Look at the recent outrage here on reddit about the pharmaceutical company that would raise the price of a drug by 3000%.
That's a good example of my point about regulations which benefit large companies. Ask yourself why was this company able to raise the price of the drug and profit. There are companies in other countries that sell the drug for much lower prices. Why can't a patient with a prescription, go to Walgreens, and have their pharmacist order their drug from another country?
Or on the production side. The drug is not proprietary. There are many drug companies that could start making a generic version of the drug in a few months. The problem is they would have to go through millions of dollars of FDA testing. Why can't a patient, after being informed of the risks, choose to buy a generic drug which has not gone through full FDA testing?
These are both cases of laws in the name of "consumer safety" which benefit large companies.
It's kind of simple really. Once you have a large business going, you can use economies of scale to lower your overall costs.
Economies of scale are not enough to eliminate competitors. Even ignoring that side of the argument, look at things this way. After increased minimum wage, required vacation pay, required maternity leave, etc. Which business will have an easier time keeping it's prices low? The business owned by a mulitnational or the business belonging to John Doe. The multinational can buy insurance in bulk (And per less per employer), introduce automation much more quickly (and cheaply), etc.Minimum wage and other required benefits would hurt competition. They are things which benefit large businesses.
But in general, the playing field without any intervention is massively skewed towards the big businesses. It's basic economic theory.
No it's not. This is not theory; this is dogma without any real life connection nor example.
And these are all necessary to keep big businesses from totally milking their employees dry to the bone. Without minimum wages, every big fastfood chain could decide to set wages incredibly low. Where are all the employees gonna go, to the competitor? Oh, also low wages, too bad.
Firms cannot pay employees whatever they want for the simple reason that firms cannot charge customers whatever they want. Employees can go work for rival firms (not every chain would switch to low wages), they could go to small businesses, they could move into different industries, or they could simply decide sitting home and watching netflix in a cheap and shitty apartment is better than working for $2/hr.
The only times when wages are inelastic (businesses can offer extremely low wages) is when employees have no other options; they can't move into other fields, they can't start their own business (increased startup or certification costs), etc.