Here's the problem with it all, tradesmen are all too eager to undercut each other for some reason. There's so much work, especially for trades that require a license that anyone that isn't charging premium money is a fool. And there's lots of foolish tradesmen with short term thinking and eager to sell their services as a low price option. Often with low price work to boot.
You rarely see older guys going for cheap and it's because they know it's a foolish thing to do.
Free market competition should be outlawed! Collusion should be legal. Unless I don't like your virtue signals, then you're a greedy capitalist robber baron!
When you "compete" by working in a way that damages the worker's health, yes, that should be outlawed. (Negative externalities are the fancy economics term)
Large corporations are already legalised collusion. Allowing those with competing interests to "collude" at the same level is a necessary counterbalance to that.
I'm not saying anything about that. What I'm saying is a decent amount of tradesmen don't know what they are worth and undercharge. In most instances it's because they underestimate the scope of the job they're taking on and are eager to get business. But business is generally easy to get in non-recession times and they could bid higher and still win jobs. It's often inexperienced guys and it's why you see so many startup construction/trade companies go out of business quickly. There's business - they just don't know how to run one.
You rarely see older guys going for cheap and it's because they know it's a foolish thing to do.