Maybe getting sued is not the end of the world. Like OK, you talk about it, you argue, and then the judge says this, the business says they'll appeal so that in the news it looks like the plaintiff is a bitch, but they never appeal because they know they'll get gutted clean as a fish appealing their stupid case. Well then they pay.
So, I am a man and if a man becomes a husband, then in the wedding, when signing the marriage contract, that gives the wife the right to sue. Well both have the right to sue. But it doesn't matter, getting married means getting sued, having children means getting sued, hiring employees means getting sued, contracts means getting sued, using IP means getting sued, and you know what? Good, because otherwise men would leave their wives stranded, children would have nothing, promises would be all broken and IP would get stolen. Lawsuits are inescapable, a business I worked for would literally cheat every single employee, partner, and customer, without exception if they could, and the reason they can't is the lawsuit. That's it. You have to pay.
Lawsuits equal paychecks. Complaining, getting a mediator, writing a polite but firm note to the employer, none of that adds up to dogshit. Well when I sued the business, in my conversations with my lawyer, she kept clearing up for me that there's no criminal consequences for suing, it's not a crime. Over and over, it's not a crime to sue, it's not wrong to sue. Funny, a relative I knew who knew the laws perfectly was like "can't we get so-and-so to talk things out, without doing something as violent as going to the Worker's Comp board?" Well you know what suing replaced right? Something violent, in fact. Before lawyers who talked there were champions who fought, and before champions who fought people would just challenge each other and duke it out, to the death sometimes. So collecting on someone meant threatening to beat him up. So it was violent, but so what? Stealing is violent. Everything you have can be stolen, and then you have to (in those days) agree to become a slave (check the thesaurus for what variation on slave you'll be called) all because your possessions were stolen. And get beaten all the time, live on terrible food and hunger, really cold, not just the coercion of slavery but the overlooked poverty of slavery. Or serfdom, in thrall, et cetera. Or going hungry until your reptile brain coerces you into stealing something yourself, and you get caught and sent to jail, coercion and violence. Stealing is violent. Creating the expectation of payment, in particular by A/B testing what makes people think they'll get paid but which your lawyer can argue you can sneak out of, that is violent.
At one point, these guys, the CEO and CFO were talking about a debt the CEO had to the CFO, like how bad could it be you never talk about it, and the CFO said "Well I don't complain about it every day! There are people in this company with rent to pay and people to feed!" Later he had arguments with banks, all kinds of people, the minute the call ended he said "how did I get into this shit!?"
And the guys were in 20% interest debt, they were "young and dumb" for accepting it and "getting raped" like the CFO said. Then they refinanced, and they got the Banco Security "prize" (it's actually called a prize) which meant that bank took on 80% of the risk of the loan (that's what jacks up the interest, the risk), a loan with that bank, the prize is a loan, so they paid I don't know, 6%. Over inflation. And for a business like that that meant the CEO had to use his assets as collateral. The CFO said they needed a miracle.
They would have been in great shape, actually, I created something for them that was worth, conservatively, a million dollars. It was to find optimal pricing to escape competition, so sometimes you would undercut your competitors, the obvious thing to do, but other times, mark up into a price segment where the good could be alone. And do it conforming to theorems, like really bulletproof. I talked to a Stanford professor, and he said that algo would be worth huge sums of money. And I have tons more stuff, most of it much better. Actually nowadays I've had to run extensive experiments because the algos are disgusting, way off the charts but it kept making no sense they could be that good, kept looking for the gotcha and kept thinking I found it and the gotchas were like a mirage, receding as I approached.
All I wanted was $1000. But he actually had to pay. Even if I sold it for $1 million now, which I can't be bothered with because of the my backlog of algos, of which my portfolio online is a small fraction, the only thing I would want would be to pay 99.9% of it to send that $1000 back in time.