Textbook Economic Illiteracy

Jon Henke and MichaelW seem to think the idea of a bloggers' union is some sort of non sequitur.

Jon:

Collectively bargain with and receive health insurance from who? Who would they go on strike against? To whom does the blogger “shop steward” talk? What constitutes "management" for an independent blogger?

MichaelW:

But what of Jon’s question? Who is supposed to pay for these medical benefits and who would the union bloggers bargain with? Very few bloggers get paid as it is, so I don’t understand how forming a union will increase that number, much less wring benefits from the currently non-existent employers.

Why, The Man™ of course, you ignorant running-dog scabs. It's The Man™ with his boot to our throats, keeping us down. Why, if it weren't for The Man™...

You know the old saw about when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem begins to look like a nail? Well all the left has is The Man™, which of course is simply shorthand for power : economic power, political power, what have you. To the left, every social outcome, good or bad ("just" or "unjust") is determined by power. Unfortunately this premise tacitly forces the leftist world-view into an intentionalist box: when good things happen it's because good power—unions, left-wing activist groups, leftist politicians.—prevail over bad power—George Bush, greedy corporate management, neocons—otherwise bad things happen just as bad power intends them to.

When your world is this black and white, creating a "just" social institution like a bloggers' union makes perfect sense if bloggers want good things like job security, "fair" wages, and medical insurance, even if there is no readily identifiable The Man™ working to keep bloggers unpaid and uninsured. To the intentionalist left, it is sufficient for just power to intend it in order to have it, and if it still doesn't happen, well, it's because some unjust power must have thwarted it.

To me, that's the saddest aspect about life on the political left, being forced by their own logic to live in a world of imagined evil.