Unions and sports agents...

[WillMagic]

are more related than you might think.

In a truly free market, they both serve as instruments of negotiation. Your average baseball player, like your average steelworker, has neither the time, inclination, or expertise to effectively negotiate a labor contract. Baseball players hire agents to represent them as unique commodities because, by and large, they are unique commodities - they represent a unique set of skills, and that uniqueness would be lost in any attempt to bundle their services in package with another player. Whereas the steelworker's services are decidedly non-unique - he is better off going in with a group to hire a negotiator.

Which means that the Austrian critique of unions - that they raise the wage of workers beyond their real market value - only holds if the union is given some special privilege by the government. Otherwise the union functions no differently than the sports agent.

It's also interesting to note that there are those who support giving expanded privileges to unions but would support restricting the powers of sports agents. Where unions might have a largely positive reputation, sports agents are almost universilly villified. And yet their function is the same. It's just envy.