> On the other hand, employees are integral to making a profit. In a free market, businesses have incentive to provide good conditions for their employees to the extent that happy, comfortable employees -- people who care about their job -- will make them more money than people who are unhappy, and couldn't care less whether the company sinks or swims. Say you're an experienced cook. Restaurant A offers a fifty-hour work week in a dingy kitchen for $2000 a month. Restaurant B offers a thirty-five hour week in a clean, modern kitchen for $2000 a month. Who do you want to work for? Your first choice will be Restaurant B, of course, and Restaurant A will have to hire one of the leftovers.

So you are assuming everybody would play fair. The whole point that >>1 was making was that by increasing unemployment, employers can circumvent this whole selection process, because for the individual it's no longer a choice between employment at Restaurant A or B, it's a choice of working under shitty condition, or not working at all. Increasing unemployment tips the scales in favour of the employers.

Which seems to be the basic flaw in most of these free-market arguments: It is implicitly assumed that corporations, when given complete freedom, would play fair against each other and compete for the favours of consumers. Yet there is no reason for them to, when they could gang up with each other, and towards each other, and do their utmost to limit consumer choice so as not to have to compete. They do this already to the extent they are allowed, and I've seen no reasonable explanation to why they shouldn't continue to do so if they were left to alone by regulations.