I often think about this in the context of the homelessness problem. Homeless people are often kind of bored during the day and spend most of the time just loit

I often think about this in the context of the homelessness problem. Homeless people are often kind of bored during the day and spend most of the time just loitering and hanging out. If they had the option of doing something productive during the day, it would be a win-win-win. They would have something to do and a bit of extra cash to spend, someone gets cheap labor, and they get off the streets during the day. Perhaps this could even be leg up into an actual job and career? There's no way to paint this as anything other than blatant extortion - just like prison labor. But at the same time it's a bit weird to me that we kind of set societal speed limits "unless you are providing at least $15/hr in value to society you are a ward of the state". But I think an important caveat to Sowell's argument is that is he is kind of describing the intent of minimum wage. It's a tool aimed at labor monopsony and one of the purposes of minimum wage is to intentionally thin out the supply of low wage labor from the bottom. It was never about benefiting people making $0. It was about removing competition amongst the people making $15.