This one, a Wall Street Journal editorial centered on a coerced unionization of ride share companies Uber and Lyft. The editors got their misunderstanding in early, via their lede:
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday announced a “deal” with ride-share companies Uber and Lyft that they couldn’t refuse. Democrats in Sacramento will reduce auto insurance coverage mandates that are driving runaway litigation in return for the companies letting drivers collectively bargain.
Yes, they could have refused the deal. The California government foisted onto them a supremely ugly choice, but it was no less a freely taken choice for all its ugliness. The companies’ managers were just too timid to resist, too timid to leave the State altogether, as their own powerful alternative to Sacramento’s demand.
There’s no reason for any business, not just Uber and Lyft, to suffer the politically imposed costs of operating in California. Nothing is stopping businesses from leaving other than the timidity of their managers.
I alluded to it just above: the cost of doing business in California isn’t just fiscal. It’s political, too, reducing as that cost does, a company’s ability to manage its own business affairs in accordance with its own free market imperatives.