Title: Freedom or Power? - Foundation for Economic Education
Headings: Freedom or Power?
Freedom or Power?
Freedom from Want
Freedom from Exploitation
Rent Controls
Freedom to Associate
Freedom of Speech
The Range of Options
Freedom and Government Intervention
Power and Government Intervention
Opportunities Overlooked
No Precise Measure of the Costs of Intervention
Brian Summers

Content: But we should-bear in mind an often overlooked fact: With low-productivity workers legally excluded from the market, minimum wage laws give high-productivity workers greater bargaining power. They don’t have to worry about competition from cheaper, less productive labor. Minimum wage laws clearly reduce employers’ freedom to hire unskilled workers. But the freedom to hire isn’t the power to exploit. When a worker freely agrees to a wage rate, he does so because, at the particular moment, that is his best option. From his point of view, he is better off accepting the wage than doing anything else. He is only being exploited when he is being coerced—as when union leaders exploit his forced exclusion from the labor market. Rent Controls
Fear of exploitation has also been instrumental in passing rent con-trois. These regulations are supposed to protect tenants from “exploitation” by ensuring their “freedom from excessive rent increases.”