> Empirically there is plenty of evidence that given a choice, many businesses would rather maintain the power differential and complain about "lack of applicants" than increase pay and suffer a corresponding diminution of authority.

Why does any company every pay more than the legally required minimum, then?

if you have 0 employees and nobody will work for you until you raise your pay to three times the legally required minimum, you raise because otherwise there is no power differential.

If you have 10 employees and you want to hire 3 more but to do that you have to increase their pay by 25% in relation to others then you might decide not to because this decreases power for everyone (should they find out what you're paying these others)

> "Market" is just another way of saying "Power differential."

Oh come on. This is a cynical or Marxist take, but it's pretty obviously untrue. A flea market, farmers market, FB marketplace doesn't have a substantial power imbalance. A market may have a power imbalance, but it is not required. People can exchange goods/services at equal power, and routinely do so. And if I understand economics correctly, that's the purpose of a "free" market: no artificial power imbalances.

This is an important point: according to Adam Smith, a free market is a market without power imbalances, a market on which everybody can trade as equals, with transparency. He was fully aware that companies would try to dominate the market, make it less free, form cartels, and generally conspire against the interests of consumers, workers and other smaller players on the market. He even suggested that workers may have to get organised in order to counter the power imbalance posed by corporations.

It's only later laissez-faire and neoliberal capitalists that turned "free market" synonymous with a lack of regulation and a playground for the biggest and most powerful companies.

One man's cynical is another man's realistic.

Nobody credible disputes the validity of Marx's critiques of capitalism and 'free markets' by the way - they dispute his fantasy called communism.

Thus it can't simultaneously be a Marxist take and be obviously untrue. One of those has to give :)

I'd encourage anyone to read the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto [0] that summarizes his issues with capitalism. It'll take less than 30 minutes and is a great read, unlike the rest of his writings (in my opinion).

[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61/pg61-images.html