Defense of Employment At Will

An excellent summary of the arguments for the employment at will presumption over at Mises Institute. I am a proponent of employment at will for many of the reasons listed in this article. I agree that losing a job is a very costly (both emotionally and financially) event in a person's life and it should not be done lightly; the question is whether an employer who fires people for "unjust" reasons (this is obviously in the eye of the beholder and anyone who has actually run a business will have a very different view of this than someone has tenure or a lifelong appointment to the bench) should be punished by the government or by the market for these actions. My vote is with the market (two other unintended consequences of our employment laws that the author does not mention is increased outsourcing and the willingness to hire illegal aliens who are less likely to bring a legal claim). Neither system is perfect and "unjust" terminations (and "unjust" reinstatements) happen under both. I just think we waste a lot of resources protecting people who, usually (not always) deserve to be fired. Let them go find another job. Unscrupulous employers will have a hard time attracting good employees and will eventually be put out of business by competitors that have a more attractive work environment. Understand that if this happened I'd have to go find another job, too. But that's a small price to pay for utopia.