Under legal circumstances, we call that economic duress, and when the job market is intentionally attacked by businesses who are far less likely to actually NEGOTIATE as much as simply demand lowering their wages, that’s considered fine, though it fits the definition perfectly. Consent requires a neutral result if you refuse something, being starved is a negative result as a response to refusing to work in an unfair work environment. The very least that can be done is a floor wage that makes sure a bare minimum to actually be guaranteed survival in the workplace is necessary, no matter the sporadic cost of jobs, due to the fact that the minimum wage is about matching what can be afforded. I also never said someone survives by doing nothing, even Lenin agreed with that, and so do I, but a bit of welfare to make sure people stay afloat for long enough to FIND work, or get basic needs met if they cant, is something I’m in favor of. I view the economic duress of our economy to be a massive problem, because though I think people should remain working, I do think that lower paying jobs, whether self-made or not (if they produce value), should be propped up enough in the economy to survive, as they could possibly create very valuable jobs, or create the environment necessary for some to make discoveries they needed for our benefit.

Once again, these concepts aren’t utopian, the literal main focus of these things is pragmatism and morality. These things are VERY much achievable, even in the revoltingly authoritarian age of the Soviet Union, they made that kind of thing work, with little to no unemployment, and poverty almost entirely gone. For their population, it came at a cost while the world was attempting to break it at EVERY. SINGLE. TURN. A large amount of that was reasonable, but the fact that they lasted so long says something: it’s not an impossible task to eliminate poverty. Suffering, death, famine, and a sadness aren’t the targets, though it would ease those issues to fix what…  Read more I actually suggest, the goal is to maximize the fairness of the workplace’s conditions while in capitalism, which is done largely by establishing base standard rules which make the job market far less like economic duress.