That's across the board, from the startups whose business plan is to be acquired at all costs, to the giant tech companies, whose business plan is to get monopoly power first, then figure out how to extract money later.
The field is wide open for a startup to do it right. Why not start one?
Look at the explosion of browsers and their capabilities after the IE monopoly was broken.
If it's the latter (number 2), then we need to start asking why American companies "doing about as well as possible" are incapable of producing secure and reliable software. Being able to produce secure and reliable software, in general and en masse, seems like a useful ability for a nation.
Reminds me of our national ability to produce aircraft; how's the competition in that market working out? And are we getting better or worse at producing aircraft?
If customers are willing to pay for X, and no companies make X available, you have a great case to make to a venture capitalist.
BTW, in every company I've worked for, the employees thought management was stupid and incompetent. In every company I've run, the employees thought I was stupid and incompetent. Sometimes these people leave and start their own company, and soon discover their employees think they're stupid and incompetent.
It's just a fact of life in any organization.
It's also a fact of life that anyone starting a business learns an awful lot the hard way. Consider Senator George McGovern (D), who said it best:
George McGovern's Mea Culpa
"In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn's 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender. Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow. Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and others have, I believe, changed the debate of our party. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578070...
It would be nice if being smart and competent was the key to success in our society, but you hint at the real key to success in your own comment--getting favor and money from those who already have it.
You didn't really engage with the other half of my comment, but I'll say it again, in general our society seems to be crumbling and our ability to get things done efficiently and with competence is waning. Hopefully the right people can get the blessing of venture capitalists to fix this (/s).
If you've never run a business, it can sure seem that way.
> the real key to success in your own comment--getting favor and money
Nobody is going to invest in your startup unless you convince them that you're capable of making money for them.
What I have realized is that most employees never do even a basic analysis of their industry vertical, the key players and drivers etc. Even low-level employees who will never come face-to-face with customers can benefit from learning about their industry.
The flip side is that a lot of business people (I exclude people who start their own companies or actively take an interest in a vertical) are also mostly the same. They care about rising from low-level business/product role to a senior role, potentially C-suite role, and couldn't care less about how they make this happen. Many times, it is hard to measure a business person's impact (positive or negative) - think about Boeing. All their pains today were seeded more than 20 years ago with a series of bad moves but the then CEO walked off into the sunset with a pile of cash and a great reputation. OTOH, there was a great article yesterday on HN from Monica Harrington, one of the founders of Valve whose business decisions were crucial to Valve's initial success, but had to sell her stake in the company early on.
I think business, despite its outsize role in the success/failure of a company, follows the same power law of talent that most other professions carry. Most people are average, some really good, some real greedy etc.
If you think there's a problem with this model (and based on your wording of "doing it right", this seems to be the case), it's largely in the incentive structure, not the actors.
Who regulates the regulators?
And besides, what's the alternative here? Don't protect employees? Let them work below minimum wage?
As I said in my original comment, show me something that isn't from the first couple of weeks after it took effect. Preferably something scholarly, not just anecdotes from a newspaper
It wasn't Seattle laws that did that.
It's that those companies needed to go from Growth-Mode to Margin-Mode. They could no longer sell VC dollars for dimes.
Presumably it rose in Seattle higher/faster than it would otherwise. The source that he provided in a sibling comment says sales dropped "immediately", which seems to corroborate this. It's lazy to argue "well prices rose elsewhere too so the minimum wage law couldn't possibly have had an impact"
In a healthy democracy, the civic-minded voters do.
It still seems to be better than all the alternatives.
The voters and their representatives, if they put their minds to it.
If you manage to secure the bag that way and exit that class altogether, good for you, but that solves nothing for the rest. There's no be all end all threshold that everyone can just stay above and stay ahead of inflation.