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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

One of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful.

We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.

I applaud South Korea for pursuing this conviction and achieving a suitable penalty for the breakdown of law at the highest levels. It's quite admirable, as admirable as the UK charging the King's own brother with crimes this morning.

When law breaks down against the powerul, billionaires turn into oligarchs, and all those startups that would have created the next big creative disruption in the economy get squashed, and we all lose out. Inequality of power is a massive risk for any economy.

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> One of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful.

That has nothing to do with startup and economy. Equality in front of the law is one of the most basic property of any decent democracy.

It is even the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

Not to mention that these former startups are now the Navy, and they are almost all squarely on the side of the person who tried to overthrow democracy.

It has a lot to do with both! HN is largely interested in startup economies, so I focussed on that in my comment.

I would contend that a startup economy can not exist without decent democracy. It's not an either/or as you frame it.

I disagree: TikTok, Alibaba, Deepseek, WeChat...

Interesting, I had not considered these the products of a startup economy, but then I haven't investigated their origin deeply, and now will. Thanks!

There are many more: Baidu, Didi, Huawei, Xiaomi, BYD...

>One of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful.

Yes, as the saying goes, the law equally forbids and punishes the poor and the rich if they sleep in the park or under a bridge.

>We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.

US has nowhere near "equal application of law", and yet it has these companies.

In fact, if it did have "equal application of law", those companies would have dead, as they get away with things that, if a smaller company or private business did, they'd have the book thrown at them.

We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.

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