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As a result of human economic activity, the planet Earth is facing a climate change emergency (IPCC, 2013). Scientific research suggests that bold and immediate solutions are required to avert the worst impacts of climate change (US Global Change Research Program, 2017). At the same time, societies are facing unprecedented levels of income and wealth inequality — often along the lines of race and gender — which threaten the very foundations of democratic governance (OECD, 2011)…

The present paper subjects unions to a libertarian analysis and finds this organizational structure highly problematic from the perspective of the criminal law. Libertarianism is defined as that philosophy which opposes the initiation, or the threat thereof, of violence against non-aggressive people. Unions are characterized as groups which although need not in principle act contrary to this stricture, as a matter of fact always and ever do so. Hence, organized labor, as presently constituted, cannot be reconciled with libertarian principles of non-aggression. However, it is clear that although they cannot be reconciled with libertarian principles, unions are not breaking any current laws, and therefore cannot be considered to be criminal or illegitimate from a legal perspective. They can only be looked upon as criminal or illegitimate from a libertarian point of view.

We analyze whether linking international cooperation in trade policy to environmental policy (or other issues with nonpecuniary externalities) promotes more cooperation in both policies, or whether cooperation in one is strengthened at the expense of the other. In the context of self-enforcing agreements, we show that if the policies are independent in the government’s objective function, then linkage promotes cooperation in one policy at the expense of the policy that is easier to enforce under no-linkage. However, if the linked policies are not independent and if these policies are strategic complements, then linkage can sustain more cooperation in both issues than no-linkage. The policies are strategic complements only if (i) the production externality has cross-border effects; (ii) the weight on the externality cost is high; (iii) import competing lobbies are not “powerful”.