6 ms·

One of the aspects of this I'm most interested in is when Google started donating to New America. It seems obvious to me that Google is giving money to politica

One of the aspects of this I'm most interested in is when Google started donating to New America. It seems obvious to me that Google is giving money to political organizations in exchange for influence and that both parties here share blame. But if Google started giving money to New America and Eric Schmidt joined the board knowing that New America was funding an anti-monopoly group then I think that makes Google and Eric look a lot worse. How many think tank papers have been quietly shredded because the author didn't have the courage Barry Lynn did?

radicaldreamer 9y ago
The whole think tank industry is like this. This is one of the main reasons why things like single payer don't have the intellectual backing of rigorous white papers and advocacy -- there isn't a whole lot of money to be made for corporations lowering the cost of healtcare.
- cwyers 9y ago
  > there isn't a whole lot of money to be made for corporations lowering the cost of healtcare. I don't know if that's true. There are a lot of companies that would save money if healthcare was cheaper -- pretty much every company in America is a health-care consumer. It's just that benefits are diffuse and the downsides of lower-cost health care are concentrated.
  - aaronblohowiak 9y ago
    large firms would lose talent to smaller firms.
    - digikata 9y ago
      Then the smaller firms could be acquired. As it is, because of the slowing new-company generation, large firms have been getting fewer and fewer options. Small firms can take risks to create new products and processes which can then be acquired and taken up and expanded by large companies. Generally its much more difficult for a large company to do that creation part in-house. So insufficient small firms end up affecting the large-firm capability in the end.
      - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
        Unfortunately this type of long term benefit for the large corporation doesn't affect the next quarterly report and is ignored in favor of more short term gains.
        digikata 9y ago
        Productivity gains seem to be dropping and one theory is that companies are getting larger, but aren't able to pickup efficiency/new value generation boosts from acquisitions like they once were able to (at an economy wide scale, not talking about the acquisitions of any specific company or even sectors here). It is difficult to make any certain conclusions here though. But if true, they will have to care sooner or later.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      Minor compared to the cost of funding health care
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    Exactly. Huge corporations would LOVE to push their health insurance costs to the taxpayers.
    - criley2 9y ago
      Maybe, but they LOVE the huge competitive advantage it gives them over smaller and more nimble firms nipping at their market share, because it's very onerous for small businesses to competitively offer health benefits.
    - frandroid 9y ago
      I think they're afraid some of the cost would be dumped onto them.
  - foota 9y ago
    Isn't YCs research arm looking into healthcare?
  - sbov 9y ago
    I think large companies love it the way it is. Healthcare being so tightly bound to employment makes it more difficult for employees to leave, which probably has a dampening affect on salaries. I haven't had to deal with it in a while, but getting healthcare for a small company ~10 years ago was a nightmare.
    - icelancer 9y ago
      It wasn't too bad for us. We provide gold level healthcare for our employees (~20 FTEs). Companies like Zenefits (yes yes I know) and others have made it a lot simpler to get started.
      - azinman2 9y ago
        Guessing you’re a tech company employing educated young single (low risk) workers? Things look very different in other industries... not everyone gets the same price...
        icelancer 9y ago
        >>tech company Nope. >>not everyone gets the same price I don't care about the price. I pay for insurance for my employees because it is the right thing to do. The comment I am referring to is the nightmare of the setup, not the cost to me for providing the healthcare. And many middleware insurance navigators make it easy to provide it (at least for me). As far as how much it costs me, whatever.
  - spinlock 9y ago
    I don't know about that. If your employer were to pay you more and you were to use your salary to buy health insurance, you'd be bumped into a higher tax bracket and you'd be using post tax money to buy the insurance. It's not a long term benefit because the government should be able to lower taxes given the increased revenue, but you'd never look past the short term (and the government would never lower taxes).
- tptacek 9y ago
  I think this is a bit of a just-so story. Rebuttals: * There are top-tier progressive think-tanks that write favorably about single-payer; EPI is an example. * Single-payer is ideologically anathema to conservatives and libertarians, so a majority of think tanks are going to be constitutionally incapable of proposing plans. * For the past 8 years or so, progressives have been working to support the health care victory they already achieved in the ACA, which has been under continuous assault since the GOP regained control of the legislature. It would be weird to see them endorsing a new health care system (and, in the process, conceding defeat on the ACA).
  - icelancer 9y ago
    >>Single-payer is ideologically anathema to libertarians For Libertarians (LP), maybe. There are plenty of libertarians who see initiatives like single-payer and UBI as the only way to reduce graft and overspending of the federal government, knowing that pure elimination is impossible.
    - aptwebapps 9y ago
      Can you really be a libertarian, even with a small 'l', and support single-payer?
      - icelancer 9y ago
        Yes, if you combine it with reducing absurd controls of the industry. Libertarians tend to be angry about the fact that Americans cannot buy medicine abroad, that medical schools are absurdly regulated, coupling insurance with jobs, and so forth. Single-payer + those reforms are well within a reasonable libertarian platform. https://www.google.com/search?q=libertarians+who+support+single+payer https://www.google.com/search?q=libertarians+who+support+sin...
        aptwebapps 9y ago
        I'm not an expert on libertarianism, but I looked at the first results from that search and it seems like some libertarians support some form of single-payer but purely as a political compromise, which I assume is what you were referring to. It still doesn't jibe with the ideology, but they seem to think that certain forms of single-payer might be better than what exists now.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- culturalzero 9y ago
  Wow. That's really disturbing actually...The layers of power and control are so mind bogglingly intricate. Eric Schmidt just demonstrated how finely tuned and detailed power actually is today. To know of a single paper and effectively flip a switch to shut it down. The Google of 'do no evil' is certainly dead. Where does this leave us in changing these things? What options are there for gaining momentum for real change when all the powers that be fight against it?
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  >there isn't a whole lot of money to be made for corporations lowering the cost of healtcare. There is a whole lot of money to be made by special interests in giving people free heathcare at the taxpayers expense. It means massively increasing government spending afterall, and that gives those with political control more resources to divvy up. And there's an enormous amount of advocacy for single payer. It also does not reduce costs.
- sumedh 9y ago
  > why things like single payer don't have the intellectual backing of rigorous white papers and advocacy I dont understand why Gates or Buffett who have made comments supporting single payer systems dont fund such think tanks who will "educate" the public about single payer.
SapphireSun 9y ago
Barry Lynn <=> Sergey Brin?!!
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  Sorry I meant: Barry Lynn <=> Larry Brin O.O
Spooky23 9y ago
All think tanks are like this. People don't tend to pay other people to tell them their baby is ugly. IMO this is more about Barry Lynn than Google. I've known about Google for nearly 20 years. Never heard of Barry.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >All think tanks are like this. I don't necessarily disagree. But it is a good moment to remind everyone that those white papers have a man behind the curtain. It's also a nice cultural moment for anti-trust (admittedly my pet issue.) >People don't tend to pay other people to tell them their baby is ugly. Sure but if I have an ugly baby and I start funding a group called "The Baby Raters" and I watch and continue donating as they judge all of my friends babies to be ugly but then pull funding (or threaten to) when they judge my baby as ugly, I'd say that I've successfully undermined the institution. It's no longer what it says on the tin.
gaius 9y ago
But if Google started giving money to New America and Eric Schmidt joined the board knowing that New America was funding an anti-monopoly group then I think that makes Google and Eric look a lot worse Schmidt joined the board in 2008. Lynn says he has been doing this research since 1999.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

radicaldreamer 9y ago

The whole think tank industry is like this. This is one of the main reasons why things like single payer don't have the intellectual backing of rigorous white papers and advocacy -- there isn't a whole lot of money to be made for corporations lowering the cost of healtcare.

cwyers 9y ago
> there isn't a whole lot of money to be made for corporations lowering the cost of healtcare. I don't know if that's true. There are a lot of companies that would save money if healthcare was cheaper -- pretty much every company in America is a health-care consumer. It's just that benefits are diffuse and the downsides of lower-cost health care are concentrated.
- aaronblohowiak 9y ago
  large firms would lose talent to smaller firms.
  - digikata 9y ago
    Then the smaller firms could be acquired. As it is, because of the slowing new-company generation, large firms have been getting fewer and fewer options. Small firms can take risks to create new products and processes which can then be acquired and taken up and expanded by large companies. Generally its much more difficult for a large company to do that creation part in-house. So insufficient small firms end up affecting the large-firm capability in the end.
    - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      Unfortunately this type of long term benefit for the large corporation doesn't affect the next quarterly report and is ignored in favor of more short term gains.
      - digikata 9y ago
        Productivity gains seem to be dropping and one theory is that companies are getting larger, but aren't able to pickup efficiency/new value generation boosts from acquisitions like they once were able to (at an economy wide scale, not talking about the acquisitions of any specific company or even sectors here). It is difficult to make any certain conclusions here though. But if true, they will have to care sooner or later.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Minor compared to the cost of funding health care
- jjeaff 9y ago
  Exactly. Huge corporations would LOVE to push their health insurance costs to the taxpayers.
  - criley2 9y ago
    Maybe, but they LOVE the huge competitive advantage it gives them over smaller and more nimble firms nipping at their market share, because it's very onerous for small businesses to competitively offer health benefits.
  - frandroid 9y ago
    I think they're afraid some of the cost would be dumped onto them.
- foota 9y ago
  Isn't YCs research arm looking into healthcare?
- sbov 9y ago
  I think large companies love it the way it is. Healthcare being so tightly bound to employment makes it more difficult for employees to leave, which probably has a dampening affect on salaries. I haven't had to deal with it in a while, but getting healthcare for a small company ~10 years ago was a nightmare.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    It wasn't too bad for us. We provide gold level healthcare for our employees (~20 FTEs). Companies like Zenefits (yes yes I know) and others have made it a lot simpler to get started.
    - azinman2 9y ago
      Guessing you’re a tech company employing educated young single (low risk) workers? Things look very different in other industries... not everyone gets the same price...
      - icelancer 9y ago
        >>tech company Nope. >>not everyone gets the same price I don't care about the price. I pay for insurance for my employees because it is the right thing to do. The comment I am referring to is the nightmare of the setup, not the cost to me for providing the healthcare. And many middleware insurance navigators make it easy to provide it (at least for me). As far as how much it costs me, whatever.
- spinlock 9y ago
  I don't know about that. If your employer were to pay you more and you were to use your salary to buy health insurance, you'd be bumped into a higher tax bracket and you'd be using post tax money to buy the insurance. It's not a long term benefit because the government should be able to lower taxes given the increased revenue, but you'd never look past the short term (and the government would never lower taxes).
tptacek 9y ago
I think this is a bit of a just-so story. Rebuttals: * There are top-tier progressive think-tanks that write favorably about single-payer; EPI is an example. * Single-payer is ideologically anathema to conservatives and libertarians, so a majority of think tanks are going to be constitutionally incapable of proposing plans. * For the past 8 years or so, progressives have been working to support the health care victory they already achieved in the ACA, which has been under continuous assault since the GOP regained control of the legislature. It would be weird to see them endorsing a new health care system (and, in the process, conceding defeat on the ACA).
- icelancer 9y ago
  >>Single-payer is ideologically anathema to libertarians For Libertarians (LP), maybe. There are plenty of libertarians who see initiatives like single-payer and UBI as the only way to reduce graft and overspending of the federal government, knowing that pure elimination is impossible.
  - aptwebapps 9y ago
    Can you really be a libertarian, even with a small 'l', and support single-payer?
    - icelancer 9y ago
      Yes, if you combine it with reducing absurd controls of the industry. Libertarians tend to be angry about the fact that Americans cannot buy medicine abroad, that medical schools are absurdly regulated, coupling insurance with jobs, and so forth. Single-payer + those reforms are well within a reasonable libertarian platform. https://www.google.com/search?q=libertarians+who+support+single+payer https://www.google.com/search?q=libertarians+who+support+sin...
      - aptwebapps 9y ago
        I'm not an expert on libertarianism, but I looked at the first results from that search and it seems like some libertarians support some form of single-payer but purely as a political compromise, which I assume is what you were referring to. It still doesn't jibe with the ideology, but they seem to think that certain forms of single-payer might be better than what exists now.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
culturalzero 9y ago
Wow. That's really disturbing actually...The layers of power and control are so mind bogglingly intricate. Eric Schmidt just demonstrated how finely tuned and detailed power actually is today. To know of a single paper and effectively flip a switch to shut it down. The Google of 'do no evil' is certainly dead. Where does this leave us in changing these things? What options are there for gaining momentum for real change when all the powers that be fight against it?
CryptoPunk 9y ago
>there isn't a whole lot of money to be made for corporations lowering the cost of healtcare. There is a whole lot of money to be made by special interests in giving people free heathcare at the taxpayers expense. It means massively increasing government spending afterall, and that gives those with political control more resources to divvy up. And there's an enormous amount of advocacy for single payer. It also does not reduce costs.
sumedh 9y ago
> why things like single payer don't have the intellectual backing of rigorous white papers and advocacy I dont understand why Gates or Buffett who have made comments supporting single payer systems dont fund such think tanks who will "educate" the public about single payer.

SapphireSun 9y ago

Barry Lynn <=> Sergey Brin?!!

SapphireSun 9y ago
Sorry I meant: Barry Lynn <=> Larry Brin O.O

Spooky23 9y ago

All think tanks are like this. People don't tend to pay other people to tell them their baby is ugly. IMO this is more about Barry Lynn than Google. I've known about Google for nearly 20 years. Never heard of Barry.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
>All think tanks are like this. I don't necessarily disagree. But it is a good moment to remind everyone that those white papers have a man behind the curtain. It's also a nice cultural moment for anti-trust (admittedly my pet issue.) >People don't tend to pay other people to tell them their baby is ugly. Sure but if I have an ugly baby and I start funding a group called "The Baby Raters" and I watch and continue donating as they judge all of my friends babies to be ugly but then pull funding (or threaten to) when they judge my baby as ugly, I'd say that I've successfully undermined the institution. It's no longer what it says on the tin.

gaius 9y ago

But if Google started giving money to New America and Eric Schmidt joined the board knowing that New America was funding an anti-monopoly group then I think that makes Google and Eric look a lot worse Schmidt joined the board in 2008. Lynn says he has been doing this research since 1999.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]