> The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale.
First, it still can be. If the US has one set of laws and the EU has another set, a conglomerate has two sets of laws to navigate. That is still much easier for them than having dozens in each place.
Second, companies do their "harmonization" game with treaties as well, which of course only works by having a sufficiently powerful central government that can be controlled to sign onto such treaties and use their power to get other governments to do the same, using many of the same problematic shenanigans that happen at the federal level to create bad federal laws.
> Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage.
But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere.
> But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere.
Meanwhile, in the real world, tax havens are tiny jurisdictions for very good and well-understood reasons and the companies operating out of them are not in any meaningful sense "local", and the downward pressure on workers' rights is much stronger when multinationals can credibly threaten to relocate to one of several other jurisidictions with relevant manufacturing industries if new labour laws are passed locally rather than by a large trading bloc. And navigating 100 sets of copyright regulations rather than two is a challenge for a startup but something Amazon has ample resources to do where there's sufficient money in it to be worth bothering.
Local regulatory innovation gives us a lot more Google Bermudas and goods exported from Special Economic Zones designed specifically to privilege their patron corporations than local search engines and consumer electronics industries.
> Meanwhile, in the real world, tax havens are tiny jurisdictions
Tax havens are nonsense created by governments that want to impose taxes that aren't actually on anything.
If you want to tax companies who employ workers where you are, impose payroll tax. If you want to tax companies who sell to your people, impose VAT. If you want to tax companies that operate facilities, impose property tax.
If you want to tax nothing, tax "profit" and then watch how the "profit" is promptly removed from your jurisdiction. Because if the profit is a result of something that is actually connected to your jurisdiction in some way then you're really just taxing that thing and calling it income tax, but if it isn't then the company has no reason not to just declare the "profit" as having happened somewhere else where the rate is lower.
And then the local business can't do that, which is why those types of taxes should cease to exist in favor of the ones that tax something that actually happens where you are.
> and the downward pressure on workers' rights is much stronger when multinationals can credibly threaten to relocate to one of several other jurisidictions with relevant manufacturing industries if new labour laws are passed locally rather than by a large trading bloc.
This, again, has nothing to do with multinationals, and is in fact the opposite.
If California has more stringent worker protections than Texas this benefits local businesses in Texas. It only benefits multinational businesses if they move to Texas, and only to the extent that they move to Texas -- and if they move their entire operation to Texas then they're a local business and not a multinational.
Meanwhile what a multinational company can do that a local one can't is hire people in Asia or South America, which is a serious problem for a local business in Texas who is trying to compete with that multinational and suddenly has a bunch of requirements imposed by legislators elected by California who neither the business, nor its local employees who lose their jobs, actually wanted.
> And navigating 100 sets of copyright regulations rather than two is a challenge for a startup but something Amazon has ample resources to do where there's sufficient money in it to be worth bothering.
Which is why central control is problematic. You should only have to comply with the laws in effect where you actually are, so that you only have to comply with 100 sets of copyright law if you physically have operations in 100 different jurisdictions.
First, it still can be. If the US has one set of laws and the EU has another set, a conglomerate has two sets of laws to navigate. That is still much easier for them than having dozens in each place.
Second, companies do their "harmonization" game with treaties as well, which of course only works by having a sufficiently powerful central government that can be controlled to sign onto such treaties and use their power to get other governments to do the same, using many of the same problematic shenanigans that happen at the federal level to create bad federal laws.
> Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage.
But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere.