I am having trouble reconciling your assertions, in which you seem to think HN should expect "basic decency" from corporations while simultaneously asserting that "'basic decency'" has never actually served as a meaningful barrier. It seems to me that the later statement rather undermines the original.

Maybe "basic decency" is a very bad phrase to describe things here, and we should just leave it out. It's probably useful as invective, and if one is already predisposed to sympathize with the point, can galvanize one to action, but it serves poorly as a tool to actually communicate.

I propose that if we avoid it, we can talk meaningfully about how the company finds it more convenient to avoid business than comply with regulatory burdens without the distraction of moralizing the matter, and draw conclusions about whether the passage of the law was wise under these particular circumstances, or what circumstances or structure might have made it better, and the like.

Perhaps your vintage-1921 blue-collar labor dispute is more of a distraction than a help, as well :)