And I think not, because in countries with much stronger employee protections it works out pretty well. The biggest 'downside' is a smaller concentration of pow

And I think not, because in countries with much stronger employee protections it works out pretty well. The biggest 'downside' is a smaller concentration of power and wealth because the risk/reward calculation is different. But being bigger serves nobody except a few sub-1% shareholders/owners. There also is no "we all lose" scenario because of the same reason companies have been able to exploit desperate (or extremely poor) people; companies can be discarded and traded in for more respectful ones in the same fashion. Sure, a bunch of megacorps will not function any longer without a disposable workforce, but that's not really bad for society, or at the very least 'less-bad' when compared with disposable employees. The same "we have to give them tax breaks or they will move away" logic fails here; if you give a company that sort of leverage, you're essentially blackmailing yourself because they can use that leverage for anything they want. As long as there are locations to move to, that is. If there are no more locations, be it because they have used them all up, or because it's made useless by law, that leverage ceases to exist. Downside-wise there is only one thing I can consistently come up with, and that is the benefit of having a high concentration of resources and purpose (or vision perhaps) to develop something completely new (like re-usable rocket boosters fit for human flight). While I don't think we should trade that for disposable humans, there should probably some sort of avenue where we can have that benefit without having the human-downside factor. I'm not sure how such a thing would be implemented or work out in detail, but not having it (and in turn also not have people get discarded with great ease) might still be a net positive in the grand scheme. Rolling over going all "welp I guess this is just how it is" gets everyone nowhere, so before someone comes along and suggest that a better way is a waste of time and energy to look for: you're wrong. (not aimed at you, jmartrican ;-) )