I initially hired Berkeley and MIT interns as contractors and one of them worked for us as a contractor for a year while on leave of absence. He was paid about

I initially hired Berkeley and MIT interns as contractors and one of them worked for us as a contractor for a year while on leave of absence. He was paid about 6700/mo. I would be envious when I myself was a sophomore to get paid this much. But he lived with his parents mostly, getting health insurance through his family as he was 20 and he got 1099s from us. Another one was paid about 7500/mo, also on 1099. This was five or six years ago. I did not have enough money to commit to an employee long term back then, although none of these interns were terminated by me- they all went on doing other things, I am in touch with most of them and they are thankful for my recommendation letters and references for Google, Amazon, etc where they are working now. In the past, it was market that decided whether a business should exist or not, and that involved the decisions of the employees or contractors to work there. But now you are proposing a new, "fair treatment" decision process, that is extraneous to the market. Has this been successfully tried before, in any country that has become wealthy due to such business selection process?