Those are examples of "un-free" markets - or markets that are being manipulated by one side. The same can happen when the workers strike, except in that instance with a union, the action was agreed to by the employer (often - there are some contracts that distinctly prohibit striking, usually dealing with public safety).

Regulations aren't necessary. At best they are created by the very people they are meant to regulate (and generally are merely barriers to other's entry) and at worst are crafted by morons with absolutely no idea of what they are regulating, and merely want to "protect ...." in which case they create inadvertent barriers which drive up the costs for everyone.

In a free market, the market itself will self regulate.

Correct. And the workers went back home after the crop picking was finished. They didn't stick around on unemployment/welfare sucking up "benefits" that they didn't contribute to paying for in the first place.

How about hammertoe or nail fungus?

But, they're just the right height to pick the strawberries.

I have a question: have you ever read any of Alinsky's books?

Alright, you make a good point. Child labor laws should not apply to small family farms. I was really thinking more about large industrial farms owned by a corporation, anyway.

That's a fascinating story, but it doesn't really explain what's wrong with a labor union. All you really did was recount a personal experience you had with a dishonest union rep. That might tell us about the personal and individual moral integrity of that particular union, but it tells us absolutely nothing about the broader functioning of labor unions in general.

Unless you can somehow demonstrate that all unions always engage in that sort of behavior, and that employees are always worse off under a union, you don't have much of an argument going for you.

What was your case?

+1

That depends on who is working them.
If it is a family farm, then of course the children should join in the work of the farm.

After much persuasion, 3 weeks before I turned twelve, I managed to convince my father to let me work with him; weekends, holidays and summers. My job was to hand him brick, and to act as 'gopher'. Another job was to clean his trowel at the end of the day. He paid me 25 cents an hour. And I was safer on the jobsite with him than I was in the playground at school.

The days after a particularly tiring day, he would try sneaking out of the house without me, so I could rest, and then patiently deal with my ire at being almost left behind. For the first time, thinking back, remembering the expression on his face, I made him feel proud of me those mornings; and that memory is worth all the gold of Cathay to me. During those years, my most effective punishment wouldn't be spanking or "time out"... but to be threatened with not being allowed to go to work with him.

One summer day we were working, just the two of us for some reason. I was up 3 scaffolds high, withering in the heat; he was below making more mortar, which I would land on the scaffolding as he pulled it up. I remember suddenly being about 2 feet shorter, and, seemingly instantly, there was my father atop the scaffold, pulling me up from the planks I'd fallen between. On that same job, after working in that summer heat all day, I had mentioned never having played "kick-the-can". He must have been exhausted, but at the of the day he dug out a coke can, and the two of us played kick-the-can together in the parking lot before going home.

Years later, foolish laborers had disassembled scaffolding, leaving the walk plank hanging over. I stepped off them, and by twisting managed to fall between two cubes of concrete block rather than on them. Before I could get to my feet, before the men within arm's reach of me could react, my father who was 40 feet away down the scaffolding was the one who picked me up.

Your "child labor laws" would have denied me some of the best and most meaningful memories of my life, at a time when I have little else.
I thank you, no thank you, and again, I thank you.

That's a good point. Whether a particular law is good or not often depends on the society, and the same law which is good in one society may be bad in another.

I guess what this shows is that most regulation should be enacted by local governments, because only they will be able to accurately asses the needs of their own community.

Interesting analogy. But, unlike a zit, you can't just pop a union and let it heal and disappear. They never go away.

Perhaps a better analogy would be that unions are like hemorrhoids (in many more ways than one). They hang around assholes, are irritating as all hell, you have to pay to reduce their irritation which is only temporary and then they become irritating again, and most people don't want to admit that they are/have one.