Eh … German labor law, for example, while quite strict when it comes to firing long-term employees, has several mechanisms in place that would make this easily possible with new hires. Lawmakers of course have long recognized that to spur companies to hire new people they have to give them a way out when they notice it doesn't work out during the first couple months.
First, it's possible to time limit an employment contract, e.g. to one year. After that one year the employment is automatically terminated. It is not possible to string time limited contract after time limited contract (if there isn't a reason for the time limit, e.g. another employee has to take care of his kids so there is an urgent need for someone to fill in, it's limited to two years, after which your contract is unlimited), but for new employees it's a tool that can be – and in practice is – used.
Furthermore the (up to) first six months can be a testing period (the law allows it) with severely shortened requirements to giving notice (minimum two weeks from both sides). During this time people can be fired pretty much at will.
Someone else might say that a human being has the right to realize his potential in an activity and be allowed to sustain himself and his family out of such activity -- which in practice means there is such a thing as "the right to have a job". There is a lot of philosophic and economic literature on the subject; several nation states even wrote it in their Constitution.
I know we tend to forget, but the XXI century came after the XX and the XIX; those were times when the best minds would think and write about the world around them, rather than looking for ways to trick people into clicking ads.
You are still stuck in the past were to start a business you need a lot of capital. It's not like that anymore. Most business these days are about services - you need an idea, not capital.
If that's the case, what is VC for? hey, it's right in the name!
You still need capital. Maybe not upfront, but you will need it to survive and scale up. VCs currently act as a "poor man's wealth redistribution" mechanism, funneling capital to bright young things that might not otherwise get access to it.
> Someone else might say that a human being has the right to realize his potential in an activity and be allowed to sustain himself and his family out of such activity
So... I have a right to sustain myself and my family by picking my nose?
The nature of the activity in question is debatable, usually it's formulated in terms of something useful to the community, but that's beside the point. The point is the origin of capital versus its destination from now on.
Well, some people do not see jobs as purely transactional …
For me employers clearly have a responsibility to take care of their employees. They are not robots, they are people and they have to be treated as such. It‘s an ethical question.
Two points: first, there's an inherently unequal balance of power in the employment relationship, and it favors the employer. This has been recognized going back to Adam Smith if not before, quote from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations below.
Second: the "right" to a job (or not) exists (or doesn't) because that's how the relationship's been defined in law. Law to which, again, employers have an unequal access vis a vis employees. And such relationships aren't recognized in other contexts. If you bring a child into the world, you cannot shirk your obligations to that child (unless you ensure, through adoption, etc., that they're otherwise met). It's quite possible to envision a regime in which employers do assume a responsibility for their employees.
On Smith:
"What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.
"It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals."
> It's quite possible to envision a regime in which employers do assume a responsibility for their employees.
You are essentially advocating for a form of serf-hood where the person will always be taken care of, but they can never advance.
You also seem to have this idea in mind that business owners are rich landowners. The reality is far from that. Most business constantly run right on the edge of failure. The reason for that is competition - anyone who tries to earn more is squeezed out by others.
No one wants to go back to the old days where you have the worker and the master and a worker can never become a master. Which is essentially the world you are describing.
But the flip side of this ability to advance is that each person has to be responsible for themself - their employer is no longer their patron.
We have made progress in the last 200 years since Adam Smith. Workers can advance now - all they need is a good idea. You don't need tons of capital like before.
First, it's possible to time limit an employment contract, e.g. to one year. After that one year the employment is automatically terminated. It is not possible to string time limited contract after time limited contract (if there isn't a reason for the time limit, e.g. another employee has to take care of his kids so there is an urgent need for someone to fill in, it's limited to two years, after which your contract is unlimited), but for new employees it's a tool that can be – and in practice is – used.
Furthermore the (up to) first six months can be a testing period (the law allows it) with severely shortened requirements to giving notice (minimum two weeks from both sides). During this time people can be fired pretty much at will.