[caconym_]

Isn't pretty much every interaction humans have with each other outside of close friends and family (and even within, to some extent) driven by market forces and/or bargaining power in some way? Some larger examples I can think of off the top of my head are the ballooning costs of healthcare in America today and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

In the general hierarchy of victims I'm not too worried about exploited startup workers. As you say, it's obviously bad if founders deceive employees, but I'd add that there are degrees of deception and also that there's a whole culture built up around working at startups that seems to suck people in. Who benefits from that? Keep in mind that startup employees are selling themselves in the same market, with even less bargaining power than the founders looking for investment.

If America had a real social safety net and real regulations in place to protect workers, I'd say go nuts. I think market forces can be a great optimizer for efficiency, and we should embrace the core principles of economics because doing anything else is tantamount to sticking our heads in the sand. But we should not forget that people can get hurt, and/or have their full human potential dribbled away down the drain for somebody else's gain. I will keep saying those things are bad until I start saying nothing at all matters.