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> Senator Dianne Feinstein criticized the bill and said that it targets a "small number of specific companies," and Senator Alex Padilla said that it was diffic

> Senator Dianne Feinstein criticized the bill and said that it targets a "small number of specific companies," and Senator Alex Padilla said that it was difficult to "see the justification for a bill that regulates the behavior of only a handful of companies while allowing everyone else to continue engaging in that exact same behavior." This bill should pass but that’s also a good point. More fundamentally there should be a bill that affectively taxes the top 10% of companies in all industries and credits the bottom 25%. Call it an innovation bill. In addition the bottom 25% percent should get discounts on all licensing fees charged by the top. More generally our government should use financial incentives and disincentives for creating the behaviors we want.

eps 5y ago
> Call it an innovation bill. This will result in a boatload of scam and zero innovation.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  How so?
  - DerpyBaby123 5y ago
    Not op, but I can imagine it would be easy to be in the 'bottom' tier of an industry by revenue/sales/etc - if I want to be credited, just make a tiny barely functioning company and collect the credits
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      A well operated implementation would probably be in the form of reduced taxes, not a check as the point is to help grow smaller competitors, not create zombie companies.
syshum 5y ago
Why do you believe that taking money from the top 10% and gifting it to the bottom would result in innovation? Is is not possible that the bottom 25% is there for a reason, that they failed or their product is not viewed as innovative by the public? I fail to see how this wealth redistribution scheme would be effective or produce the stated outcome. Like most wealth redistribution scheme it is lofty on the goal, but unclear on the results with no objective measurements and not real way to assess its value. It is more a "do it and assume it was successful" program like many government program are
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Depending on how it's implemented it could result in innovation by reducing the cost for competitors, to well, compete. Tremendously poor companies would still fail, but it would effectively create more breathing room for potentially viable competitors.
- echelon 5y ago
  > Why do you believe that taking money from the top 10% and gifting it to the bottom would result in innovation? The economics occurring atop the Apple platform should not belong to Apple. Apple created a great product in the iPhone, they slayed the competition, and they have forever positioned themselves as 50+% of American computing. They're making boat loads of profit on hardware sales, accessory sales, first party services and subscriptions. This should not come with the right to tax almost everything happening in mobile computing. Apple is not innovating in the dating space, the gaming space, the business management space, or the productivity space. They are taxing these industries simply because they established themselves as the toll keep of the winning platform. None of these companies cares about Apple. They're only building in Objective-C/Swift/iOS because that's what won the market. They'd be much happier to build for an open web platform, but Apple has artificially knee-capped it. Web apps suck because of Apple. Apple needs to be told by the government this isn't okay. This won't hurt Apple in the slightest. They have a dragon's hoard of cash, will still have the best mobile platform, and have a ton of other incredible revenue streams. They need to let their stranglehold go so that others can grow too. Imagine if the roads were 50% Tesla and Tesla took 30% of every Amazon delivery, every trip to the grocery store, and every date you went on. That's what Apple is doing right now. It sounds absurd because it is.
dereg 5y ago
> More fundamentally there should be a bill that affectively taxes the top 10% of companies in all industries and credits the bottom 25%. Call it an innovation bill. In addition the bottom 25% percent should get discounts on all licensing fees charged by the top. No. How is this at all promoting innovation? The practical effect of this would be to allow crappy companies to stay alive as zombies, doing the opposite of promoting innovation. This would also encourage companies to split into a hojillion shell companies to qualify themselves as what you define "the bottom 25%." This isn't even speculation. If you look at states' tax credit programs to "encourage innovation" in x industry, you see those tax credits are absorbed by the best of financial engineers. The more levers, and thus complexity, you create in an economy, the more likely that it's the extreme wealthy who benefit.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  I disagree with you. If companies split themselves into smaller companies that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Without having described how exactly the money would be distributed or the specific criteria I'm not sure how you can confidently say it would create zombie companies. In any case, the point of what I was saying was to help fund strong competitors. You could just as well transfer funds from the top 10% to the third and fourth deciles.
  - dereg 5y ago
    What's your desired outcome of a program like this? The purpose of antitrust is to encourage competition for the benefit of consumers. Improving competition is a necessary, but not sufficient outcome. Creating competition for competition's sake, irrespective of the consumer effect, is against the spirit of antitrust.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      I think competition for competition's sake is good. Historically and inherently it will ultimately result in better outcomes for consumers as ultimately that's the purpose of all companies - providing goods and services.
pumanoir 5y ago
Isn't the very definition of antitrust to target "a handful companies" and prevent them from running an entire industry?

eps 5y ago

> Call it an innovation bill. This will result in a boatload of scam and zero innovation.

endisneigh 5y ago
How so?
- DerpyBaby123 5y ago
  Not op, but I can imagine it would be easy to be in the 'bottom' tier of an industry by revenue/sales/etc - if I want to be credited, just make a tiny barely functioning company and collect the credits
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    A well operated implementation would probably be in the form of reduced taxes, not a check as the point is to help grow smaller competitors, not create zombie companies.

syshum 5y ago

Why do you believe that taking money from the top 10% and gifting it to the bottom would result in innovation? Is is not possible that the bottom 25% is there for a reason, that they failed or their product is not viewed as innovative by the public? I fail to see how this wealth redistribution scheme would be effective or produce the stated outcome. Like most wealth redistribution scheme it is lofty on the goal, but unclear on the results with no objective measurements and not real way to assess its value. It is more a "do it and assume it was successful" program like many government program are

endisneigh 5y ago
Depending on how it's implemented it could result in innovation by reducing the cost for competitors, to well, compete. Tremendously poor companies would still fail, but it would effectively create more breathing room for potentially viable competitors.
echelon 5y ago
> Why do you believe that taking money from the top 10% and gifting it to the bottom would result in innovation? The economics occurring atop the Apple platform should not belong to Apple. Apple created a great product in the iPhone, they slayed the competition, and they have forever positioned themselves as 50+% of American computing. They're making boat loads of profit on hardware sales, accessory sales, first party services and subscriptions. This should not come with the right to tax almost everything happening in mobile computing. Apple is not innovating in the dating space, the gaming space, the business management space, or the productivity space. They are taxing these industries simply because they established themselves as the toll keep of the winning platform. None of these companies cares about Apple. They're only building in Objective-C/Swift/iOS because that's what won the market. They'd be much happier to build for an open web platform, but Apple has artificially knee-capped it. Web apps suck because of Apple. Apple needs to be told by the government this isn't okay. This won't hurt Apple in the slightest. They have a dragon's hoard of cash, will still have the best mobile platform, and have a ton of other incredible revenue streams. They need to let their stranglehold go so that others can grow too. Imagine if the roads were 50% Tesla and Tesla took 30% of every Amazon delivery, every trip to the grocery store, and every date you went on. That's what Apple is doing right now. It sounds absurd because it is.

dereg 5y ago

> More fundamentally there should be a bill that affectively taxes the top 10% of companies in all industries and credits the bottom 25%. Call it an innovation bill. In addition the bottom 25% percent should get discounts on all licensing fees charged by the top. No. How is this at all promoting innovation? The practical effect of this would be to allow crappy companies to stay alive as zombies, doing the opposite of promoting innovation. This would also encourage companies to split into a hojillion shell companies to qualify themselves as what you define "the bottom 25%." This isn't even speculation. If you look at states' tax credit programs to "encourage innovation" in x industry, you see those tax credits are absorbed by the best of financial engineers. The more levers, and thus complexity, you create in an economy, the more likely that it's the extreme wealthy who benefit.

endisneigh 5y ago
I disagree with you. If companies split themselves into smaller companies that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Without having described how exactly the money would be distributed or the specific criteria I'm not sure how you can confidently say it would create zombie companies. In any case, the point of what I was saying was to help fund strong competitors. You could just as well transfer funds from the top 10% to the third and fourth deciles.
- dereg 5y ago
  What's your desired outcome of a program like this? The purpose of antitrust is to encourage competition for the benefit of consumers. Improving competition is a necessary, but not sufficient outcome. Creating competition for competition's sake, irrespective of the consumer effect, is against the spirit of antitrust.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    I think competition for competition's sake is good. Historically and inherently it will ultimately result in better outcomes for consumers as ultimately that's the purpose of all companies - providing goods and services.

pumanoir 5y ago

Isn't the very definition of antitrust to target "a handful companies" and prevent them from running an entire industry?