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It has nothing to with any politicians using or not using the internet. It simply was "unregulated" because it has less impact on the world, and because existin

It has nothing to with any politicians using or not using the internet. It simply was "unregulated" because it has less impact on the world, and because existing laws were by and large adequate to capture everything that did happen (contrary to popular opinion, the internet has always been subject to regular laws, and some fraud on E-bay is not materially different from offline fraud)

Shivetya 8y ago
No. What happened is politicians have found a new avenue for indirect taxation and the pay off long term is in the hundred of billions if not trillions of dollars over decades. The simplicity of it all is that it relies on the same two methods most indirect taxation works, ignorance and exploitation of jealousy. The ignorance part is easy, the public doesn't understand the scope of the issue or how it is a tax on their activities. The jealousy is sold by portraying those being taxed directly as not paying their fair share and such. Indirect taxes are the unseen but real burden on your paycheck
- simias 8y ago
  I suppose you can reduce the fact that some people don't like that international tech giants effectively don't pay the same amount of taxes as the homegrown competition as "jealousy" but it's not extremely constructive. The big problem for the EU is that the internet is effectively a border-less global playing field which makes is very hard to enforce laws, taxes and regulations locally. I agree that their current approach is deeply flawed but at the same time it doesn't seem like we're nearing any kind of global governance for the internet so it seems that the alternative is either Chinese-style crass protectionism or just giving up and letting Google and Facebook eat the European web without giving anything back. Pick your poison.
  - mcny 8y ago
    I offer a simple solution but nobody likes to hear it. The solution to legal tax avoidance is to stop using tax incentives to do public policy. Set a single income tax rate for all businesses that they pay on revenue, not on profits. Do the same for individuals as well. No deductions, no credits. If you make $200k a year, your taxes are the same whether you have zero dependants or twelve. Similarly, if you made $200M in revenue, you pay taxes on the $200M. This is a little difficult because I have no idea how to account for Google putting ads for Pixel devices on Google search results or Facebook peddling their Alexa device in Instagram but there must be a way to force companies to report this as revenue. No idea how this will work for the Google home page for which there is no established price structure. We can still keep a progressive tax regime. Maybe 0% income tax for revenues under a certain amount and higher taxes for higher brackets. But people never want to listen. They keep saying oh grocery stores will go out of business or whatever. I think it is pretty silly. We can't have it both ways. If we want to prevent legal tax avoidance, we must act to prevent tax avoidance.
    - Thiez 8y ago
      That solution is not simple at all. Let's take the creation and selling of wooden chairs as an example. Let's say chopping down trees costs $100, turning wood into chairs costs $100, and selling chairs also costs $100. Let's assume companies are non-profits (to make things easier). Company A Spends $100 to create a unit of wood. Company B spends $100 for a unit of wood, and spends $100 to make that into a chair, and sells for $200. Company C spends $200 to buy a chair, spends $100 to have a nice shop and friendly sales people, and sells for $300. Now let's add taxes! We'll do 10% to make the numbers easy. Company A pays $10 taxes. Company B pays $20 taxes. Company C pays $30 taxes. Total taxes paid on a chair bought at company C: $60. Now we introduce company D. Company D is large, and can produce its own wood, has its own chair-making factory, and has its own shop. A chair at company D also costs $300. But company D only has to pay $30 in taxes! In the real world, company D will immediately drive companies A, B, and C out of business (or acquire them!) because it can sell its chairs cheaper, because it only had to pay taxes once. The problem with your suggested solution is that companies owning their entire production line get an immediate tax-advantage over smaller companies who do not. If implemented, there would still be legal tax avoidance by simply forming bigger companies.
      - mnw21cam 8y ago
        That's not how VAT works. All three companies A, B, and C pay $10 each, because they have all added $100 value to the goods they have sold. Is that not how it works everywhere?
        neffy 8y ago
        No, the US is as OP said. Apropos... popular macro-economic theory is based more or less on the idea that the economic financial system is not sensitive to conditions like these. As you just showed, it's actually quite trivial to demonstrate that it is.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        why_only_15 8y ago
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    "letting Google and Facebook eat the European web without giving anything back. Pick your poison. " Democracy means power of the people. That is more than just voting. If most of the people decide to use google and facebook although hating it, than maybe they deserve what they get. I don't like Facebook, I don't use it. I like google less every year, I use it less. But I don't cry and whine for my politicians to tell those evil corporations to do what I want. They are free to offer me what they want. And I am free to decline and use something else. And this may be smug, but if more people would act like that, there would be more real alternatives.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Except it's not as easy as that. Almost half the web is reporting your every click to Google, through Analytics, and plenty are also reporting to Facebook and others. If you use a Mastercard, Google is getting info on your purchases. If you email a Gmail user, they're getting it too. Your friends (maybe not yours, but many's) are backing up photos of you to Google Photos and sharing them on Facebook, Instagram and more. Your Wifi router is tracked and your house is photographed.
      - hutzlibu 8y ago
        But I am free to use and support the other half of the internet. And I am free to use adblockers. And my home is free to be photographed from the outside from anyone. I do not loose anything because of that. Neither do I loose, if friends upload pictures they made. If I do not want to be on a picture I tell them the moment they make it. Or we consent on private use only. And if people make pictures without consent they are not my friends and there are laws for that. (but I actually do not care about that so much) What I care about it is my communication. I want to be able to communicate with friends all over the world, without a company being able to control and influence that communication. Which is why I do not use Facebook at all. And I am able to do that, with all the people important to me. The people who insist on facebook ... I can miss out. And again: yes the situation IS shitty, but I don't see any improvement from regulations at all. Quite the contrary: we just got the annoying "We use Cookies" banners. But the tracking goes on as ever.

Shivetya 8y ago

No. What happened is politicians have found a new avenue for indirect taxation and the pay off long term is in the hundred of billions if not trillions of dollars over decades. The simplicity of it all is that it relies on the same two methods most indirect taxation works, ignorance and exploitation of jealousy. The ignorance part is easy, the public doesn't understand the scope of the issue or how it is a tax on their activities. The jealousy is sold by portraying those being taxed directly as not paying their fair share and such. Indirect taxes are the unseen but real burden on your paycheck

simias 8y ago
I suppose you can reduce the fact that some people don't like that international tech giants effectively don't pay the same amount of taxes as the homegrown competition as "jealousy" but it's not extremely constructive. The big problem for the EU is that the internet is effectively a border-less global playing field which makes is very hard to enforce laws, taxes and regulations locally. I agree that their current approach is deeply flawed but at the same time it doesn't seem like we're nearing any kind of global governance for the internet so it seems that the alternative is either Chinese-style crass protectionism or just giving up and letting Google and Facebook eat the European web without giving anything back. Pick your poison.
- mcny 8y ago
  I offer a simple solution but nobody likes to hear it. The solution to legal tax avoidance is to stop using tax incentives to do public policy. Set a single income tax rate for all businesses that they pay on revenue, not on profits. Do the same for individuals as well. No deductions, no credits. If you make $200k a year, your taxes are the same whether you have zero dependants or twelve. Similarly, if you made $200M in revenue, you pay taxes on the $200M. This is a little difficult because I have no idea how to account for Google putting ads for Pixel devices on Google search results or Facebook peddling their Alexa device in Instagram but there must be a way to force companies to report this as revenue. No idea how this will work for the Google home page for which there is no established price structure. We can still keep a progressive tax regime. Maybe 0% income tax for revenues under a certain amount and higher taxes for higher brackets. But people never want to listen. They keep saying oh grocery stores will go out of business or whatever. I think it is pretty silly. We can't have it both ways. If we want to prevent legal tax avoidance, we must act to prevent tax avoidance.
  - Thiez 8y ago
    That solution is not simple at all. Let's take the creation and selling of wooden chairs as an example. Let's say chopping down trees costs $100, turning wood into chairs costs $100, and selling chairs also costs $100. Let's assume companies are non-profits (to make things easier). Company A Spends $100 to create a unit of wood. Company B spends $100 for a unit of wood, and spends $100 to make that into a chair, and sells for $200. Company C spends $200 to buy a chair, spends $100 to have a nice shop and friendly sales people, and sells for $300. Now let's add taxes! We'll do 10% to make the numbers easy. Company A pays $10 taxes. Company B pays $20 taxes. Company C pays $30 taxes. Total taxes paid on a chair bought at company C: $60. Now we introduce company D. Company D is large, and can produce its own wood, has its own chair-making factory, and has its own shop. A chair at company D also costs $300. But company D only has to pay $30 in taxes! In the real world, company D will immediately drive companies A, B, and C out of business (or acquire them!) because it can sell its chairs cheaper, because it only had to pay taxes once. The problem with your suggested solution is that companies owning their entire production line get an immediate tax-advantage over smaller companies who do not. If implemented, there would still be legal tax avoidance by simply forming bigger companies.
    - mnw21cam 8y ago
      That's not how VAT works. All three companies A, B, and C pay $10 each, because they have all added $100 value to the goods they have sold. Is that not how it works everywhere?
      - neffy 8y ago
        No, the US is as OP said. Apropos... popular macro-economic theory is based more or less on the idea that the economic financial system is not sensitive to conditions like these. As you just showed, it's actually quite trivial to demonstrate that it is.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - why_only_15 8y ago
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  "letting Google and Facebook eat the European web without giving anything back. Pick your poison. " Democracy means power of the people. That is more than just voting. If most of the people decide to use google and facebook although hating it, than maybe they deserve what they get. I don't like Facebook, I don't use it. I like google less every year, I use it less. But I don't cry and whine for my politicians to tell those evil corporations to do what I want. They are free to offer me what they want. And I am free to decline and use something else. And this may be smug, but if more people would act like that, there would be more real alternatives.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Except it's not as easy as that. Almost half the web is reporting your every click to Google, through Analytics, and plenty are also reporting to Facebook and others. If you use a Mastercard, Google is getting info on your purchases. If you email a Gmail user, they're getting it too. Your friends (maybe not yours, but many's) are backing up photos of you to Google Photos and sharing them on Facebook, Instagram and more. Your Wifi router is tracked and your house is photographed.
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      But I am free to use and support the other half of the internet. And I am free to use adblockers. And my home is free to be photographed from the outside from anyone. I do not loose anything because of that. Neither do I loose, if friends upload pictures they made. If I do not want to be on a picture I tell them the moment they make it. Or we consent on private use only. And if people make pictures without consent they are not my friends and there are laws for that. (but I actually do not care about that so much) What I care about it is my communication. I want to be able to communicate with friends all over the world, without a company being able to control and influence that communication. Which is why I do not use Facebook at all. And I am able to do that, with all the people important to me. The people who insist on facebook ... I can miss out. And again: yes the situation IS shitty, but I don't see any improvement from regulations at all. Quite the contrary: we just got the annoying "We use Cookies" banners. But the tracking goes on as ever.