So, being 11th (of 178) in the ranking of the "Economic Freedom" you list below makes the American regulatory environment "oppressive" ?

From the viewpoint of most countries in Europe it would be considered "very liberal".

(EDIT: Also the source you mention is clearly politically biased. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation )

All sources are politically biased. Some are just more honest about it.

Just making a generic statement like that without qualifying it serves only to excuse that one source. Are the government of China's comments on Tibet equal in weight to Amnesty International? No. Is the Heritage Fund pushing an agenda equal in trustworthiness to an academic international ranking? Probably not.

However, academic studies from two accredited institutions that don't have a particular ax to grind are probably equally credible.

"Heritage is biased" is the unqualified generic statement, and it serves only to reinforce the dangerous idea that some organizations are unbiased and can be blindly trusted.

Of course Heritage is biased. But their Index has a well defined methodology and provides the data that informs the final score for each country; it can stand on its own, and should be criticized as such.

Right. See the recent news about Facebook's curation 'algorithm'.

Oppressive regulatory environment? Relative to where, countries which have limited resources and can't enforce regulations to protect consumers?

Compared to the first ten countries here: http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

It's worth noting that the index there accounts for "business freedom" and "labor freedom" but doesn't really account for what is on topic here: "startup freedom".

Occupational licensing has some overlap, but regulations are often very good for very big businesses since they impede competition from small challengers. Anyway, I'm mostly sympathetic to your points, but it's important to distinguish between being 'business friendly' and being 'friendly to status quo corporations'.

So, 90+th percentile for freedom makes the US oppressive?

In fairness, I haven't seen this objection when people complain about USA health care.

Because the complaint there is closer to "wow, we're paying the most and we're not even close to the top" rather than saying the quality of care is objectively bad.

And we're a good bit worse than 11th there.

How much separates them? Other than NZ which tries hard to bring investment. I don't think there is significant daylight between those at the top. And I don't think it's a good idea to relax the rules in this area of commerce.

I'm guessing you have done zero research as to whether Zenefits would have been violating similar regulatory law in any of those 10 other countries.

Occupational Licensing is not universally bad.

Licensed hairdresser? Fuckoff. Licensed doctor? Sounds reasonable. Lawyer? yeah. Engineer? Probably. etc...

Insurance salesperson? maybe.

Really depends on what the license is intended to protect. if it's just a silly barrier to entry that's one thing. If it is to ensure that a person has a minimal level of competence so as to prevent real harm to their customers that's a different thing. A lot will claim to meet the latter standard, I'm skeptical how many do. Insurance sales licensing I would guess to be mostly the former.

That being said, you spend 2 weeks getting licenses sorted out when someone starts and you avoid this whole mess.