Maybe this is unpopular, but what if 5/10-year long contracts started getting traction?

I guess you'd need to trust the company, which is hard to come by.

Interesting thought — long-term contracts could indeed align incentives for growth and stability. The challenge, as you note, is trust: few employees or companies are willing to bind themselves for 5–10 years in today’s fluid market.

That’s why governance frameworks (whether in labor or in AI) matter: they provide external guarantees of trust where bilateral promises may not hold.