I guess I was thinking of the abstract question of how someone would convincingly argue that the plight of new parents would be better off in general with no government regulation at all. I agree that the FMLA is grossly inadequate, but not one of the businesses I've worked for in my entire career, so far as I know, has voluntarily offered anything better.
I am a free market proponent. It is difficult to predict what the free market would make of this situation since we are currently so far from the free-market model. Here are a few stabs at looking in my crystal ball.
* Minimum wage laws pressure companies to cut benefits such as this.
* Many laws and regulations make it more difficult to start your own business. In a free market, having more small business owners would even the playing field and make benefits like this more common.
* When businesses no longer have terrible laws like the FMLA to serve as a reference for their time off policies, more would craft their policy based on attracting and retaining talent. Businesses that do so naturally are more likely to succeed and will crowd others out of the market.
* Since people can't rely on a government for their own welfare in a free market, they would be more proactively aware of time off policies when taking a new job, thus creating a natural pressure for better policies.
* Since businesses wouldn't have the "We're completely compliant with federal regulations" cop-out, more outcry may result from stories like the OP because these policies are actually counter-productive to business.
But in the end none of that really matters in the free-market debate. Either you do have the right to use force against people who are honoring a mutually agreed contract, or you don't. If I want to work for a company with a no-time-off policy, what right do you have to steal that company's money (fines) or property (confiscation)? What did we ever do to you?
If it's okay to use morality as an argument to make such laws, then why is it not okay to use morality as an argument to leave people be?
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I can appreciate the difficulties of hypothesizing, and I hadn't thought about it (at least directly) from a moral standpoint. It's still difficult for me to believe that in a totally free market the majority of employees, especially those who have a harder time finding jobs to begin with, and spend their whole careers accepting unfavorable terms just to stay employed, would find themselves with better options for family planning, but maybe it'd be so.
