From the Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom:

DENMARK:

Property Rights            90.0
Business Freedom       99.1
Labor Freedom      92.1
Monetary Freedom     80.7
Trade Freedom             87.1
Investment Freedom  90.0
Financial Freedom       90.0

FRANCE:

Property Rights            80.0
Business Freedom       83.7
Labor Freedom      51.6
Monetary Freedom     82.3
Trade Freedom             82.1
Investment Freedom  55.0
Financial Freedom       70.0

N.B. 100 = perfect freedom; 0 = perfect unfreedom

Denmark may be the best existing model for the most statist interpretation of Bleeding Heart Libertarianism. It has one of the freest, most open economies in the world. It respects economic rights far better than most countries, including the USA. It also has well-functioning, government-provided social insurance.

France is a pretty good model for the kinds of economic regulations Bertram et al think we BHLers should advocate. Yet, if our goals are to make sure that workers are not simply at the mercy of employers, that works do not feel trapped, that workers are not easy targets for exploitation, and, also, to make sure that we do not create an insider/outsider economy in which large numbers of would-be workers are kept out of work, isn’t Denmark just obviously better than France? (I encourage Bertram et al to peruse the rankings. They’ll quickly see that, in general, the best places for workers, by their own standards, are those that combine high economic freedom with well-functioning government social insurance–that is, BHL-kinds of countries–rather than countries that have much more limited economic freedom.)

If you want to protect workers, you want high growth, a dynamic economy, and high levels of wealth. As a matter of empirical fact, that has done more to liberate workers than anything else. Workers enjoy substantive liberty in commercial societies and almost nowhere else. Bertram et al have not yet produced an argument against these claims. (Instead, they most rely on speculative thought experiments or some yucky but non-representative cases.)

Now, Bertram et al might say that Sweden looks pretty good, too. Sweden does well on most economic freedom scores (better than the US), but it has low labor freedom, like France. This objection–Sweden is great!–doesn’t work, though. In terms of results, from a left-wing point of view, Denmark does as well as Sweden, but it one-ups Sweden by doing a better job recognizing and protecting people’s economic freedom. Plus, as I mentioned above, the general trend is that the more BHLish countries are better than the less BHLish countries.

On a closing note, since 2007, I’ve worked in places that practice high levels of “workplace democracy”. I do not feel empowered by this at all. If anything, it’s a burden, not a benefit. Faculty meetings are miserable events. As in a real democracy, my vote counts for nothing–the group always decides what it decides irrespective of my vote. By working in a “workplace democracy”, I have simply traded a one-headed boss for a many-headed boss. This many-headed boss loves to hear itself talk and loves to waste my time. In “Political Liberty: Who Needs It?“, I argue that individual political liberty does not make individuals more autonomous or in control in any meaningful sense. My remarks there aptly characterize all of my experiences with workplace democracy.