Government Unions and “Logic of Collective Action”

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"Public-sector unions have long posed a problem of what the economist Mancur Olson called the 'logic of collective action'. Democracy tends to offer benefits to small, well-organised groups (who defend them vigilantly) while spreading the costs among the broader public (in doses that are too small to rally resistance around). The result is a hardening of privilege. What is new in Wisconsin is that those who do not belong to public-employee unions see this logic as clearly as those who do."

--Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times (U.K.)