> the problem with the free market is that it has to optimize for infinite growth. It doesn't matter if you make profit, you have to make the most profit or you're a failure. Which means removing insurance for workers, minimizing wages, maximizing unpaid overtime etc. The free market is fundamentally at odds with workers and that's why companies employ lobbying and union busting behavior.
Have you ever ran a company? Most people running a business care about all these things you're enumerating and no one believe in infinite growth.
Unregulated capitalism will externalize all of its costs onto society. Too much regulation will strangle the system. Like with most things, there needs to be a balance. Similarly, capital will exploit labor without regulations or unions to prevent it from doing so.
Now yes, of course capital is going to seek the locality with the cheapest costs of production, so there is a tension between competitiveness and ensuring a minimum standard of living. Cities, states, countries, ultimately have to work together to balance these demands.
If your solution to all of this is a laissez faire system that relies on the fact that "most people care"... it is I that has to question your naïveté.
Have you ever ran a company? Most people running a business care about all these things you're enumerating and no one believe in infinite growth.