Or some combination of those things.

In European countries where this is the model there are often several competing unions with different political affiliations.

So let's say the far-left carpenters union is the one to successfully negotiate with an employer. I belong to a centrist union. Now what? Do I go against my political and personal beliefs or do I suffer because of them?

This is exactly the problem. Many of the unions I mentioned above are such ones, where in many places, you must be a member if you work in an industry. They are less unions and more guilds. Let's say you are a carpenter, a skilled trade you have likely spent a large number of years learning. It's quite hard to leave the union, because you will be forced to move to a different profession. This obviously isn't right. Unions can serve a purpose for collective bargaining; I think most agree on that. But they don't need to support political parties.

It seems that some unions have shifted from representing employees in negotiations to representing a profession in all respects. I believe that's contrary to their original purpose and dilutes both their support and their credibility as simply advocating for the worker.