I think this is a question about timescales. Employers especially larger ones can afford to wait much longer than any singular employee. People break union lines because future better pay is not worth starving to death today. The average minimum wage American cannot afford to miss 1 paycheck without serious economic trouble.
if you could wave a magic wand and create a system for deciding labour allocation: Let's keep it simple: You must harry potter sorting hat people into, some salaries in the real world in parentheses: instagram influencer, video game tester, poet laureate, astrophysicist, molecular biologist (~35k USD), code monkey (~80-200k USD), oil rig worker (~80k USD+), road paver, garbage collector (~70-100k USD+), lyft driver (~40k USD -- though I made 50k doing that), and farmer (< ~20k USD)... How would you do it, and how "free" would it be, and what is your operational definition of "free"?
Re:What harm do minimum wages do?
by throwaway894345 on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @04:51PM
(#24216261)
Sounds like you define "free market" such that all parties have equal wealth, or at least equal runway to wait for a better price. Per my original comment, I'm not familiar with this definition.
> employers can afford to wait for a given worker's labor prices to come down
So employers can wait.
> is affirmative evidence that the labor market is free
For employers.
> whereas the OP considers this evidence that the labor market is unfree
For employees - they can't wait (that much), see above.