From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
A job is a mutual agreement between employer and employee. Businesses have to compete like everyone else, and this includes competing for employees.
There is a myth perpetrated by minimum wage law supporters that without these laws, there would be a “race to the bottom” that would force down general wage levels. But this is demonstrably false. If it were true that “in a pure free-market economy business owners pay the workers as little as they wanted,” then the same principle would apply even under minimum wage laws: Most workers’ pay would gravitate down to today’s legal minimum wage.
But this is not the case.