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I wouldn’t approach it in terms of “enforcing antitrust laws.” It’s very hard to win those cases. What I would do is limit the cash that public companies can re

by aj7 4y ago

I wouldn’t approach it in terms of “enforcing antitrust laws.” It’s very hard to win those cases. What I would do is limit the cash that public companies can retain. This has the effect of distributing capital to new ventures and competitors naturally. And it has two knock on effects that are also very positive. If Sergei Brin et al want to develop self-driving cars, let them use their own money, or raise new money, not use an advertising company’s stockholders’ money vainly and cavalierly. Second, with less cash around, there’s less to waste in general, and especially for senior managers, less to steal. We could implement my suggestion by making this more tax favorable for everyone involved. Liberate the cash!

amelius 4y ago
I think Stallman proposed limiting the amount of people working for a single company.
zackmorris 4y ago
Traditionally the answer to all of the economic problems we're facing today was taxation. You're right that antitrust cases will never be won at the scale needed to have a material impact on the economy. Plus, big companies will never allow reforms anyway, and will lobby their way out of any loss. So what do we do? What are some ethical and amicable solutions that can be applied evenly and fairly to all citizens? * Tax all property, not just homes. The US national property tax averages 1.1%. So we should tax stocks and other assets at around 1% also. Stockholders would choose to give up 1% of their shares each year, or pay their cash value to keep them. The current US stock market cap is $46 trillion, so 1% of that would be $460 billion. We paid $4.8 trillion in taxes last year, so this property tax would lower taxes for the rest of us by about 10%. The average income tax paid is $20,000 per year, so that would be about a $2000 savings per year. * Charge sales tax on all property sales, including stocks. 5% might be a bit high, and some states don't charge sales tax. So a national rate would be needed to establish a baseline on stock trades, something like 0.1% to 1% per trade. Losses could be used as a tax write-off, so a final sales tax could be charged at the end of the year, which might equal the property tax. This could reasonably raise savings to between $2200 and $4000 per year. * Fund UBI with the wealth taxes stated above. $2000/yr is $167/mo, but $4000 is $333 (about the cost of health insurance or a student loan payment or rent in rural areas). Instead of working to make rent, we could get back to getting real work done. * Organize. Tech could move to a cooperative model where gains/losses are split across teams, and form unions to provide actual resistive power against concentrated wealth: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146861998/video-game-microsoft-union https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146861998/video-game-microso... * Change the culture of tech. We could make the "I've got mine" mentality of tech bros uncool. Wealth concentration makes property a zero-sum game by forcing 90% of the population to subsist on 10% of the wealth. So we could openly criticize people who have assets above what they would need to retire (perhaps $10 million). Wealth beyond that is an effective theft of the time and resources of workers, who are forced to work to continue paying dividends on that wealth. The opportunity cost of that has grown to consume all of our time, giving us a lower standard of living, less leisure time and less upward mobility (by far) than we had before tickle-down economics which started in the early 1980s: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar... Now to me, everything I said above is obvious. It's self-evidently the way to fix the problem. Any child could understand it. The real difficulty is around de-programming the so-called thought leaders who currently benefit from the wealth inequality status quo. We could and should call them out and challenge them at every opportunity.

by aj7 4y ago

amelius 4y ago

I think Stallman proposed limiting the amount of people working for a single company.

zackmorris 4y ago

Traditionally the answer to all of the economic problems we're facing today was taxation. You're right that antitrust cases will never be won at the scale needed to have a material impact on the economy. Plus, big companies will never allow reforms anyway, and will lobby their way out of any loss. So what do we do? What are some ethical and amicable solutions that can be applied evenly and fairly to all citizens? * Tax all property, not just homes. The US national property tax averages 1.1%. So we should tax stocks and other assets at around 1% also. Stockholders would choose to give up 1% of their shares each year, or pay their cash value to keep them. The current US stock market cap is $46 trillion, so 1% of that would be $460 billion. We paid $4.8 trillion in taxes last year, so this property tax would lower taxes for the rest of us by about 10%. The average income tax paid is $20,000 per year, so that would be about a $2000 savings per year. * Charge sales tax on all property sales, including stocks. 5% might be a bit high, and some states don't charge sales tax. So a national rate would be needed to establish a baseline on stock trades, something like 0.1% to 1% per trade. Losses could be used as a tax write-off, so a final sales tax could be charged at the end of the year, which might equal the property tax. This could reasonably raise savings to between $2200 and $4000 per year. * Fund UBI with the wealth taxes stated above. $2000/yr is $167/mo, but $4000 is $333 (about the cost of health insurance or a student loan payment or rent in rural areas). Instead of working to make rent, we could get back to getting real work done. * Organize. Tech could move to a cooperative model where gains/losses are split across teams, and form unions to provide actual resistive power against concentrated wealth: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146861998/video-game-microsoft-union https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146861998/video-game-microso... * Change the culture of tech. We could make the "I've got mine" mentality of tech bros uncool. Wealth concentration makes property a zero-sum game by forcing 90% of the population to subsist on 10% of the wealth. So we could openly criticize people who have assets above what they would need to retire (perhaps $10 million). Wealth beyond that is an effective theft of the time and resources of workers, who are forced to work to continue paying dividends on that wealth. The opportunity cost of that has grown to consume all of our time, giving us a lower standard of living, less leisure time and less upward mobility (by far) than we had before tickle-down economics which started in the early 1980s: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar... Now to me, everything I said above is obvious. It's self-evidently the way to fix the problem. Any child could understand it. The real difficulty is around de-programming the so-called thought leaders who currently benefit from the wealth inequality status quo. We could and should call them out and challenge them at every opportunity.