I don't think business is the answer to everything. There are a lot of ways that I think the shear size of some corporations gives them the capacity--through vertical integration--to ignore some market forces. Oligopoly is not a free market. But I think you're way off base here and are severely overstating what we should realistically expect out of government.

Even as early as Henry Ford (in positing that greater leisure time for workers was good for the business as well, as it increased per-hour productivity and created a larger consumer class), we see capitalists bucking such simplistic and reductive thinking. Also, the only modern movements towards reducing working hours lately has been from private industry as well.

I don't think there is any principle to any study of government or economics that says what you have said. Government has the capacity to enforce laws. Beyond that, what those laws are, for whose benefit they are written, that's not guaranteed. To hope that a government will adopt a certain policy for humanitarian reasons is wishful thinking.

But, if you can make an economic case for a certain policy, then it becomes much, much harder for people--either businesses or governments--to ignore.