(First, you should know I'm playing devil's advocate. I run a startup, and of course I agree with you about sales and marketing. See [1] for my thoughts on this)

> That a business is run by one person is irrelevant.

I disagree with you here. In your system, there is a binary designation for individuals: either you are an individual employee, you have given up a large part of your freedom in exchange for the security of being gainfully employed; or you are a freelancer, and therefore no different from a single-person software development business, and are 100% exposed, to the same degree corporations are held (or lesser, see 'bailouts'), to the conditions of free market economy.

But of course this isn't, shouldn't and can't be binary. There currently exists millions of people somewhere in the middle of this spectrum right now, millions of counterexamples to this story, of people who lived entire lives as freelancers working through an agency like upwork or freelancer. They're here, they exist, they're humans just like you and I.

Not wanting to be responsible for all aspects of business is exactly why they go to places like freelancer.com, upwork, Uber, taskrabbit, etc.

Victim blamers are basically telling that person that they didn't "do their life good enough" and they don't deserve a social safety net, and that somehow they "had it coming" and "deserved to get screwed" because they didn't share your definition of a what a freelancer should be. They behaved too much like an individual and not enough like a business, so they got what they deserved. Despite the millions of people who aren't economically efficient yet hoisted up by the social safety net, for instance any union member, anyone on social security or welfare, anyone on food stamps, in government housing, anyone who benefits from subsidies, etc.

But let's pick on this one particular guy who deserved to have his life ruined by a customer service rep with a grudge because he dared to think he could get away with being a simple person - an individual human, not a business - with the freedom to work 25 hours a week because he got sick a year prior. Fuck that guy.

I am taking this position to an absurd degree, but to illustrate my point, here's what's really at the core of the victim-blaming position: "You're a freelancer who didn't want to be responsible for sales and marketing, so that you could just lead a straightforward technical life without the rigid constraints of being a full time employeee? Fuck you, you deserved to get screwed over for not treating your life like a business, like the rest of us!"

I think this is one of those strange ways in which capitalism has affected our worldview. I do consider myself a capitalist, but I have to admit that the idea of expecting individuals to behave as businesses would doesn't sit right with me.

At the end of the day, a customer service representative with a grudge (allegedly) had the power to hold earnings back from the person who earned them. That would bankrupt a business too, if it happened at the wrong time or under the right circumstances. Your bank refusing to deposit your checks for 2 months would wreak havok on like 70% of Americans' lives! We are all dependent on others in so many ways that we can't pick on this guy for also being dependent.

Instead, let's call out the actual bad actor here. And since freelancer.com is the actual business in the story, shouldn't we expect them to be accountable to free market forces, ie a bunch of pissed off developers asking for more accountability?

[1] https://burakkanber.com/blog/startup-advice-dont-overinvest-...