I fundamentally disagree with your premise. Your rhetoric mimics that of a socialist. I'll tear apart your philosophical rhetoric one part at a time. > human l

I fundamentally disagree with your premise. Your rhetoric mimics that of a socialist. I'll tear apart your philosophical rhetoric one part at a time. > human life and human labor has intrinsic value and any company's bill of materials ought to include labor. Human life has intrinsic value, it could be argued from a moral standpoint, but human labor does not. What matters is what that labor is used for. I could have you spend all day making mud pies. That does not mean your labor is worth anything. The only thing that can determine the true value of your labor is what someone else is willing to pay for i.e. the market. > Companies have been allowed to undercut worker's value for centuries under the threat of homelessness and starvation. More people than ever before have been lifted out of homelessness and serfdom because of the free market. Companies working under a free market is a pretty new and novel idea. > Companies are the only entities we allow to just take, setting their own prices, without quarrel This is wrong on several takes. First and foremost, you're implying that workers in general should have the ability to unilaterally determine the value of their own labor a market. This is in direct conflict with the realities of the free market i.e. spending all day making mud pies. You can moan and groan all you want, but yes, if all your work requires is the basic use of your prefrontal cortex, your labor is less valuable than if you were a doctor. That's not the fault of the employer. > Oppositionally, I believe in human dignity - I think a worker should be able to bargain. They DO have the ability to bargain. Their ability to walk away is one of their most powerful things they can do. If you truly believe you're getting a raw deal and that your labor is worth more than whatever compensation company X is offering, then you should simply walk away and apply for company Y. In a free market, the role of the buyers and sellers are inverted because it is the companies that are the buyers; specifically they buy the commodities that are your labor. And this is not even touching on the basic principles of supply and demand in context to minimum wage. The fact of the matter is, a minimum wage does not lift people out of poverty - it removes rungs from the bottom half of the ladder. Precious rungs to low skilled employees that use them to climb up out of poverty. Companies will not just eat the cost - they do not want to go out of business. They make a cost-benefit analysis and compensate for this minimum wage by firing their low-performing staff to make the remaining higher-performer workers work overtime. Now it's harder for new people with little job experience to find employment. Congratulations - you've just hurt the very people you've intended to protect. And this isn't even touching on the impact of dead weight loss caused by minimum wage. You need to study the basic concepts of microeconomics before formulating your philosophical principles, because as of right now, I can tell you that they are a little insane.