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I am looking at it from the standpoint that eventually some taxing authority will start the snowball by taxing any service based on perceived value or such. nev
by Shivetya 9y ago
I am looking at it from the standpoint that eventually some taxing authority will start the snowball by taxing any service based on perceived value or such. never under estimate a governments desire for revenue.
most likely an additional tax on the provider once their product is marked as a service. the users won't object because they won't be charged the cost, it would merely get passed on to investors and costs of advertising would increase to pay for it or more advertising would appear. embedded taxes are the easiest for governments to use, it puts the blame on the provider for the costs
- ta_20170828 9y agothrowaway bc don't want enemies in the Valley Why shouldn't governments consider vc-backed free services as dumping, like they do with steel & manufactured products? In my view this is an obvious regulatory failure.
- Applejinx 9y agoNot throwaway 'cos I'm in Vermont :D That's a really good point. To the extent that power is the accumulation of capital, and gaining dominance in free services to produce lock-in and monetization in other ways, this is an obvious insight. Also, it's been Google's business model this whole time, which suggests that it works really well. There's a conversation worth having about the balance between the benefits we get from natural monopolies of this nature, and the power traded away through enabling them.