I imagine that many implicit rackets are irrational, and many explicit ones are ultimately later deemed to be morally-objectionable. So in the case of the former, no one wants to disturb a stable component of profitability, even as there is a sense that the paradigm is suboptimal, archaic, or however else a schema may become irrational. The latter is the answer to your last two questions.

That's a reasonable point!

Though I don't think it's strong enough in the long run.

See eg https://www.economist.com/business/2010/10/21/profiting-from... (going via Google Search or so might be required to get around the paywall). But the subtitle already gives the gist: "If South Korean firms won’t make use of female talent, foreigners will" South Korean companies are pretty sexist and pay women less and given them fewer opportunities. But foreign multinationals don't share that sentiment, and are happy to hire talented women.

(The article is a few years old. These days the foreign multinational companies might even be extra happy, because it helps them boost their global diversity stats.)

Rackets are used everywhere to suppress wages. Employers usually subscribe to services that tell them what other employers are paying in their area for a given job, which they use during salary negotiations to give themselves a stronger bargaining position.

Any difference in information between two parties is exploitable to drive the price in the direction favored by the more-well-informed party.

> Employers usually subscribe to services that tell them what other employers are paying in their area for a given job, which they use during salary negotiations to give themselves a stronger bargaining position.

That's not exactly a 'racket'. Glassdoor lists that kind of information for everyone, including job seekers. And workers' rights to share that kind of information is even enshrined in lots of countries laws as inalienable (ie they can't sign away such that right; any provisions to such effect are at best unenforceable and at worst make the employer liable to be sued).

> Any difference in information between two parties is exploitable to drive the price in the direction favored by the more-well-informed party.

Not in a liquid market with competition. Eg I have no clue what Google stock should be trading at, but if I send a market order to buy a few stocks, I'll get a pretty good price because there are several market makers competing.

There are sometimes attempts by employers at cartels. These days mostly informal or even only implicit, eg via the kind of third party information sharing you allude to you in comment.

But as with any cartel, each member has an incentive to free ride and non-members even more so. And while your local Burger King and McDonalds franchisees might be able to collude, they'll have a hard time keeping people from switching to driving to Uber or Lyft if fast food wages drop too low. There's also the safety valve of self-employment.

The best thing government can do for the workers is to lower barriers to entry for would-be entrepreneurs: make employers compete with each other, and also pre-emptively compete with potential new market entrants (imagined or real).

(Closing markets by eg taxi medallions is exactly the opposite of what's good for workers.)