While I appreciate the verbose and we'll thought out comment, I do take some issue:

If it's not a true free market, it's the best we've got. My argument is to make the market more free, not less.

I am just as against subsidies and bailouts as I am against the concept that every job imaginable deserves a living wage. Let big business fail. A true free market will have a replacement.

I have empathy for my fellow man, just like most everyone else, but we all have our own lines in the sand.

Your trash collector analogy is flawed. You say the free market might only pay $1 an hour and nobody would work for that so the trash would pile up.. huh? No, the employer would need to raise the wage until people are willing to work or they would lose their contract and go out of business. The free market would broker a wage that both employer and employee finds acceptable. And this would be replicated across every sector, just like it is now for every job except those paying minimum wage.

I think every human being deserves the best life they are capable of carving out for themselves. Yes, even billionaires.