.'Deserves' is an impossible thing to decide. No one deserves anything. Thank God we don't get what we deserve. - Milton Friedman

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." — Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)

The misuse of language contributes also to the belief that labor unions are a product of modern industrial development. They are nothing of the kind. On the contrary, they are a throwback to a preindustrial period, to the guilds that were the characteristic form of organization of both merchants and craftsmen in the cities and city-states that grew out of the feudal period. Indeed, the modern labor union can be traced back even further, nearly 2,500 years to an agreement reached among medical men in Greece.