>It seems to me a case that echoes “better to let 9 guilty men go free than to execute an innocent man”. Of course, in this case, the ratios are actually reversed. Should we execute 9 innocent men to make sure that 1 guilty guy gets punished?

We don't have to do an echo. We can just do it as it is.

9 men hunt and 1 man eats free, so the 9 men are carrying the weight of the 1.

This system is inherently unstable and unsustainable. Maybe you can mitigate it (nordic style) by keeping a small population and drilling into people's heads from birth that "you take turns being the 1, and the 1 needs to be eager to get back to the hunt or shame will be had", but even then that is a not an inherently stable system, but one propped up by trust.

> 9 men hunt and 1 man eats free, so the 9 men are carrying the weight of the 1.

Updated the quote to the historically accurate 99 vs 1.

> This system is inherently unstable and unsustainable.

The countries cited are extremely stable. Arguably far more stable than the US.

That said, we can bring in the rest of Western Europe if 5 countries aren't enough of an example. They have union participation rates between 10% and 50%, median around 20%. The thing is, they have much larger proportions of their workforces covered by collective bargaining agreements - France for example is at 10% union participation yet 98% of labor covered by bargaining agreements.

Western Europe and the Nordics combined = ~400 million people, bigger population than the US, and far more diverse, so the common refrain of "small homogenous population" doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Of course, all societies so far have eventually been unstable.

We can just choose whether our unstable society will be a vindictive one that prioritizes punishing wrongdoers over the wellbeing of the whole, or a pragmatic and (as a nice bonus) compassionate one which prioritizes the wellbeing of the whole over a puritanical urge to purge the unworthy.

>9 men hunt and 1 man eats free, so the 9 men are carrying the weight of the 1.

You just described every non-union tech company I've worked at but maybe ratio reversed. Full of lazy entitled takers, not a shop steward in sight.

If unions are inherently unstable and unsustainable, so is capitalism as a whole.