That's right. It's the common argument against minimum wage, which a lot of people argue.

Given a choice between fewer jobs in which employees are actually able to support themselves and more where they can't, the former seems the more humane option...

How do you plan to enforce a global minimum wage where employers cannot simply shift labor?

I don't have a good answer for that, except to expect that wages wherever the jobs are outsourced to are at a livable standard for that area. Competition and outsourcing are probably inevitable in a global marketplace, but everyone should at least have access to food, clean water, education and decent healthcare.

Of course i'm coming entirely from a labor point of view, and i'll grant my grasp of economics is probably naive to say the least.

If the end goal was not profit, this would not be a problem.

If the end goal was to produce some goods or services that are of benefit to people, while looking after employees, the environment and the local community, the world would be a much better place.

Of course, the stock market might not grow so fast, but that's just made up anyway. People struggling to buy food on paltry wages is not made up.

>If the end goal was not profit, this would not be a problem.

I suggest you try your experiment on sentient creatures that are not motivated by utility. I am unaware of any at this point, however.

Humans managed about 200,000 years of doing exactly that.

I find the past 200,000 years of "management" unacceptable and largely void of progress. Only once sufficient incentive was established in what we now know as a capitalistic global market did we see humans as a species begin to solve existential problems at a race previously reserved for science fiction and fantasy.