I come from Canada...big country north of you... maybe you cannot see it because of the snow.
The most people I ever employed at one time was around 20. Hiring an employee means taking the skills that they have and making use of those skills in your organization the best way possible. Generally people do not have all the skills necessary to do the jobs so need additional training to meet those requirements. Personally I needed to take spend between $1,000 to $10,000 per year to maintain my qualifications and my employees almost as much. Since the employee didn't pay the cost if I sent them on a week long course, nor accommodation nor paid his own salary, it meant a considerable investment in that person. So when other businesses would hire the employee that meant a significant loss of investment. In that sense businesses "steal" other businesses employees.
When you go to work, do you walk on a dirt path or do you ride a vehicle on paved roads. When you ride a vehicle or take medicine or eat food do you have to worry that it could be injurious to do so? Governments are very good at enacting rules which help the majority of people. The reason that children are not in the workforce is due to rules that governments have imposed to prevent their exploitation.
Those are examples of where governments a like a tool suited for their work. Most of the examples that you gave are when a government tries to do things it isn't suited for.
You wrote: "Personally I needed to take spend between $1,000 to $10,000 per year to maintain my qualifications and my employees almost as much. Since the employee didn't pay the cost if I sent them on a week long course, nor accommodation nor paid his own salary, it meant a considerable investment in that person. So when other businesses would hire the employee that meant a significant loss of investment. In that sense businesses "steal" other businesses employees."
So you aren't providing your employees with experience because they will do a better job—you are doing it to make them obligated to you? I'm sorry but no amount of experience makes anyone yours, and no other business can steal another autonomous individual from you. Do you want to own people? That is how you sound right now.
Government rules don't help anyone. Markets functioning optimally fixes those problems naturally. The government only slows the process (for instance, there were federal laws against letting people free their own slaves prior to the civil war).
It is not necessary for a centralized gang to steal from each person and imprison 1 in 20, just for a god damn road to be built, and for people to realize that kids are shit labor. It is completely absurd to think it would.
I am not saying that people belong to a business but reflecting upon how in an environment where there is a limited supply of labour (eg full employment) businesses will compete against each other in order access this labour. This competition is what causes wages to increase. This is good for the workers but what happens if you are not in full employment or the skill level of the job is easily replaced with technology if the workers ask for more money. They still have street sweepers in Ukraine but in Canada they have sidewalk sweeping machines replacing a dozens of workers for a single one who is more skilled (can drive the equipment). Minimum wage creates an artificial price level which either causes businesses to fairly pay their employees or to innovate and hire more skilled labour.
I used Ukraine as an example because they are a highly educated population roughly the same size as Canada but their average wage is 1/10 the rate in Canada. The average income in Ukraine expressed in CAD is $321.99 vs $3,166.71. The mortgage interest rate in Ukraine is 21.03% while in Canada it is 2.99%.
Because labour is so cheap, employers have little regard for their employees. However consider a product such as a bottle of Coke. In Ukraine it costs $0.56 CAD while in Canada it costs $2.03 CAD. They could double the minimum wage in Ukraine and while it might cause the price of commodities to rise, (what is Coke a few pennies worth of sugar and flavouring) it would not rise to Canada's price which has wages 10 times.
Source
Canada has admittedly more "government" than the US. When I was a child I first visited the US. What struck me was the poverty of the country. This was because I looked at the state of your roads. The line about the streets in US are paved in gold is sadly mistaken. I think they are paved in potholes. How can any person start the day with resolution and optimism it they open their door and step into poverty. When I visited Costa Rica (a really laissez faire government), its central highway was in poorer condition than our rural roads.
As far as people realizing that children are an inefficient labour force ... 4.7 million or 12.6% of children aged 5 to 14 in the work force in Bangladesh.
I admit your government needs to be changed. Your incarceration rate is just wrong. However that is actually a symptom of how "capitalism" has become to extreme in your country. You have corporations take over the management of prisons. You have corporations which create fear in people so they feel they have to buy guns. A reason society would adopt measures which would prevent the problems before they happen... Why do people steal? They steal because there is a disparity in the society which puts insuperable barriers for the lowest to rise honestly.
It isn't that "governments" are inherently bad. It is the people who are attracted to power and influence the running of government to cause it to become corrupted.
Take Belarus which is a country a country exactly opposite to what you would like. The difference is that its president (could be called a dictator) Alexander Lukashenko has been in power since 1994.
You would need around 1,808.78$ in Minsk to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 5,200.00$ in Chicago, IL (assuming you rent in both cities).