@CWOTUS What exactly in the unanimously decided holding of US v. Darby do you think the court got wrong? I’ve downloaded the decision and I’m about to read it, so I’d be interested in your take on it. If nothing else, @ibstubro makes a good point about how a minimum wage might fall within the scope of the Commerce Clause: it enables the federal government to prevent employers from violating the rights of immigrants and the poor (e.g., rights against exploitation). Federal rights cross borders, and economic rights are subject to even conservative readings of the Commerce Clause.
@MollyMcGuire We don’t have a free market. And even if we ever did, we never will again. Free markets require an absence of coercion, which isn’t possible in a world where all property is already owned and we have to trade our labor to even get a foot into the door of survival. It’s not like we can go west and claim a bit of land for ourselves anymore. We are born into a world where from the beginning you need to have money, and you can only get money from other people.
If I had a legitimate option other than accepting the wage an employer will offer, then maybe I would be free of coercion. But in the absence of real options, I am stuck. Even if I could acquire a farm, I would have to pay taxes on it. Which means I’d have to sell some of my crop. Which means I’d have to adhere to federal regulations on agriculture goods. I can’t just run a subsistence farm anymore, which means I am coerced to be part of society.
And since this society guarantees me rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as part of an exchange for this coercion, society has a duty to make sure that I can make enough money to survive so long as it is forcing me to live within its confines. And the best part about that argument is that it is consistent with the principles behind conservative political theory (Burke), libertarian political theory (Nozick), and liberal political theory (Rawls).