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.