Is Uber ripping off its drivers? The woman who beat Starbucks and FedEx says yes

Power differentials are irrelevant. Suggestions otherwise are unscientific Marxist hocus pocus that leads to destructive laws being instated.

If I offer a worker in Indonesia $2 a day to work for me, they are perfectly capable of deciding whether it's in their interest to take the offer. The power differential is as irrelevant as the one between Microsoft and me when Microsoft, with its $100 billion capitalization, offers me a product and I decide whether I want to trade my limited capital for it.

Yes, how dare the government make the decision of what wage is acceptable for other people, and eliminate countless opportunities for mutually beneficial employment that would otherwise take place.

>statistically reduce harm.

That's an absolute fallacy. Any evidence on the issue shows they harm. Mutual consent, which only requires laws against fraud and contract renegement, are all that are needed from the government to foster prosperity.

Your belief that regulations are what provide people with a "living wage" is totally ignorant of how wages are set. By your logic, we could make the minimum wage $100/hr and make everyone upper-middle-class. That we can't is not because minimum wage only works in some income bands. It's become minimum wage doesn't work, period. It can't increase the net amount of capital available for paying workers. It only redistributes it, at the expense of the economic growth. Economic growth, meaning increases in total production, is the only source of increase in capital available for employer labor expenses, so minimum wage retards wage growth.