> The rules are too complex to start a business. I really don't think this is the reason. It's easier than ever to start a business now that there are so many

> The rules are too complex to start a business. I really don't think this is the reason. It's easier than ever to start a business now that there are so many free, accessible resources to help you through the process. There are even services like Stripe Atlas that will walk you through incorporating, getting an EIN, and setting up your billing: https://stripe.com/atlas https://stripe.com/atlas The reason few people start businesses is that it's really hard to make a good living. Running your own business is highly risky and takes a lot of work. For every success story there are countless failure stories that people don't speak of. Being an employee, especially in tech, can be an extraordinarily good deal. It can be frustrating like any job, but predictable pay that comes in well above median compensation for work that poses very little risk to yourself is a luxury. A lot of us have gone back and forth between self-employed and being an employee, and you don't really appreciate how nice it is to get a regular old job doing a narrow piece of work until you've dealt with the stresses of running your own business from top to bottom. > we must first force open protocols, interoperability, and regulations that are gradual by business size. What does this even mean? Very few business types would even benefit from "forcing" platforms to have open protocols. If regulators came in and forced Facebook or Instagram or even Hacker News to open their protocol and allow other businesses to interoperate (whatever that means) what makes you think individual small businesses would thrive, as opposed to other large companies coming in to take advantage of those forced-open platforms?