Laws prohibiting private discrimination against members of class C, it is important to understand, are not implemented in a cultural vacuum. In a government based on popular representation or other democratic mechanisms, such legislation is typically just one expression of a rising broader popular movement, sympathetic to the plight of people in class C. If one of the major premises of that broader movement is that class-C persons should be regarded as individuals, rather than as instances of a collectivist stereotype, then that movement may itself have healthy effects on popular attitudes. Because the movement and interventionist legislation overlap historically, observers may not distinguish properly between the legislation's effects and the general cultural effects of the movement. If they fall into the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, they may erroneously impute to the legislation positive cultural effects of the popular movement which have nothing to do with that legislation. Through praxeological analysis, which does not depend on historical "proof" (pp. 4.3:1-4), we can sort out the effects generated by the legislation itself.

In the free market, as we have seen, the worker's wage or salary, including benefits, gravitates toward his or her DMVP (pp. 4.8:11-4). A company that refused to hire a worker at a wage reflecting that measure of productivity would be at a disadvantage relative to any competitor that could profitably attract that worker. Since companies that do not maximize their profits do not tend to survive in the unregulated market in the long run, the free market tends toward a formula that we might describe as "equal pay for equal productivity."