So you're just going to ignore reality in favor of what you think "should" be happening.
If someone like you was in charge, we'd swiftly find ourselves living in company towns and working 18 hour days on assembly lines, only to be swiftly culled the instant some form of automation made us redundant.
You say you're aware that there will always be people to take advantage of a situation where there is absolutely no protections for the consumer, but you are woefully ignorant of the scale to which advantage would be taken.
Why would it? Is that a problem for you? If so, talk to your wife about it.
There are literally hundreds of posts on the old relationship subreddits that start out the way yours did and end up having a "I pursued this new thing and deeply regret it" update.