The way I see it in the workplace or any other facet of life: Any activity between two adults, where both adults are of sound mind and consent to the activity should be legal. If someone wants to sign up to work in a dangerous environment for $1/hr, so be it, as long as the risks and terms of payment were communicated and understood by both parties.

Theft is not consensual, therefore it wouldn’t be legal in a laissez-faire regulatory environment. Worker exploitation also would be illegal, if the employer broke the terms of their agreement with the worker.

The issues with that approach is that not everybody is well equipped with the ability to evaluate risk and price it accordingly. Furthermore, the employer typically has an information advantage over the employee, as they know how often the safety equipment is serviced/replaced, for example.

As such, it makes more sense to have an expectation of worker safety and that employees are not unnecessarily exposed to risks that are preventable and known to the employer.

You seem to be unaware of things like structural power imbalance and multi-agent coordination problems. One purpose of regulation is to avoid game theory traps that happen in environments like you describe.

What are the specific regulations you’re arguing against though? Regulations aren’t just about labour, but also externalities, like dumping chemicals in the water.

The Jones law cited in the article is about protecting local labour and manufacturing. Is that what we’re discussing or something else?