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It is not difficult to avoid abusing power imbalances in your favor,I think that's being naively idealistic, looking at everything both currently and throughout history. The Stanford Prison Experiment has a lot to say about this, too.
> nor is it difficult to set fair wages and labor practices.
Theoretically, yes. But one issue with the USA in particular is its sheer size and variety. A fair wage in New York City and a fair wage in Podunk are not the same thing. Nor are manual labor practices equivalent across varying climates and population densities. The federal level of governance is wildly disconnected from the populace in both distance and levels of hierarchy. They deal with passing laws most of which arise from local issues that 99% of people (and even lawmakers) don't have a connection to, yet end up affecting everybody. Even at the state level, Californians and New Yorkers are still burdened by laws that tend to originate from the high density centers that might not make any sense outside there.
It's relatively easy to look at a single instance of a job and consider what's fair practice and fair pay in that specific environment, but to do so as a legally enforceable blanket policy is not.
> moral authority ... individuals devaluing everyone ...
There isn't a "devaluation" happening; there's little real value exchanged in the actual work to begin with. This has nothing to do with any notion of "moral authority", which themselves manifest in externalities added to work environments for societal benefit. But the ratio of expense between those externalities and the work itself can get overwhelming for low-end labor, hence automation and offshoring.