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Comment by msla | Hacker News Reader

> This is, as per usual, big companies trying to scare you into believing regulations meant for them will hurt the little guys.

Except those regulations hurt the little guys more than the big companies.

Even if the big companies can't buy their way out of compliance, compliance inherently costs less for them and regulatory bodies are more willing to work with a big company than a small group of hobbyists, leading to the big company being able to follow the law with nary a hiccup whereas the hobbyists get destroyed by zealous enforcement.

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This isn't true for a myriad of reasons. Smaller organizations are usually inherently more compliant, their smaller scale makes it far easier and cheaper for them to become compliant, and enforcement agencies are less interested in investing significantly in enforcement actions against them.

...their smaller scale makes it far easier and cheaper for them to become compliant...

This is often somewhat true. However, as I have observed in several USA contexts, large organizations are often exempted (whether explicitly or not) from pesky new regulations, citing this very point. For example, I personally attended a California PUC meeting in which VZN and SBC were exempted from "lifeline" regulations that continued to be imposed (with nonzero costs) on the small CLEC that employed me. Large organizations have to keep lawyers and lobbyists employed, so they might as well keep them busy. Creating regulations and exempting themselves is common practice.

Perhaps things work differently in Europe.

In Europe, small companies tend to be exempted. E.g. no GDPR data protection officer required when less than 250 people in the company. 10, 50 and 100 are also personnel counts seen on a regular base.

In practice, a lot of companies stop growing just below the limit, and e.g. split in parts that have supplier relations to each other. No, we don't have 2000 employees. We are a group of 200 companies, owned by the same owners, and having 10 employees each.

Having 200 boards can't be more cost effective than not hiring one data protection officer, right? Even two boards has to be more expensive.

Then again, humans struggle to connect, at what, 200-300 people? so maybe it's not terrible to build something like a zaibatsu

THe data protection officer is the least of the costs they avoid. Medical staff, prevention and protection officer, union representative, ... The list goes on and on. I've heard that a company of 99 and 110 people de facto have the same amount of people doing work, the 10 extra people are all the extra laws that go in effect at exactly 100 employees. SO

There is also impact on worker protection. If your people go on strike, or if you want to do mass layoffs, you just dissolve a few companies.

I presume board requirements are a lot smaller for such tiny companies, too.

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