The problem is that you have an entire industry set up to push people into contracting who really should be employees. In other words, there are lots of "independent contractors" out there who have one client they work on full-time, which really does not fit under any reasonable definition of an independent businessperson. The companies just prefer to have these people defined as freelancers so they don't have to pay for the types of benefits (health insurance, retirement, etc.) that employees get, and to make them more easily disposable.
Part of being a freelancer or contractor is that you already have all the power
This is a joke, right? How much power does a single independent contractor have by themselves over (say) Electronic Arts? Especially when they have no other clients to fall back on should EA tell them to go pound sand?