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For me these kind of ridiculous projects from both Facebook and Google are the prime evidence that we ought to be taxing these companies more. They're essentia

For me these kind of ridiculous projects from both Facebook and Google are the prime evidence that we ought to be taxing these companies more. They're essentially circumventing market mechanisms (which would require a whole lot more people than just Zuckerberg to think that such a project was a good idea) and wasting a bunch of resources because they've been overcompensated for their other successful projects.

dageshi 5y ago
Perhaps you could tell us which business ideas and scientific theories will be correct so none of us have to waste any money on ridiculous projects?
- nicoburns 5y ago
  The idea is to distribute resources so that we get more experiments. Many of them will be ridiculous projects, but some of them most likely won't be. We don't get that when all the resources are concentrated in a single project like this.
  - dageshi 5y ago
    There's no lack of VC spending on startups in this world, some of them are quite ridiculous. I'm not sure what you would propose would make any difference to anything.
    - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
      If anything, there's a oversupply of VC money right now. You can get funding for incredibly whacky ideas. There's just not enough good ideas for the amount of money available, so it's sloshing into anything and everything.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> because they've been overcompensated How is this determined? Are market mechanisms not working in stock trading either? Seems like they are delivering decent profit numbers for their investors, compared to other companies.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > Seems like they are delivering decent profit numbers for their investor This is IMO completely the wrong benchmark. Are they delivering value to society? Yes some, but IMO not nearly in proportion to the amount of wealth they've accrued. Your free to make your own judgement about that, but if you agree then you also agree that market mechanisms are not working in this case.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > Are they delivering value to society? Yes some, but IMO not nearly in proportion to the amount of wealth they've accrued. How is this determined? I am trying to see if there is some actionable chain of reasoning here, or if people are just stating the top 5 companies in the public markets qualify? Is it a certain net profit margin? A combination of various factors? The funny thing is Facebook (or Meta I guess) could fall of the face of the earth tomorrow and humanity would not really be impacted other than temporarily losing WhatsApp groups and having to migrate to a different chat program.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      > How is this determined? That's my personal judgement. The actionable response would be progressive taxation on corporate profits which would stop companies getting quite so large, and force (or strongly encourage) companies that wanted to continue growing beyond a certain point to split (which would have the effect of spreading control/power over the economy around). > The funny thing is Facebook (or Meta I guess) could fall of the face of the earth tomorrow and humanity would not really be impacted other than temporarily losing WhatsApp groups and having to migrate to a different chat program. Isn't that exactly the problem though. So much of societies resources going towards something that isn't ultimately that important. The opportunity cost here is huge.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
I wish it was harder for these megacorps to just buy every single rising competitor as soon as possible. Because honestly I doubt they would be able to survive or be as successful without that whole routine. The market can't self regulate if only very few megacorps have an iron grip on it and can stamp out any threat immediately.
- krageon 5y ago
  This is the market self-regulating. If you don't like what happens (I do agree), then you dislike the concept. Which makes sense, because the whole "might makes right" approach of such philosophies only serves to enable bullying and callous behaviour. Essentially the issues we see today.
- Factorium 5y ago
  Correct. Force them to divest Instagram and Whatsapp, and prevent them from acquiring any more companies. Problem solved.
ipaddr 5y ago
There are many reasons not to like this but circumventing market mechanisms doesn't register. You want Mark to have to have to report to a bunch of investors so they can vet his ideas before he is allowed to proceed. If this was investor funded couldn't Mark fund this himself? Should we have prevented Amazon from investing into AWS? The meta universe seems like the next social platform and it's related to the facebook mission of connecting people virtually.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > Should we have prevented Amazon from investing into AWS? It's not about preventing it outright. It's about constrain resources to bias towards the invested-in company actually being profitable to allow other companies to compete with them on a level playing field. > If this was investor funded couldn't Mark fund this himself? If Facebook didn't make as much money then Mark wouldn't have as much money to invest. Which IMO would be a good thing as it would mean that wealth would be more distributed which would likely lead to it being used more wisely due to the wisdom of the crowd. Mark could probably still launch such a project (and I have no problem with that), just not with "hiring 10,000 staff in Europe for an unproven project" level of resources (which I do have a problem with).
  - hytdstd 5y ago
    It sounds to me like you have a problem with the concept of conglomerates utilizing their capital.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      I have a problem with them having so much capital in the first place because I think on average they don't tend to use it very well compared to smaller companies.
      - hytdstd 5y ago
        Purely out of curiosity: why does poor capital utilization concern you? It's their gamble, their resources, their right, I think.
wrnr 5y ago
I was never a fan of facebook (the website), but i'm sort of glad they are doing this metaverse thing. Computer graphics remains one of the most exiting fields in computer science, even good old geometry is having a comeback, and we could use the funding. It's not that any other big institutions believes there is anything of value here. It may be trickle down innovation, but at least facebook created react, I'm not one of them, but a lot of people not at facebook make a good living with that. What is the last time EY, PWC, Capgemini, BCG, McKinsey, Deloitte did anything for the common man. Sure they employ together millions of engineers, and that is something, but they bill over a trilion dollars for writing reports and keeping some old linux box running [1]. Talking about resources squandered and misdirected talent, it's not something you read about in the news very often. [1]https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190507005765/en/Management-Consulting-Global-Market-Opportunities-Strategies-to-2022---Top-Opportunities-Will-Arise-in-the-Financial-Advisory-Segment-Which-Will-Gain-163-Billion-of-Global-Annual-Sales-by-2022---ResearchAndMarkets.com https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190507005765/en/Man...
syrrim 5y ago
>They're essentially circumventing market mechanisms That's the point. Market mechanisms will only fund things that will obviously succeed in a short time. A market cannot innovate or be creative. A single person, with a proven track record of being ahead of the curve, can. >and wasting a bunch of resources The tremendous excess of resources we enjoy today comes from allowing a large number of people to explore ideas without first proving that does ideas were guaranteed successes. Not only can we easily afford to waste resources, we can't afford not to.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > The tremendous excess of resources we enjoy today comes from allowing a large number of people to explore ideas without first proving that does ideas were guaranteed successes. Yes, that is why I believe we should distribute resources so that as large as possible a number of people continue to have that opportunity, rather than concentrating so many resources in one man's project.
  - dkarp 5y ago
    Is a company with tens of thousands of employees really one man's project?
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      Yes and no. Obviously other people are involved. But it's driven by one man. One man gets to decide the direction and has ultimate control. This is clearly a very different situation to for example the case of 2 companies with 5000 employees or 4 companies with 2500 employees, or even 2000 companies with 5 employees. Those cases would all allow for much more variation in approach, and this in turn would allow much greater scope for market feedback from consumers to affect the development of the products offered.
      - zaphar 5y ago
        One man gets to decide the direction and has ultimate control. This is one of those statements that sounds pithy and is theoretically correct but in practice. The person at the top has far less control than people think they do and it's incredibly difficult to wield what control they do have with any kind of precision or accuracy. What actually happens is the the organization is full of people who attempt to do what they think they are inferring the people above them want and the result is an aggregation of all those little inferences of varying quality and accuracy. The bigger the organization the less control the person at the top actually has.
JohnPrine 5y ago
Yeah, that money should go to the government instead! Because the government never wastes resources right?
Aunche 5y ago
I'd agree with you if Congress wasn't the biggest offender of wasting resources. At least you can sell Facebook shares or sue Zuckerberg if you feel like he's wasting your money. A Senator gets reelected when they waste money because they waste it in their home state.

dageshi 5y ago

Perhaps you could tell us which business ideas and scientific theories will be correct so none of us have to waste any money on ridiculous projects?

nicoburns 5y ago
The idea is to distribute resources so that we get more experiments. Many of them will be ridiculous projects, but some of them most likely won't be. We don't get that when all the resources are concentrated in a single project like this.
- dageshi 5y ago
  There's no lack of VC spending on startups in this world, some of them are quite ridiculous. I'm not sure what you would propose would make any difference to anything.
  - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    If anything, there's a oversupply of VC money right now. You can get funding for incredibly whacky ideas. There's just not enough good ideas for the amount of money available, so it's sloshing into anything and everything.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

> because they've been overcompensated How is this determined? Are market mechanisms not working in stock trading either? Seems like they are delivering decent profit numbers for their investors, compared to other companies.

nicoburns 5y ago
> Seems like they are delivering decent profit numbers for their investor This is IMO completely the wrong benchmark. Are they delivering value to society? Yes some, but IMO not nearly in proportion to the amount of wealth they've accrued. Your free to make your own judgement about that, but if you agree then you also agree that market mechanisms are not working in this case.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Are they delivering value to society? Yes some, but IMO not nearly in proportion to the amount of wealth they've accrued. How is this determined? I am trying to see if there is some actionable chain of reasoning here, or if people are just stating the top 5 companies in the public markets qualify? Is it a certain net profit margin? A combination of various factors? The funny thing is Facebook (or Meta I guess) could fall of the face of the earth tomorrow and humanity would not really be impacted other than temporarily losing WhatsApp groups and having to migrate to a different chat program.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    > How is this determined? That's my personal judgement. The actionable response would be progressive taxation on corporate profits which would stop companies getting quite so large, and force (or strongly encourage) companies that wanted to continue growing beyond a certain point to split (which would have the effect of spreading control/power over the economy around). > The funny thing is Facebook (or Meta I guess) could fall of the face of the earth tomorrow and humanity would not really be impacted other than temporarily losing WhatsApp groups and having to migrate to a different chat program. Isn't that exactly the problem though. So much of societies resources going towards something that isn't ultimately that important. The opportunity cost here is huge.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago

I wish it was harder for these megacorps to just buy every single rising competitor as soon as possible. Because honestly I doubt they would be able to survive or be as successful without that whole routine. The market can't self regulate if only very few megacorps have an iron grip on it and can stamp out any threat immediately.

krageon 5y ago
This is the market self-regulating. If you don't like what happens (I do agree), then you dislike the concept. Which makes sense, because the whole "might makes right" approach of such philosophies only serves to enable bullying and callous behaviour. Essentially the issues we see today.
Factorium 5y ago
Correct. Force them to divest Instagram and Whatsapp, and prevent them from acquiring any more companies. Problem solved.

ipaddr 5y ago

There are many reasons not to like this but circumventing market mechanisms doesn't register. You want Mark to have to have to report to a bunch of investors so they can vet his ideas before he is allowed to proceed. If this was investor funded couldn't Mark fund this himself? Should we have prevented Amazon from investing into AWS? The meta universe seems like the next social platform and it's related to the facebook mission of connecting people virtually.

nicoburns 5y ago
> Should we have prevented Amazon from investing into AWS? It's not about preventing it outright. It's about constrain resources to bias towards the invested-in company actually being profitable to allow other companies to compete with them on a level playing field. > If this was investor funded couldn't Mark fund this himself? If Facebook didn't make as much money then Mark wouldn't have as much money to invest. Which IMO would be a good thing as it would mean that wealth would be more distributed which would likely lead to it being used more wisely due to the wisdom of the crowd. Mark could probably still launch such a project (and I have no problem with that), just not with "hiring 10,000 staff in Europe for an unproven project" level of resources (which I do have a problem with).
- hytdstd 5y ago
  It sounds to me like you have a problem with the concept of conglomerates utilizing their capital.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    I have a problem with them having so much capital in the first place because I think on average they don't tend to use it very well compared to smaller companies.
    - hytdstd 5y ago
      Purely out of curiosity: why does poor capital utilization concern you? It's their gamble, their resources, their right, I think.

wrnr 5y ago

I was never a fan of facebook (the website), but i'm sort of glad they are doing this metaverse thing. Computer graphics remains one of the most exiting fields in computer science, even good old geometry is having a comeback, and we could use the funding. It's not that any other big institutions believes there is anything of value here. It may be trickle down innovation, but at least facebook created react, I'm not one of them, but a lot of people not at facebook make a good living with that. What is the last time EY, PWC, Capgemini, BCG, McKinsey, Deloitte did anything for the common man. Sure they employ together millions of engineers, and that is something, but they bill over a trilion dollars for writing reports and keeping some old linux box running [1]. Talking about resources squandered and misdirected talent, it's not something you read about in the news very often. [1]https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190507005765/en/Management-Consulting-Global-Market-Opportunities-Strategies-to-2022---Top-Opportunities-Will-Arise-in-the-Financial-Advisory-Segment-Which-Will-Gain-163-Billion-of-Global-Annual-Sales-by-2022---ResearchAndMarkets.com https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190507005765/en/Man...

syrrim 5y ago

>They're essentially circumventing market mechanisms That's the point. Market mechanisms will only fund things that will obviously succeed in a short time. A market cannot innovate or be creative. A single person, with a proven track record of being ahead of the curve, can. >and wasting a bunch of resources The tremendous excess of resources we enjoy today comes from allowing a large number of people to explore ideas without first proving that does ideas were guaranteed successes. Not only can we easily afford to waste resources, we can't afford not to.

nicoburns 5y ago
> The tremendous excess of resources we enjoy today comes from allowing a large number of people to explore ideas without first proving that does ideas were guaranteed successes. Yes, that is why I believe we should distribute resources so that as large as possible a number of people continue to have that opportunity, rather than concentrating so many resources in one man's project.
- dkarp 5y ago
  Is a company with tens of thousands of employees really one man's project?
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Yes and no. Obviously other people are involved. But it's driven by one man. One man gets to decide the direction and has ultimate control. This is clearly a very different situation to for example the case of 2 companies with 5000 employees or 4 companies with 2500 employees, or even 2000 companies with 5 employees. Those cases would all allow for much more variation in approach, and this in turn would allow much greater scope for market feedback from consumers to affect the development of the products offered.
    - zaphar 5y ago
      One man gets to decide the direction and has ultimate control. This is one of those statements that sounds pithy and is theoretically correct but in practice. The person at the top has far less control than people think they do and it's incredibly difficult to wield what control they do have with any kind of precision or accuracy. What actually happens is the the organization is full of people who attempt to do what they think they are inferring the people above them want and the result is an aggregation of all those little inferences of varying quality and accuracy. The bigger the organization the less control the person at the top actually has.

JohnPrine 5y ago

Yeah, that money should go to the government instead! Because the government never wastes resources right?

Aunche 5y ago

I'd agree with you if Congress wasn't the biggest offender of wasting resources. At least you can sell Facebook shares or sue Zuckerberg if you feel like he's wasting your money. A Senator gets reelected when they waste money because they waste it in their home state.