Thatcher and pickpockets

Just as people are remembering Margaret Thatcher's dealings with the UK unions of her day, the Louvre's workers walk off the job (h/t Roni W).  Too many pickpockets at the Louvre.

Here Alvaro Vargas Llosa notes that conservatives worried that Thatcher was too libertarian, but libertarians worried that she was too conservative.  Given the alternatives (the pickpockets I read about in my daily newspaper), that is not a bad set of headaches.

We live in the world that Mancur Olson described some years ago -- one where established interests are pretty much in charge. A periodic shake-up is the best we can hope for.  We get sequesters as the way to cut public sector spending because not enough politicians can afford to go on record cutting off any one of a thousand special interests.  Another Margaret Thatcher in these circumstances would be pretty good.