Have you noticed the behavior of markets, especially big companies? The only things they seem to be doing voluntarily are those that help increase their profits. CEOs are getting paid tens of millions of dollars while laying off thousands of people and closing factories. Companies do every dirty little trick to avoid paying for healthcare/pension. And so on.

We have already tried the "markets will fix things, markets will regulate themselves" blah blah strategy - it doesn't seem to work. When was the last time a big company voluntarily cleaned up its own oil spill or other environmental disasters?

There has to be minimum wage laws (and environmental laws etc etc) and they have to be sensible. It boggles my mind that you'd argue against this. If you want to encourage small businesses to start, there are other ways to help them - interest free loans, tax free zones etc

A company cleaning up their own spill isn't news worthy and so you never hear about it.

When I started here the first thing they sent me to a mandatory class: 2 hours to say (in different ways) "All the drains outside go directly to the river, so if you see a chemical going towards a drain you are to find the cover near to the drain (a sticker) and block that drain, then call maintenance to figure out what it is".

The above happens several times a year, and you never hear of it because we clean up our own mess. (almost all the mess is the brake line on a delivery truck breaking)

That was not a great example, because EPA enforcement actually is fairly effective and large companies do police themselves to some extent either out of fear of enforcement or as a result of a settlement caused by past enforcement.

It's useful to remember, though, what the world looked like before climate regulation. Rivers in industrialized cities were once choked with toxic effluent from tanneries and heavy industry. Even in Silicon Valley semiconductor manufacturers dumped heavy metals down the drain, contaminating groundwater and causing many billions of dollars of damage to be cleaned up by the taxpayer.

We don't know how much the EPA affected anything. In the past people didn't realize how bad pollution was so they didn't see why to care: people have been dumping trash in rivers for thousands of years to no noticeable ill effect (such trash was mostly organic matter that the fish could eat and in small quantities until the very end of that). Companies are directed by people, and they started caring: they did two things in parallel: start the EPA and clean up their act. We can only guess how things would be different if the EPA had been ruled unconstitutional (I can't even think how you could construct a parallel universe where the people running a company didn't care but the EPA existed and had teeth).

I do know the EPA fines are a cost of doing business to some. A few of them have decided that the public relations problems were getting too bad and cleaned up their act.

Well... bump the fiduciary duty to shareholders couple of stairs down the priority ladder and they may change.

You mean the mythical one Milton Friedman made up?

> There has to be minimum wage laws

Minimum wage laws, like employer healthcare mandates, are a feudal solution (specifically, viewing employers as feudal lords responsible for the minimal upkeep of their employer-subjects) to a capitalist problem. They are better than nothing, but worse than making minimal upkeep a public function, taxing appropriately to support it, and doing less to impose additional costs or barriers to mutually beneficial employment.

Not at all. Many laws only apply to companies with certain amounts of employees.

It is entirely possible to put in laws that are reasonable for larger companies to follow, but not hurt small business growth.

This is correct. My roommate worked for a landscaping company that had 5 employees. They did not have to pay overtime.

There are often overtime exceptions for seasonal work. If x% of your revenue is earned in y months you don't need to pay overtime. Landscaping likely qualifies as seasonal.

Benefits that cost small businesses more than large ones are a huge problem maybe the biggest problem, because it takes an already risky venture and essentially punishes people who want to pursue it.

For example health insurance costs 10x or more either via either the public exchange or for a small business to offer relative to corporations in the same market. That's a huge disincentive for employees to work for you.

If we were really interested in making it easier for small businesses we'd improve social safety nets, not weaken them further with re-regulation. We need to reduce the risk/pressure for employee rather than concerning ourselves with how cheaply we can exploit an underclass.

Yes, I'm quite sure people who have spent their whole life obsessing over every single cent, and whose core motivation is "getting more money to keep score" are going to just decide to start paying their workers more one day. Keep wishing! I'm sure we'll see wages just start to rise everywhere because of the power of your wishing.

I guess the important point he's making is regarding sensible minimum wages. If a company, whether startup or not, can't pay a reasonable minimum wage then it shouldn't be trying to hire.

Wishing for market players to act against their own self-interest, that is one strategy. In case it doesn't work, and you don't like minimum wage or complicated rules, another strategy might be to advocate for an universal basic income. I would even argue that this is less utopian than the first strategy.