Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Government-Mandated Lunch Breaks are Somehow Libertarians’ Fault

The Nation: Gov't-Mandated Lunch Breaks are Somehow Libertarians’ Fault - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Scott Shackford:

January 30, 2013 - "Rick Perlstein at The Nation has an odd, confounding story ostensibly about how a libertarian University of Chicago student’s experiences with reality turned him into a liberal.... Here are a couple of paragraphs that show some real confusion....

"'He sold books books at Borders in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It 'did kind of a 180 on me. Just in terms of the rigidity of a corporate structure! You know: they tell you you have to take your lunch break at 1:00. But at 12:58 a customer starts speaking to you. And if you speak to them until 1:02 the bosses at Borders would start yelling at you to take your break at one, and then if you got an extra minute to 1:31 it throws off the whole schedule but if you volunteer to go two minutes early they fear they might be fined!"

"'Call it the irrationality of the market.'

"Which of these fellows doesn’t realize that these restrictive lunch break policies are a direct result of government intervention over business policy? Did the word 'fine' not tip anybody off? Who would be fining them?

"Behold, Massachusetts’ mandatory meal break law. These laws are a result of progressives getting directly between the relationship between the employer and employee. Perlstein should be praising this 'corporate structure,' not using it as some sort of misguided attack on libertarians."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/30/the-nation-govt-mandated-lunch-breaks-ar
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