[calamari4065]

Why do you think that employee reporting doesn't work right now? You could have theoretically perfect coverage, including transactions that are not digital or even legal.

Faster discovery doesn't change the resolution. Random citizens cannot do anything even if they could see it. An employee can already post publicly, shout to the rooftops. Plenty do.

Technology can't fix this problem because it is fundamentally not technological in nature. We do not lack the technology to process payments at scale. We've been operating a global economy for a few years now. That is indeed a technological problem, but not the one we're talking about.

Wage theft is fundamentally a breach of contract. Your employer has entered a contract wherein they are legally required to pay you some explicit amount within some explicit timeframe. The problem is not that the transaction can't be processed or audited. The problem is that a person chose to never initiate the transaction, or they paid less than they agreed on. This is a legal problem which requires legal action to correct.

No matter how the evidence is collected, you still have to go through the legal process. The resolution is still retroactive and the employee is made whole for all missing wages present and past. You still have to pull bank records and have an auditor look at them. It really does not matter in the slightest if it takes milliseconds or days to pull the records. The legal process takes weeks or months and the employee is made whole for the same amount either way.

I'm not saying you're wrong because I don't like cryptocurrency, I'm saying you're wrong because you're proposing a technological solution to a problem that fundamentally cannot be fixed with technology. Your solution simply does not address the problem at hand.

The only actually relevant point you've made so far is that a public ledger would make audits easier. And sure, why not. Totally valid point. Also totally irrelevant. The outcome is precisely the same no matter what. The employee gets the same settlement either way. The legal process is still the same. The incentives for governments to investigate are still the same. The social and political issues driving lack of enforcement still exist. A public ledger just doesn't change any of that.

Cryptocurrency might solve some problems, I don't really know or care. But it definitely won't solve this problem. No technology will.