Here we see another sad episode of statism’s miserable theater—unions, regulators, and masked central planners disrupting the spontaneous emergence of order in voluntary exchanges. Lieferando, a private company, must answer to the market, not to parasitic unions or the state’s bureaucratic interference. The clamoring for compulsory collective wage agreements and minimums is antithetical to the individual freedom of both employer and employee. Friedrich Hayek warned us about the folly of treating labor as a unitary block, as though “society” can coordinate the needs of thousands of individuals through bureaucratic decrees. This is the road to serfdom: every demand for centralized control over wage agreements subverts the very price mechanism that delivers prosperity.

These poor, deluded workers are not conscripts chained to Lieferando. They choose to contract for their labor services precisely because—however low the critics deem the wage—it surpasses their next best alternative. If Lieferando’s terms are so abysmal, let voluntary migration to greener pastures force the company’s hand. Don’t shackle market competition by state coercion or collective bargaining that overrides individual contracts. Robert Nozick’s entire framework exposes the immorality of seizing the fruits of voluntary agreement through redistributive “social plans” demanded by unions. Compensation and “protections” become nothing more than legalized extortion when achieved through the threat of force or government mandate.

Contracting out delivery is not a moral evil but a market rationality—Rand’s point: a business acting in pursuit of efficiency and value, in open competition, is the prime mover of societal progress. The labor union’s call to restrict subcontracting is an assault on freedom of association and innovation, seeking to replace dynamic adaptation with ossified, state-blessed privilege for entrenched mediocrity. The complaints of bad conditions and high turnover? That, too, is the market’s ruthless but honest feedback. If a job is “unpleasant,” it will require higher compensation or automation will take over—thus, either way, human ingenuity and the subjective value preferences of free individuals win out.

Unions, socialism, collective tariffs—these are the roadblocks to liberty, the tools of stagnation and oppression. Only through unhampered, unregulated, and uncompromised voluntary exchange will prosperity and justice prevail—let the state and its collectivist lackeys get out of the way.