Despite strenuous protests from the business community, it is hardly surprising that Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke's economically-damaging Closing Loopholes IR law passed recently. The left is in the political ascendancy, and many of them cling to long outdated paradigms for industrial relations.

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They may be well-meaning, but they clearly do not understand the adverse economic consequences of their policies.

The gig economy organically grew from new technologies that allowed win-win opportunities for consumers and workers by avoiding Australia's restrictive and costly IR laws. The lightly regulated gig economy was good for employees and consumers, which is why it grew so rapidly.

However, the unions strongly resisted these innovations. A number of the industries being revolutionised by the gig economy were highly unionised, and the unions have struggled to get similar traction in the gig economy model.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the government chose to side with the unions, regulating and constricting the gig economy instead of embracing change.

It is pursuing its blinkered view of the greater good, in thrall to what American economist Thomas Sowell calls the zero-sum fallacy: "the fallacious assumption that economic transactions are a zero-sum process, in which what is gained by someone is lost by someone else."

The government, and its union donors, will not countenance the possibility that some gig economy workers prefer their current working structure and will not welcome the "certainty" gained by........

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