[annabellish]

>The fundamental problem here is that laws and regulations written to deter some megacorp from systemically being sleazy to make a buck apply equally to small businesses.

I don't think that's the _fundamental_ problem, because there are problems leading to that. Capitalism strongly incentivizes against respecting externalities, and regulations are the only effective tool we've found to stop us from (more aggressively) killing ourselves for profit.

That regulations have a cost and this strangles smaller businesses is a serious problem, but the regulations are usually solving an even more serious problem. A more fundamental issue is simply that capitalism left unchecked incentivizes behaviours which are crippling, while checking capitalism to prevent this causes powerful inefficiencies to form.

I don't know if there's a good answer here. Having regulations not apply to small businesses doesn't work, because small businesses are not intrinsically more likely to act against their own financial interests in order to respect externalities than large businesses are.

[AstralStorm]

Then you will have big players like Uber that abuse subcontractors who are small businesses.

Perhaps the model of "run a business" is wrong altogether? Or maybe a simple check... Margin cap. Capping margins is liable to not harm efficiency at all but might instead freeze out some sectors from the market... Hard choices.