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Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by vkou on Thursday April 28, 2022 @01:14PM (#31195172)
So? If you are doing business in 50 states, you need to be complaint with the laws of all of them. If you don't like it, you should move to a country with a more homogenized regulatory environment. Just because you are doing things with computers doesn't change anything. If I operated a franchise with 50 different locations, I'd also need to be complaint with 50 different regulatory environments.

You can't have 'states rights' (which, for better or worse, is how America claims to govern itself) and also have a single law of the land.

If you aren't sure that you're breaking a state law, don't do business in that state. Or do, and live with the consequences.

Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by telchior on Thursday April 28, 2022 @01:26PM (#31195382)
The point is that it's not insane to not have omniscient awareness of all laws in 50 states. It's tough running a very small business. If someone doesn't have enough funding to hire a team of lawyers, should they just fuck off and never do business anywhere? Your answer seems to be "yes".

You also completely ignored my point on the legal uncertainty factors. Businesses break laws every day that are just not enforced. Even a lawyer or accountant is occasionally blindsided by a state or federal authority choosing to selectively apply a law.

My sympathies lie with the small business owner here. It's very difficult to make sure that you've got every angle covered at all times, especially at the scale he's running at.

Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by vkou on Thursday April 28, 2022 @01:33PM (#31195477)
Yes, it's difficult to run a small business that wants to behave like large business, but doesn't want to do the necessary work to be in compliance.
Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by telchior on Thursday April 28, 2022 @02:25PM (#31196259)
"Small business that wants to behave like large business"

You mean, exist in the 21st century and sell or conduct any kind of business online? Is that a big business?

It's a well recognized fact that legal and accounting complexity, aka red tape, is an inhibitor of small business growth. Derisively sneering at anyone who doesn't want to do the "necessary work" or "behave" is a troll opinion, and not particularly rational.

Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by vkou on Thursday April 28, 2022 @04:26PM (#31197779)
No, I mean doing business in 50 different states, or, as mentioned higher up in this thread, >50 different countries.

Any business that has ever tried to do something at that scale at any point in human history needed to deal with compliance in all of them. Just because Stripe or the Apple Store provides payment processing as a service doesn't mean that you can just shrug your shoulders, and claim that none of the other regional distinctions and local laws apply to you.

> Derisively sneering at anyone who doesn't want to do the "necessary work" or "behave" is a troll opinion, and not particularly rational.

Claiming that the law doesn't apply to you because you're a small business and you can't be bothered to follow it what isn't particularly rational, here. If you think this is an excessive burden, you should work to invest more power in the federal government, or in international unions like the EU.

You don't just get to do a run-around of sovereignty because you're a foreigner and it's a lot of work.

Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by telchior on Thursday April 28, 2022 @06:17PM (#31198897)
While I believe that the point about doing business in other countries is valid, we aren't talking about foreigners in this thread. We're talking about someone in state A that wants to do business in state B under the general assumption that they won't be blindsided by policies being vastly different between the two. I sympathize because I have been blindsided in that way before -- 3 years after making a decision, my accountant informed me that an obscure (federal, in this case) tax requirement existed that I didn't know about, hadn't known to ask about, had never heard about from a lawyer, the accountant or anyone else, and had absolutely massive fines associated with it.

Basically everything you've written is dripping with contempt for anyone who gets similarly blindsided, and you're making every effort to strawman and twist the message. Nobody, not me and not the guy writing this article, says that the law "doesn't apply" to us. Most people starting a business have a deep desire to follow the law as well as possible, because they don't want to run into future difficulties. But again, it's difficult to check all the boxes.

I wonder why you're so contemptuous, but it's kind of a moot point. Most people understand that the tax code complex, and understand that it would be better for small businesses if they were not so complex.

Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by dragonwriter on Thursday April 28, 2022 @01:18PM (#31195248)
> You can't have 'states rights' (which, for better or worse, is how America claims to govern itself)

No, it's not.

“States rights” didn't really enter the political lexicon until it was injected there by the proponents of permanent institutionalization and expansion of slavery, who eventually revolted over it, lost, and whose ideological successors keep raising as a motto for their (usually unsuccessful, beyond the short term) attempts to resist progress on equal civil rights.

It is not “how America claims to govern itself”, it's how reactionary dissidents against the way America governs itself complain that they would prefer America to govern itself.

In the way America claims to govern itself, people have rights and governments, including those of states, have powers.

You probably mean “federalism” or “dual sovereignty” or something like that.

Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by seti0Cha on Thursday April 28, 2022 @01:51PM (#31195765)
State's rights have been an issue since before the signing of the constitution, as can be seen by how long it took to get all the states on board. Many were reluctant to cede that much power. It was only in the early 19th century that the preeminence of the federal government was established, culminating in a ruling that states did not have the right to ignore the fugitive slave act right before the civil war. It's true that the slave states really embraced that position a their core justification, but that's not how it originated.
Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by dragonwriter on Thursday April 28, 2022 @01:54PM (#31195796)
> State's rights have been an issue since before the signing of the constitution

The general issue of the relative distribution of power between states and the central government has.

That's not what “State’s rights” historically refers to. As I explained, in detail.

Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by brewdad on Thursday April 28, 2022 @01:27PM (#31195393)
Have you read the 10th Amendment? State's rights are literally enshrined in the Constitution.
Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by gamblor956 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @02:05PM (#31195967)
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

Doesn't say anything about state's rights. But it does suggest that any powers not already reserved by the Federal government belong as much to the people (i.e., citizens) as they do to the states.

Re:I employed a California resident, so now I’m subject to i... by dragonwriter on Thursday April 28, 2022 @01:35PM (#31195513)
> Have you read the 10th Amendment?

Yes, have you?

> State's rights are literally enshrined in the Constitution.

Find the word “right” or “rights” in the 10th Amendment.

“Rights” are nowhere associated with governments (state or federal) except in being protected against them in the Constitution (either base, bill of rights, or later Amendments); in the Constitutional model, people have both rights and powers, the latter of which they endow selectively to various governments.

“States rights” is a slogan created much later than the BoR by the pro-slavery faction that continues to be an anti-civil-rights slogan.