The cat and mouse game does happen since companies do try these kind of tactics, but regulators know them well too.

If a company exercises enough control over a contractor, regulators can decide that the relationship is effectively an artificial construct meant to skirt employer's obligations. If that's the case, the company can be determined to be the actual employer of the contractors, with all obligations that come with that.

It's not entirely the fault of the US, but it's pretty clear that the US did significantly contribute to the situation.

It might, but keep in mind it won't necessarily work. Britain had a relatively liberal culture: it tolerated self-government, dissent and challenge to authority to a certain extent and that enabled the American Revolution movement to start coordinating and grow.

It's not a given that the American Revolution would have worked as well against a more ruthless and authoritarian regime cracking down hard against it early and fast. Brutal crackdowns might have prevented establishing the kind of coordination that was crucial to lead to a successful revolution.

Basically, it's true that it's important that the people take up arms in some situations if they want change, but depending on the situation and whom they are facing it doesn't mean they are going to win.

The question is also whether states can impose warnings that are not supported by solid scientific consensus. Parts of California's Prop 65 has been ruled unconstitutional in Federal District Court for this reason, see California Chamber of Commerce v. Rob Bonta:

That would also happen. Think of the interest rate as how much risk the creditor is willing to work with: lower the interest and the creditor will have to become more selective, lowering limits and denying more debtors than before.

That's difficult to say, maybe you would have been denied credit and you would have had to find a different solution. Said that, there are other options to provide affordable credit but they typical require state intervention to cover the risk outside of free-market economics.

Take your own home as example: if you bought it with a mortgage in the US part of the risk of that mortgage is covered by the Federal Reserve acting as "lender of last resort". Without that backstop provided by the government, you might have been denied a mortgage or it would have only be accepted at a much higher interest rate.

Neither is an utility technically, but they are effectively considered a necessity for a normal life. I'd argue banking services have also effectively become a necessity for a normal life for most people.

The Supreme Court upheld profit caps for utilities. I agree the case is much weaker for banking or Credit Cards, but it's not non-existent.

Rate-of-return limits and similar constructs are not new in the US, although they typically apply in particular circumstances with high public interest, e.g. utilities or insurance. The Supreme Court upheld them in many occasions.

As example, the Affordable Care Act limits profits of medical insurance at an 80/20 Medical Loss Ratio, which means only a capped 20% of the premiums can be used to cover administrative costs and profits, the remaining 80% needs to be used to pay for medical claims.

For a credit card company there is no precedent as far as I know, but I think there would be enough public interest to support a profit cap.

Those with excellent credit score can get lower interest rates, but also the better the credit score the more likely they will pay back the money before the interest rate kicks in as that's the more financially sound thing to do, so for them the interest rate is effectively irrelevant.

Furthermore, those with good credit score can decide to opt for a credit card with higher interest but also better benefits. Since they are not really affected by the interest, they can reap the benefits for free.

Then the solution is not to cap the interest rate, but to cap the profit margins.

Note that the concept already exists e.g. in some insurance regulations, with various degrees of success depending on how many loopholes they keep open and how good the enforcement is.

The interest is only in part profits for the creditor: it also covers the risk of the debtor defaulting. Not all debtors will pay back the money and the creditor will not always be able to recoup the money lent e.g. through repossession. This means as a creditor without interest you would end up losing money and go out of business. This means the higher the risk, the higher the interest rate.

Basically if you are considered a very bad debtor, a creditor might be still be willing to lend you money at a very high interest rate as it can cover the risk, but if the interest rate is capped lower, the creditor would just refuse to lend you money outright. Doing otherwise would mean losing money.

Basically without additional measures just capping the interest rate would make bad debtors ineligible for credit from credit card companies.

If you are a high risk debtor you would not end up with a 10% capped CC: you would end up without CC altogether since creditors would deem the risk not adequately covered at a 10% cap.

That's what would drive these high risk debtors to "unregulated, more costly alternatives", since I doubt they suddenly would become eligible for better forms of credit, or not need the credit altogether.

In Canada in this case the burden of proof would actually be on the employer:

In Canada "lack of intent" is not a defense against defamation. The possible defenses are:

• Truth: does not apply as the statement in question is agreed to be false.

• Fair comment: does not apply as the statement is clearly not presented as opinion but fact.

• Privilege: does not apply as this defense mainly covers public proceedings and this is not one.

• Responsible communication: this applies if the matter is considered of public interest, but it requires the defendant having exercised responsible diligence, which is in question in this case.

• Innocent dissemination: this also applies if the defendant didn't know of the defamatory nature of the information they disseminated and took prompt action to remove it, but requires the defendant not having been negligent when they did the dissemination, which is in question in this case.

TL;DR: IMHO in Canada a defamation case against Google would be pretty solid.

The EU has the EU framework for investment screening and individual State Members also typically have their own national mechanism to review and potentially block acquisitions in some circumstances.

I realized I might have been unclear in my post: with "go with Exoscale" I don't mean merely selecting them as provider, I mean in the context of investing state money into them to let them build up their infrastructure.