I'm not sure I understand. You're saying that it's not possible for someone of sound mind to decide to trade a technically-unconstrained probability distribution of demands on their time (with exit rights) for a fixed wage, no matter how high? And that two parties should be prohibited by law from making this exchange?

I'm not making a general-purpose argument against regulating nominally consensual labor agreements, but this specific example is an awfully weird context to decide that people need to be protected from themselves. I've had jobs where the exact hours of oncall rotations weren't explicitly spelled out in the contract, and I made the decision that the oncall rotation was worth the fixed pay. Trading fixed amounts of money for probability distributions is all over the economy (this is what insurance is), and you're the first person I've ever heard suggest that it should be prohibited.

Would you mind elaborating on why you think this is so egregious that people need to be protecting from themselves so they don't engage in it?

We’re not talking about unique agreements. We’re talking about below or at market rate compensated roles where you’re expected to be available after hours, on top of a 40 hour work week. No, I don’t think that should be allowed unless you’re compensated specially for the time you’re on call, as well as when you need to actively engage while on call (removing exempt employee status for technology professionals). This is no different than roles like nursing, or IT in developed countries with robust labor regulations.

People don’t need to be protected from themselves. They need to be protected from employers, who have more power than labor (through at will employment and a lack of collective bargaining). Simply because some are willing to work for free does not mean that technology professionals as a whole should accept such a poor arrangement, because it’s been normalized as such by employees who accept it.

European countries are moving in this direction (prohibiting email access outside of business hours), and I hope to see more progress on this front in the US over time.

The attitude that salaried employees are expected to be available at all hours is such a US labour market thing.

So much so that a (US headquartered) multinational I worked for gave up trying to get their EU employees to do weekend on call, as the team didn't want to get treated that way.