Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers

It is explicitly why Standard Oil was broken up. Look up pretty much any anti-trust case. It's very common, and the reason it's not even more common, is because it's explicitly illegal by anti-trust law.

> When the prices are low that sounds like a good outcome for their customers.

No, because it's only temporary. They only lower the price to drive the competitor out of business, and once they're out of business, they raise the prices again.

> there isn't anything preventing another newcomer from emerging

Yes there is: investment. If every newcomer goes out of business like that, that makes it a bad investment to enter that market. You are already at a disadvantage entering a new market because of the investment needed. If you then can't recoup those costs, there's not much point in even trying. And the established big players can and will drop their prices to run you out of business unless stopped by regulation. Your argument only works if you ignore investment costs necessary to enter a market.

There's literally more than a century of legal history behind this.

It deserves to be amended to a far greater degree than that, but also the above statement isn't relevant when there is only one "employer" available. Which has often been the case, historically, and maybe more so in the future.

I'm 5 days late to your disagreement, but regardless: I think the choice of word "dishonest" implies that CGs post was fraudulent in nature, and was a poor word choice unless RR has some reason to believe that CG knows the truth to be different from was you stated. Disingenuous might be closer to what RR meant if RR thought that CG knew that there is an imbalance but chose to focus on treating the situation as both parties have equal weight in the relationship.

I think that the original comment that CG replied to was making an important point about the balance of power between the two parties.

An employee working for an employer vs a customer of that same employer is not equivalent.

You shouldn't compare a person working for an employer with the hopes that they will receive a future paycheck for the work they are doing today (a paycheck that they likely are relying on to make good on commitments that they have) with a customer that receives a service today with the promise to pay it in the future (even though the service provider is also relying on that future payment to make good on commitments that they have made).

There is almost always an imbalance of power between an employee and an employer.

An employee might be doing identical work that a contractor could do, but as a contractor you might expect to be paid up front in partial or full, which an employee would not be able to expect.

It is more complicated with a customer and a service provider in terms of the balance of power. If you only have one option for who provides heat to your house that your children live in, then the provider has more power than the customer. If you like to drink at a bar when you have extra cash then the customer has more autonomy in that relationship than the bar.

One can come up with examples where the employee has more power over the employer, but it is more rare and not what the article in question is discussing.