Striking hotel housekeeper Evelyn Rodriguez dances as hotel workers and their supporters rally at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown hotel in Los Angeles on Monday, August 7, 2023 as Unite Here Local 11 continues to demand higher wages and better benefits. Collectivist systems in all their forms, from full-blown communism to the welfare state, share a common premise: everything in a society kind of belongs to everybody, and the government’s job is to distribute it fairly.
Eventually, and it doesn’t take long, the people who set alarm clocks and work long hours stop doing so, or go somewhere else to do it. And that brings us to the deal between the Los Angeles City Council and a hotel workers’ union, Unite Here Local 11, over the proposed “Responsible Hotel Ordinance.” There are other things in the measure, including provisions that prevent the development of new hotels unless the developers first meet a laundry list of demands related to housing, transit, local employment and more.