Well first, that’s what I have been doing, so I’m not sure what you mean by “am I willing?” Second, as to whether I want to continue, I guess that depends on whether we can do this without rancor, posturing, and arrogance, whether people are going to feign ignorance as to the obvious meaning of words and phrases, and whether people are more interested in harping on trivialities and name-calling rather than honestly addressing points.
The problem with such discussions is that Libertarianism appears to be set up as unfalsifyable. You say, “X will happen in a free market, so we don’t need to have regulations for X”. But if I give examples of societies where X doesn’t happen, they are immediately dismissed because “it’s not a free market”. Since a utopian Libertarian society has never existed, it’s impossible (if real-world examples are disallowed) to prove or disprove the tenets of Libertarianism. Yet they continue to be held as immutable truths by Libertarians. How does one have a discussion about that?
So why isn’t a minimum-wage law an attempt at “wealth redistribution”? The phrase “weath redistribution” implies a taking of money by government, and a giving of that money to other citizens. That’s most certainly an accurate description of what occured in communist Russia and China, but it’s a little heavy-handed to describe minimum-wage laws. I wouldn’t object to classifying welfare as such, either. But minimum-wage? Nah.
What does a minimum-wage law do? It prevents ruthless employers from abusing workers. Assuming that the MW is not excessively high (which it most certainly is not in the U.S.), an employee is EVERY BIT ENTITLED to the money that he/she earns. They are not being handed the money; they are working for it. See, Libertarians make the assumption that there is some natural rate of pay to which “the market” will gravitate, and that employees are not entitled to anything above this “natural” rate, unless they negotiate for it. But I submit that, in the real world, conditions will naturally gravitate to “whatever people can get away with”. This is human nature. And unfortunately, what people can get away with is often unacceptable from a humanitarian point of view.
Now, you can argue that the employer could pay workers less if not for the law, and that therefore the law is taking money from them, but I find such arguments to be specious. If we disallowed any law that resulted in business owners making less money, the public good would be in serious jeopardy. And here’s where the discussion is going to break down, because I will give an example, and you will dismiss it because it’s not precisely the same situation as minimum-wage. But I’ll give it anyway: Public businesses are required to have fire exits. Sometimes fire exits result in considerable extra expense for the business. Given the horrific things that can happen when a crowded building with inadequate exits catches fire, the greater public good is served by having these laws. Is the government unfairly taking money away from business owners? I don’t believe so. Regulatory laws certainly may have the effect of reducing profits for businesses, but I think it’s unfair to characterize this as the government “taking” their money.
The Libertarian argument seems to be that the law is unfair because it forces employers to do something that they may not have to do if they were completely unfettered. But in the real world, it is IMPOSSIBLE for citizens to be completely unfettered. And here again is where the discussion is going to break down, because any example I use is going to be immediately sneered at because it’s not coming from a “free market” (which is a hypothetical construct that has never existed in the real world). If I give examples of ruthless employers who have taken advantage of workers in sweat shops, you will try to dismiss my examples: “Oh, THAT was in the past”, or “THAT wasn’t a free country like ours.” But IMO such dismissals miss the point, which is that it’s HUMAN NATURE that the strong will prey on the weak.
The failing of the Libertarian ideal is that it makes 2 erroneous assumptions: (1) That all people will be naturally benevolent, and that nobody will ever take unfair advantage of anyone else, and (2) That all citizens have unlimited choices and opportunities. Libertarianism would work like a charm if we had 100% employment and anyone could just go down the road and get a new job at a moment’s notice. But that’s not the case in the real world. People have found themselves in situations where they had to work to survive, and did have limited options, and were forced to accept brutal and dehumanising conditions of employment. In such situations, the employee is not freely consenting to the conditions, but is doing so under duress, and I believe this DOES occur in the real world, and COULD occur in the U.S., were we to allow businesses to operate completely unfettered.
I guess what it comes down to is whether an employee is always “freely” accepting the conditions of employment. And when you get down to the bottom rung of society (and those are the ones who will be affected by MW laws), I don’t believe such is always the case. I suspect you would agree with me that laws against fraud are not “wealth redistribution”, wouldn’t you? - even though such laws result in the potential purpetrator having less money, and the potential victim having more money. But what’s the difference? The difference is that with fraud, one person deceived the other, and therefore the other person wasn’t freely entering into the agreement. Well it’s my belief that an employee who accepts a job for extremely low wages, in the real world, is often not freely entering into the agreement either.
Is that enough description of my position for you? 
