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Why does it seem like every billionaire is exploiting our legal system as much as they're innovating? Bezos exploiting sales tax and workers, oil companies and
by awakeasleep 8y ago
Why does it seem like every billionaire is exploiting our legal system as much as they're innovating?
Bezos exploiting sales tax and workers, oil companies and the Kochs exploiting environmental externalities, Oracles, Microsofts, and Googles exploiting patents to prevent competition. All of these companies consolidating as much as possible to get as close to a monopolistic position as possible, to charge as much 'rent' as they can.
All these self made billionaires are using the law, and imperfect or lacking regulation to fuck over millions of people.
Sure they're providing a service along with it, but the vast sums of wealth are possible because they poison the earth and steal and fuck over the rest of us while they do it.
- zip1234 8y agoIt is the plight of rational actors to optimize their position. The government should be focused on making sure that those companies are properly paying for public resources that they use. If they are not, the laws should be changed to make sure that they are. However, the more complicated laws and government get, the easier it is to find loopholes. Anyways, my point is that the billionaires are doing just as any of us do--they just have more tools at their disposal because of the scale of large companies and the complication of the world.
- ThrustVectoring 8y agoIt's a curse inherent to capitalism. Any incentive to make what people need also works as an incentive to make people need what you make.