If it was up to the companies, men/women/children would still be working from dawn to dusk for slave wages in unsafe conditions. If they got hurt because of the company’s negligence they would be fired and thrown out into the streets.

From what I can gather, the above is a common sentiment among socialists and communists. But it is in fact false. If I were operating a business in a market where all my competitors are heartless employers who work their employees for slave wages in unsafe conditions, I would just have to do a simple thing to drive everybody out of business and become a very wealth man: Offer better working conditions.

Unless my mean competitors changed their heartless ways, they’d all lose their employees, who’d be more than happy to work for me now. Therefore, universal slave labor is an unsustainable state in a free market, especially for workers who have some skills.