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Comment by aminok | Hacker News Reader

Labor regulations are morally abhorrent. It's an absolute injustice that a person can inject themselves into a private relationship that they are not party to by ruling it illegal. It makes impossible millions of mutually beneficial consensual interactions that would otherwise happen. Oppression of this kind causes devastating harm on a massive scale involving hundreds of millions, if not billions of people.

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Just because an agreement is consensual does not mean that there is no power differential. One party will almost always have some greater leverage over another. When the power differential is too great for consent to lead to a mutually-beneficial arrangement, regulation may be required.

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.

Your argument can be applied to minimum wage. How dare the government say I can't work for $5/hour if I want to? Labor regulations have a purpose and statistically reduce harm.

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.

Until there is a labor shortage that forces businesses to pay labor a living wage or higher, labor regulations are required.

Your argument holds no water.

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.

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