He said "a truly fair free market" which doesn't translate to anarchy. Some regulation may be necessary. He is just positing that the current regulations are not appropriate, not that regulations and/or law should be abolished entirely. Some regulation and law is required for a market to remain free.

Does anyone, anywhere believe a "truly fair free market" is anything but an ideal that could never exist? We'll find unicorns first.

I don't think "truly fair" necessarily implies "perfect".

"Truly fair" implies that regulation would not be needed, and that is only something that would happen in an ideal world.

Why does it imply regulation would not be needed? It's truly fair because appropriate regulations are in place and inappropriate regulations are not. There may still be minor flaws, but once a certain fidelity is reached, I think "truly fair" is an apropos descriptor of a system even if it isn't 100% perfect.

"a truly fair free market" doesn't translate to anything, because it's not attainable.

A "truly fair free market" requires perfect information on the part of all stakeholders, which is impossible to achieve.

As if events like this were happening everywhere back then. Why is this outcome attributed to an unregulated market and not a group of horrible, horrible people?

Unfortunately most people seem to think we need the government to protect us from an unregulated market of employers. But the reality is, we don't. Even during the Industrial Revolution, work-related fatalities were on the decline and the creation of OSHA had little affect on the trend [1].

It's most surprising to me that people in technology on HN make this argument. You see benefits at startups and larger companies like free meals, free transportation, remote work, free cell phones, gym memberships, on-site massages, free Kindles, health care, dental care, 401k matching, and so on.

What percentage of the potential pool of benefits are mandated by the government? I would say an extremely small percentage. So what causes all of these employers to offer such amazing benefits and salaries without anybody from the government telling them to do so? Competition for labor.

[1] http://mercatus.org/publication/evaluating-oshas-effectivene...

I don't think anyone doubts that a small slice of high-demand workers are in a favorable position to negotiate good terms. That's also why the original wave of unionization took off among occupations like coal miners and shipyard workers, not among stockbrokers or architects. Programmers don't need much government help because they, for the moment, are in high demand, so the employee has more market power than in most industries. Though even in tech, some aspects seem to still need the government to intervene: despite the shortage of programmers, employers still have enough market power to force noncompete agreements into the average worker's employment contract, unless the state bans them (as California did).

One thing I like about living in Denmark, though, is that just about all employees have reasonable working conditions and decent perks, so there's less of a social gulf between different occupations. I get 6 weeks of vacation per year, along with benefits like paternity leave, good health coverage, a safe working environment, etc.— and so does everyone else. Actually I think even in my white-collar job the benefits are a little better here, though it depends on what you care about. I don't have free lunch or a masseuse available, but the work/life balance is good: at a Valley company it would be hard to negotiate perks like 6 weeks of vacation (especially if you want a real vacation, where you disconnect for at least 2-3 weeks at a time), and people don't seem to normally take paternity leave.

I think China is the perfect example of what I believe.

Do you really believe the Clean Air Act was unnecessary? I was around in the 70's in California when the air was crap. Do you really think that cleanup would have happened without regulation? Not in a million years.

And, don't say the labor market and clean air are different. They're both driven by profits.

"Why is this outcome attributed to an unregulated market and not a group of horrible, horrible people?"

How can you separate the two things? The reason we need to regulate things in general (not just economically, but in terms of all laws, etc) is because there are a significant amount of bad apples who will act horribly (though admittedly rarely to the point of murder/massacre) for personal gain if unchecked.

If we lived in a truly utopian society where people always acted in the best interest of the entire community then unregulated capitalism would work fine, but so would pure socialism. We obviously don't live in such a utopian society so both extremes fail miserably.