A Pole: Setting the minimum wage is a measure of the same type like anti-trust laws.
Hmm, the analogy doesn't compute ... anti-trust laws are designed to prevent monopolization. There is no 'monopolization' involved in stopping certain labor transactions.
"It prevents the market from ruining itself it is not intended to provide jobs."
Well, it does no such thing. If the labor market is healthy it is not impactful; if the labor market is unhealthy it is of no help. At best, it trades slight marginal increases in some low-wage job wages for higher marginal unemployment in the labor pool. Generally, I would think that is a poor tradeoff from a social policy point-of-view.
UK unemployment rate is 10% for 18-24 year olds. Would you call that market 'healthy' or 'ruined'? What do you think unemployed youths end up doing? Do you really think its better to have unemployed youths rather than having starting wages be a bit lower, but getting more of them in the work force?
James Watt used the so-called "flyball governor" to regulate the speed of his steam engines. You free market guys must hate him, Watt wasted so much power, unregulated engine would go much faster!
The Free Market *has* a "governor" - it's called the pricing mechanism... without Government price controls, ALL MARKETS CLEAR. With Government price controls, eg min wage laws, some markets can get screwed up. Worst case, you can create serious unemployment with a badly designed minimum wage law.
Your analogy is an unintended illustration that free markets actually do NOT NEED government intervention to work properly. Long live the pricing mechanism!
Raise the level of abstraction one level up: monopolization can be an undesirable result of market competition which undermines competition. Minimum wages laws prevent wages from reaching market equilibrium of subsistence and creating stratified stagnated society.
Both measures by regulating market protect it from itself.