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There has NEVER been a business in history that could survive as a profit making enterprise that cared more about its workers than its profit.

You need to make your final descent into hell with that sentiment branded on your forehead. That's a real keeper. So's hell.

Let's see, you post an artificial opposition of two unrelated ideas and demand everyone sign off on it. To-wit:

a. Businesses need profits to survive. Not a controversy.
b. I'm not sure what to make of the second reference you've spun in there with gongoristic incomprehensibility -- are you arguing that businesses need to avoid caring about their workers at all? Are you in favor of sending them home hurt, for example, without medical attention, and never mind workers' comp or OSHA rules or any of that weenie stuff that cuts into your profits? Is that where you're coming from? Or are you simply arguing that Fezziwig couldn't cut it because he treated his workers decently and kindly, and that however regrettably, Scrooge and Marley had the better, actually the correct, business model for HR? What's your model?

How hard would you push your employees if there were no employment laws on the books and you could do whatever you wanted? What would your ideal relationship be? Ownership outright? Would you want clear title to each of your workers? Or would you settle for a rental contract with whoever owned them?

Just wondering.

And if you don't like the insinuation, well, I did that deliberately -- to show you what your constant prating about "racism" sounds like. You constantly tell us that anyone who opposes borders wide open to Malthusian masses of would-be workers is a racist. Well, pal, if all those people are from foreign countries and more than likely of other races as you assume they are, and you're the guy who wants to use them to screw wages down to zero, then who's the racist? The people who want them to stay at home and build their own countries, or you, who want them to come over here so you can use the "iron law of wages" to take advantage of them?

are you arguing that businesses need to avoid caring about their workers at all

Only to the point of keeping the productive enough to maximize profit. The worker is the ULTIMATE beneficiary of “trickle down economics”. If a business is losing profit due to labor costs it makes NO difference how happy or unhappy the workers are., a different approach has to be taken towards labor costs. BTW, Dickens was a socialist.

How hard would you push your employees if there were no employment laws on the books and you could do whatever you wanted?

I wouldn't push them at all. I would hire the one that would accept the wage I had determined a function was worth. If no one accepted that wage I would have to either raise the offer or find another labor source, even outside of the country to accomplish the task at a price I could pay that maximizes the profit I am in business to make. I, as a business, do not care who does it only that it is done at an acceptable profit. It is NOT up to unions, government or anyone else to determine what an acceptable profit is for me.