>My worry is that the end result will require notarized declarations of honour, financial plans stretching decades into the future, 30 page business plan documents, reams of corporate governance documents, and tons of other nonsense to protect against the perceived risk that someone who failed at starting a business once fails a second time.
"It is a mistake to optimise something that should not exist in the first place." - Elon Musk (apparently, although I would be astonished if Deming or Ohno hadn't said something similar)
In Europe, there are two parallel realities which coexist, have some influence over one another, but are ultimately somewhat separate.
There's the real reality, and then there's the reality as it is perceived by the bureaucratic apparatus, the "upside down." It's important to realize that everything in the "upside down" must be consistent with the rest of that reality, but not necessarily with what actually happened in the real world. The closer your activities get to the government and government scrutiny, the more true that description is.
Did John have to go somewhere on Monday and finish his work on Saturday instead? He could have filed for time off and then gotten special permission to work on Saturday, but that's far too many forms with far too many signatures. It's just easier to pretend (on all documents, yes all of them, the "upside down" demands consistency) that he did in fact work on Monday and did not work on saturday. Americans call it fraud, Europeans call it Tuesday.
In the European countries (yes, plural) in which I have lived, _most_ (admittedly not all) employees would decline such a request as abusive and illegal, and employers which insisted would be on the hook for damages were they to insist.
That sounds like a really good use for AI.