Whatever happened with that anti-poaching agreement the big SV companies had? Because it seems to me the pay and conditions would be a lot better in a truly free market.
The time to assert your rights is when you have leverage, if you wait until you need those rights because you have no leverage it’s too late.
Germany seems to have strong unions and a strong auto industry, but the German economy as a whole has suffered decades of wage stagnation. One outperforming industry alone doesn't negate the broader correlation between restrictive labor laws, and degraded economic performance.
Also, Germany has many advantages in manufacturing that are independent of its labor laws, like a strong work ethic and tradition of engineering, good trade schools, etc. So an argument can be made that it has a strong tendency to be a manufacturing power that is capable of counter-acting the harmful effects of bad policies.
One possible indication that unionization has had a harmful impact on German economic development is if you look at Germany's past compared to its present you see that it developed more rapidly relative to its contemporaries before embracing the social-democratic/unionized-workforce model.
Is the optimal social order defined near ancient Euphrates or in the industrial revolution era UK?
Imagine trusting the "Market" to make wise decisions.
The market just means other people, free to act without compulsion.
It works because information is transmitted through local decisions, as the changes local decisions make to supply/demand impact the prices that are communicated to the economy at large.
The resulting price system is a result of more economic calculations than any central economic planner could perform, which is why more market-based economies outperform more centrally-planned ones, as the empirical evidence shows.
Anyway, libertarians as a group are the most educated:
https://www.people-press.org/typology/quiz/?pass&src=typolog...
The above shows they do also have the highest incomes, which would support your "they're trying to protect their privilege" theory.
And libertarians are the most rational:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Libertarian views are more consistent with those of economists:
And the majority of libertarians arguments are both based on first principles and appeal to people who like this type of argument.