The locked gate is no tribute to labor

Reason marks Labor Day with a pointed observation: the surest way to improve a working person's life is to let that person leave — to cross a county line, a state border, or an international one in search of better wages and better conditions. The piece argues that labor mobility, both domestic and international, makes workers vastly better off by giving them the most powerful negotiating tool imaginable: a credible alternative.

I spent the better part of my working life moving. From Boston to Philadelphia as a young printer, then to London, then to Paris, then home again. Every time I moved, I carried a skill and offered it in a new market. Every time the market accepted me, I was paid something closer to what my labor was actually worth. Had I been locked by law or license to a single guild in a single city, I would have been dependent on that guild's generosity — which is to say, dependent on very little indeed.

The barriers Reason alludes to — occupational licensing requirements that don't transfer across state lines, zoning rules that price workers out of productive cities, immigration restrictions that prevent labor from flowing to where it is most needed — are, at their root, grants of monopoly privilege. I knew monopoly well. I printed against it, petitioned against it, and argued in London against the mercantilist variety of it. A monopoly on labor supply serves the employer, not the employee, whatever the stated justification.

There is a fair objection, and I will not hide it: some workers fear mobility because they fear it will be used against them — that employers will simply import cheaper labor rather than pay a living wage at home. That fear deserves a serious answer, not a dismissal. My answer is that the remedy for a depressed wage is more bargaining power for workers, not less mobility for anyone. Trap the foreign-born worker outside the border and you have not raised the domestic worker's wage; you have merely hidden the competition while leaving the structural weakness untouched. The honest path is to ensure all workers — native-born and newcomer alike — can organize, can move, and can refuse a bad offer.

The Reason article frames this as a Labor Day reflection (I treat that framing as the reporters' own; I cannot verify the fuller argument beyond the lead). I think the instinct is sound. A holiday that celebrates workers while defending every wall that keeps workers in place is a holiday that celebrates the idea of labor while shortchanging its practitioners.

Counsel for the working person: If a license you hold does not transfer to the next state, find your professional association and ask why — and whether a reciprocity compact is being negotiated. The answer will tell you a great deal about whether your license exists to protect the public or to protect the incumbents. And if it is the latter, petition accordingly. That is what a free citizen does.