I'd argue that's getting tied up in details to a degree that loses the essence of the mechanism, and the distinction between wages and other economic goods, most especially rents, though also commodities.
The producer of commodities can, provided the opportunity to do so, seek other employment. So long as there is anything that may be produced and sold, they will cease producing some good X at a loss and start producing some good Y for profit. Or move elsewhere, or cease production at all.
If labour generally fails to command a sufficient wage to ensure its long-term survival (or, in extreme cases, short term), there is no alternative employment to living.
You live, or you die.
At best, at the individual level, you can die more slowly. But you'll die all the same.
The problem with living, as opposed to producing or exchanging merchandise, is that it has an irreducible cost, and you've got to meet that no matter what. If businesses take advantage of this, then what is being operated is not a profitable business, but quite literally a charity based on the transfer of wealth from the life-force of the workers (and perhaps the State through various welfare programmes) to the business owners. As you describe.
The key difference between the formulation I prefer (though I don't claim origination, I just don't know its origin) and the more familiar versions associated with Ricardo, Malthus, Marx, etc., is that I see the concept of an accrued labour capital -- health, fitness, skills, etc. -- as well as personal capital of the worker (housing, clothing, vehicles, tools, etc.) which do not have to be be replenlished on an absolutely continuous basis, but which, if not tended will over time degrade.
Moving from the individual to the market level, if there is a constant source of fresh labour then it's possible to "burn out" individuals and simply replace them with fresh young blood. As has been and is practiced throughout history and presently, around the world.
Again, the key is distinguishing various types of economic goods, and their behaviour in the face of market prices, and who it is that does (or doesn't) bear the full costs. I'm not saying this in defence of markets (I believe they allocate prices exceedingly inaccurately much of the time), but in acknowledgement of the observable behaviour. This isn't seeing the behaviour as desireable but as extant.
Again: labour at best returns its costs and those alone. Rents return profit in excess of costs. That is a fundamental inequality of any market economic system.
(The issues of other types of goods and the prices they experience extends the set of problems yet further.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages