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> When does Zuckerberg have more wealth? When Facebook has a 900 billion dollar market cap and he pays a 70% tax rate, or when Facebook has a ten billion dollar

> When does Zuckerberg have more wealth? When Facebook has a 900 billion dollar market cap and he pays a 70% tax rate, or when Facebook has a ten billion dollar market cap and he pays a 30% tax rate? This is a bad example. All else being equal, society doesn't care if there's one 100-billionare, or 100 1-billionares, if the rest of the income- and wealth- distributions remain the same. What really drives the inequality is, as you noted, consolidation, lack of antitrust enforcement. When a market is reduced to a handful of companies, that don't compete, but collude. And lack of labor organization to serve as a counterweight. (This is meaningful because, if you split ownership of a company among more people, their personal wealth may be lower, but the company still acts as a unit on the market.)

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> (This is meaningful because, if you split ownership of a company among more people, their personal wealth may be lower, but the company still acts as a unit on the market.) That's the point of the example. Zuckerberg owns a given percentage of Facebook. That isn't what increases over time. If he ever wants to spend any of the money, that only ever goes down. The reason he's a multi-billionaire is that a given percentage of Facebook causes him to be when Facebook is a single 900 billion dollar company when it wouldn't if there were a hundred Facebooks each of 1% the size and he only owned the original percentage of one of them. > And lack of labor organization to serve as a counterweight. Labor organization is just a different kind of consolidation. It's only useful against a monopoly -- otherwise the business has thin margins and there is nothing for a labor monopoly to extract -- but the correct response to a business monopoly is to smash it to pieces.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  They're all monopolies. Business competition itself is over control of monopolies.
jayski 5y ago
Very interesting comment. Im not arguing for or against antitrust laws, just adding to the conversation. If we had more companies competing in the same areas (5 equally sized search engines instead of google, 5 online shopping sites instead of Amazon, etc) - theres a strong possibility those 5 wouldnt be able to compete with giant international companies that arent subject to the same antitrust laws. (baidu, alibaba, etc) So I wonder if America is better off owning these tech giants with all the harm they cause, or not having them at all.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> (This is meaningful because, if you split ownership of a company among more people, their personal wealth may be lower, but the company still acts as a unit on the market.) That's the point of the example. Zuckerberg owns a given percentage of Facebook. That isn't what increases over time. If he ever wants to spend any of the money, that only ever goes down. The reason he's a multi-billionaire is that a given percentage of Facebook causes him to be when Facebook is a single 900 billion dollar company when it wouldn't if there were a hundred Facebooks each of 1% the size and he only owned the original percentage of one of them. > And lack of labor organization to serve as a counterweight. Labor organization is just a different kind of consolidation. It's only useful against a monopoly -- otherwise the business has thin margins and there is nothing for a labor monopoly to extract -- but the correct response to a business monopoly is to smash it to pieces.

DarylZero 5y ago
They're all monopolies. Business competition itself is over control of monopolies.

jayski 5y ago

Very interesting comment. Im not arguing for or against antitrust laws, just adding to the conversation. If we had more companies competing in the same areas (5 equally sized search engines instead of google, 5 online shopping sites instead of Amazon, etc) - theres a strong possibility those 5 wouldnt be able to compete with giant international companies that arent subject to the same antitrust laws. (baidu, alibaba, etc) So I wonder if America is better off owning these tech giants with all the harm they cause, or not having them at all.