>>12
"But are you really free in such a society?"
Yes.
"Let's assume you work 40 hours a week for $50k a year. Along comes someone with similar ability who will work 45 hours a week for $40k. Either you drop your price, or work more, or get replaced. Now consider that happening repeatedly across the entire market."
Yes? So what? The guy has as much right to compete for the job as you have. You also both have the freedom of association - you can unionize to attempt to raise your wage rates.
"After a while you end up with many people working unhealthy hours for little wage, since there is always someone desperate prepared to replace them. You could decline, but then you'd have nothing to eat. Is that freedom?"
We had such a system for a couple hundred years in the United States, and, in the words of Milton Friedman:
"We didn't live in a paradise, but there is no period in human history in which the ordinary man -- the ordinary man -- had as great an improvement in his lot in life as in the nineteenth century in the United States when the government was of trivial importance." -Milton Friedman