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I wonder how the startup scene will adjust to this if it becomes mainstream. can employee contracts be modified to force compensation even in this case? seems difficult to write one up without weird second order effects.

if this does end up being something that is legal and successfully circumvents anti trust, does it mean antitrust actually is a failure in practice?

2026 hasn't even begun and more shenanigans are in flight.

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This won't last. It's just creative regulatory evasion and the loopholes will get closed.

but if it does, will it mean we are in the endgame. More and more value extraction by fewer and fewer people and entities under noble or complex reasoning.

ok? and?

And then capitalism crumbles because the delicate bargain between labor and capital it was predicated on has been destroyed.

And if my cat was an eldritch god in disguise life as we know it is in danger because I forgot to feed him this morning and surely he'll take revenge by destroying the universe.

That's what y'all sound like.

"creative regulatory evasion".

Credit where credit due: "creative regulatory evasion" was first attributed to Professor Michael P. Fleming of the University of Cincinnati College of Law to describe the tactics employed by the small loan industry to circumvent early 20th-century usury law.

Seems this would likely be one of the most salient terms the DOJ would use at trial.

By which administration exactly?

Most likely the next democratic administration. Antitrust actions are wildly popular and are also things the executive can act upon without the need for Congress or the courts. I mean this is what the current administration has taught the public, now rather than aiming the state at the people it'll be aimed at the corporations hopefully.

Regulations shouldn’t have to change with every new fintech innovation, and the IRS already has the necessary laws in place to catch and prosecute abuse of unpredicted loophole technicalities as tax fraud with intent. We’re better off applying a general tax to “gross revenue not paid as wages” and directing it to a universal basic income fund. The purchase price is gross revenue, and the less they pay out as employee wages, the more the (not subject to deductions) tax charge becomes. Sure, they might still fuck over workers, but at least the workers could afford to quit (thanks, UBI) — and VCs would face the choice of taking half the payment and fucking over workers, or taking the same size payment while not fucking over workers. They may be selfish, but they’re not so self-destructive as to choose the former out of spite: it would utterly destroy their ability to hire brilliance in the future, especially once people can afford to say no.

> Regulations shouldn’t have to change with every new fintech innovation…

Hard disagree given that a lot of fintech innovation is increasingly devious ways to circumvent the spirit and the letter of the law

> … and VCs would face the choice of taking half the payment and fucking over workers, or taking the same size payment while not fucking over workers. They may be selfish, but there not so self-destructive as to choose the former out of spite

Also hard disagree. The VC and investor people I’ve met and work with seemed to have a cultural aversion to labor being anywhere near the same level of compensation or power as them. I would fully expect them to take a deal that fucked over the employees if they got paid the same either way.

You’d have to tune your suggested system so that not fucking over the employees was heavily incentivized

Works for me! I do tend to be more optimistic than most. I would scale it so that the tax scale is applied with an exponential factor that concentrates the impact on high-revenue businesses while protecting low-revenue ones. (And I suppose as a bonus it would provide a financial counter-incentive against merged conglomerates, too.)

[flagged]

This comment is not cool, and is not welcome on HN.

You had a history of guidelines-breaking comments and moderator warnings up until a few years ago, and we've not seen any comments from you until the past month or so, and now you're back into those bad old patterns. You are of course welcome to participate here. But this is only a place where people want to participate because we have clear guidelines, and most people take care to observe them. Please do your part to raise standards here rather than dragging them downward.

Sure thing. Was the comment so grotesque?

It doesn’t have to be “grotesque” to be in breach of the guidelines. The guidelines ask us to be kind, to avoid swipes and sneers, and to converse curiously.

If it was a one off we’d be content to leave it flagged and move on but we’re talking about a pattern from years ago that seems to be resuming, and we need you to end that pattern now, thanks.

It’s pretty neat to know there’s a list.

The only list is your list of past comments which is there for anyone to see. There’s no need to evoke spooky atmospherics when you can just observe the guidelines that apply equally to everyone. It’s not hard to be a positive contributor here.

if we use your logic then every law written would be failure since at some point people would discover loophole/flaw that would get abused

the fix is we use more ambiguous words or just stronger government control

see how China "control" capitalist on this case if you want absolute government control

isn't it true though that laws that have frequently abused loopholes that effectively go against the spirit of the law are indeed failures? isn't that the entire purpose of having lawmakers who are constantly evaluating such things?

Yeah that is the point of having law maker

my point is making a law that a "future proof" is impossible, since guess what???? Human just cant account for every possible future scenario

You could see it as a failure to enforce the spirit of the law. Judges have the power to make it right and refuse the loopholes.

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