Definition
- For a contract between an employer and an employee to be valid, it must always be consensual.
- Consensual agreements between people that don’t harm others must not be interfered with, even for supposedly moral reasons.
- Many civil laws and regulations pertaining to employment restrict victimless crimes. These restrictions are coercive; they breach the Legal Principle and should be abolished.
- For example, minimum wage laws prohibit two parties from voluntarily agreeing on an employment contract below certain wage thresholds. By artificially raising the ‘minimum wage’ threshold, some low-skilled workers that want to work are priced out of the market – as a result of the state intervention, their real minimum wage becomes zero.
