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Comment by esafak | Hacker News Reader

You don't! That's the beauty of free-market capitalism.

You can start your own company, or even freelance. And there are thousands of companies to choose from.

An individual can sometimes strike out on their own and succeed, and that's all to the good. But it simply does not scale across every sector of the economy, let alone being a viable strategy for most hand-to-mouth laborers (IIRC, something like 40% of US workers have less than $1000 in savings).

Every shareholder and investor wants a competitive moat: for corporate firms to have enough market power (including lobbying power and regulatory capture) to keep labor costs low (with an intentionally managed reserve pool of the unemployed, via NAIRU, to "discipline labor").

The fact that some individuals can beat the odds, does not change the systems dynamic: "the table is tilted, the game is rigged".

USA has 33.2 million companies, most of those aren't giant conglomerates, so the system do support people to work outside of companies, it isn't as hard to do as some people think.

The main reason people don't go and work for themselves is that companies pay so much that usually it isn't worth it. They would make money on their own but they make more working for a company, that isn't really a bad thing though.

Oh cool, I can also choose stressful precarity.

Yes, that is life without a corporation that takes the risks for you. Wasn't that what you wanted?

You can't have your cake and eat it, you either get the risk or you take orders from someone who took on that risk for you and give you a stable income.

Most of the problem is lack of sane health insurance at prices that make sense. And that is a uniquely American problem.

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