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> Zuckerberg recently told podcast host Joe Rogan that Meta’s profit would double if Apple stopped applying “random rules” that tax his company. So why aren't

> Zuckerberg recently told podcast host Joe Rogan that Meta’s profit would double if Apple stopped applying “random rules” that tax his company. So why aren't you lobbying Congress to get HARD rules set for app stores in the form of legislation? Ya know, to level the playing field for everyone. Oh right! Because that could--in theory--hurt future revenue from the Meta Quest store (and maybe other app store plans). GET OVER YOURSELF already! Anti-competitive app stores are bad for everyone including Meta. Zuckerberg's visions of grandeur remind me of that quote from Steinbeck about Americans... > "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." I swear, the richest businesses in America could be so much richer if they banded together to lobby Congress for legislation that benefits all of them. Example: Imagine if the US switched to a single-payer healthcare system; how much money that would save the big tech companies. ...but no: Since that's not their "core business" it might as well not exist. This is true for so many things from credit card/transaction fees to health insurance to USPS shipping prices.

yunwal 2y ago
> how much money that would save the big tech companies It would directly save them money, but it would also remove a significant source of leverage in salary negotiations (if you don't get a job, you won't be able to get decent health insurance). In the end, it's probably better for companies that can afford to pay for health insurance that people are forced to rely on them for it. It gives them an anti-competitive edge.
- redserk 2y ago
  I seriously doubt the overwhelming majority of candidates are asking for the detailed coverage information from the company's health insurance. I did this twice as I have specific needs with coverage. Both times were with in-house recruiters, and both times I was met with a rather confused face. So in an imaginary world, sure I can see this maybe playing out. In practice? Not a chance.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Since the ACA, all health insurance coverage from companies with at least 50 people has been good enough. At this point, what I did ask about was the cost of insurance when I talk to the first internal person, usually HR. That is going to determine comp conversations.
    - redserk 2y ago
      Depends what you need covered. Not all medications are reasonably covered by all plans. Good luck if you’re unable to take the medication that your insurance pushes you to take. The appeals process isn’t necessarily easy, even with doctors involved.
  - yunwal 2y ago
    > I seriously doubt the overwhelming majority of candidates are asking for the detailed coverage information from the company's health insurance. No, but having an additional thing that makes you fear unemployment helps them, both in salary negotiations and in retention.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  I doubt the average Meta employee has to worry about finding a job so is this scenario actually realistic?
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    The market is a shit show right now even for those coming out of BigTech. There are thousands of them being laid off and working for one isn’t really that impressive anymore if it ever was. Besides, they may have to sully themselves and become an “enterprise developer”. Besides that, they probably have a lifestyle that requires them to make top of market.
    - barbazoo 2y ago
      Good point. I always assume others in tech also manage to live well below their means.
  - yunwal 2y ago
    Meta laid off 5% of it's employees just a few days ago
cma 2y ago
Because Zuckerberg runs his own app stores with a 30% cut and similar arbitraty and capricious rules. Virtual Desktop's PCVR streaming feature was blocked for a year until Meta released their own clone.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> I swear, the richest businesses in America could be so much richer if they banded together to lobby Congress for legislation that benefits all of them. Example: Imagine if the US switched to a single-payer healthcare system; how much money that would save the big tech companies. You're misunderstanding how the corruption works. Single-payer isn't the thing that causes other countries to pay less for healthcare. For example, Medicare and Medicaid pay significantly more per-patient than healthcare systems do in other countries, even for patients in the same demographic groups. Other countries with hybrid or private healthcare systems also have lower costs than the US. The US system is so expensive because it has been captured by healthcare companies. If you change the funding source without changing the other aspects of the system, it doesn't get any cheaper; if you change the other aspects of the system, it gets cheaper regardless of the funding source. But the healthcare industry makes the tech industry look like chumps. US healthcare spending is $4.9 trillion. The people getting all that money don't want it to cost less and lobby Congress to make sure it doesn't. And it's to their advantage to deflect blame to insurance companies so they can propose laws that make it even worse, like capping insurance company profits to a percent of claims to keep the insurer's incentives aligned with increasing rather than decreasing costs, because then the only way for the insurer to make more money themselves is to pay out more claims to the healthcare companies, depriving them of the opportunity to profit from reducing waste.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I broadly agree, with two caveats: 1) some of the extra cost is used to buy state of the art treatments and systems, that help drive down their cost in other countries, and 2) it's been just as captured by legislative tug of war over the decades, that cause strange loopholes and constraints.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    https://marylandmatters.org/2024/01/19/report-finds-some-drug-manufacturers-spend-more-on-advertising-executives-salaries-than-new-research/ https://marylandmatters.org/2024/01/19/report-finds-some-dru...
scarface_74 2y ago
Company provided health care makes it harder for people to leave and start their own business that might compete with them
danaris 2y ago
This is because the money is only one aspect of it—not that they don't care about money; of course they do. But they also care about the power. They especially care about entrenching the new stratified class system they've been putting into place. Single-payer healthcare would make us plebes less dependent on them, our neofeudal overlords. You can see this in things like proposals to improve working conditions. They would cost nominal amounts, and there's plenty of research that shows they would increase productivity, employee morale & retention, etc, but if they make it harder for the managers to treat the workers like unworthy peasants, they don't get done.
opo 2y ago
>"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." That quote is from Ronald Wright. It appears to be a paraphrase from this Steinbeck quote. In the actual quote you can see Steinbeck is not trying to criticize the poor, but rather champagne socialists: >...Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck https://classic.esquire.com/issue/19600601/print https://classic.esquire.com/issue/19600601/print

yunwal 2y ago

> how much money that would save the big tech companies It would directly save them money, but it would also remove a significant source of leverage in salary negotiations (if you don't get a job, you won't be able to get decent health insurance). In the end, it's probably better for companies that can afford to pay for health insurance that people are forced to rely on them for it. It gives them an anti-competitive edge.

redserk 2y ago
I seriously doubt the overwhelming majority of candidates are asking for the detailed coverage information from the company's health insurance. I did this twice as I have specific needs with coverage. Both times were with in-house recruiters, and both times I was met with a rather confused face. So in an imaginary world, sure I can see this maybe playing out. In practice? Not a chance.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Since the ACA, all health insurance coverage from companies with at least 50 people has been good enough. At this point, what I did ask about was the cost of insurance when I talk to the first internal person, usually HR. That is going to determine comp conversations.
  - redserk 2y ago
    Depends what you need covered. Not all medications are reasonably covered by all plans. Good luck if you’re unable to take the medication that your insurance pushes you to take. The appeals process isn’t necessarily easy, even with doctors involved.
- yunwal 2y ago
  > I seriously doubt the overwhelming majority of candidates are asking for the detailed coverage information from the company's health insurance. No, but having an additional thing that makes you fear unemployment helps them, both in salary negotiations and in retention.
barbazoo 2y ago
I doubt the average Meta employee has to worry about finding a job so is this scenario actually realistic?
- scarface_74 2y ago
  The market is a shit show right now even for those coming out of BigTech. There are thousands of them being laid off and working for one isn’t really that impressive anymore if it ever was. Besides, they may have to sully themselves and become an “enterprise developer”. Besides that, they probably have a lifestyle that requires them to make top of market.
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    Good point. I always assume others in tech also manage to live well below their means.
- yunwal 2y ago
  Meta laid off 5% of it's employees just a few days ago

cma 2y ago

Because Zuckerberg runs his own app stores with a 30% cut and similar arbitraty and capricious rules. Virtual Desktop's PCVR streaming feature was blocked for a year until Meta released their own clone.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> I swear, the richest businesses in America could be so much richer if they banded together to lobby Congress for legislation that benefits all of them. Example: Imagine if the US switched to a single-payer healthcare system; how much money that would save the big tech companies. You're misunderstanding how the corruption works. Single-payer isn't the thing that causes other countries to pay less for healthcare. For example, Medicare and Medicaid pay significantly more per-patient than healthcare systems do in other countries, even for patients in the same demographic groups. Other countries with hybrid or private healthcare systems also have lower costs than the US. The US system is so expensive because it has been captured by healthcare companies. If you change the funding source without changing the other aspects of the system, it doesn't get any cheaper; if you change the other aspects of the system, it gets cheaper regardless of the funding source. But the healthcare industry makes the tech industry look like chumps. US healthcare spending is $4.9 trillion. The people getting all that money don't want it to cost less and lobby Congress to make sure it doesn't. And it's to their advantage to deflect blame to insurance companies so they can propose laws that make it even worse, like capping insurance company profits to a percent of claims to keep the insurer's incentives aligned with increasing rather than decreasing costs, because then the only way for the insurer to make more money themselves is to pay out more claims to the healthcare companies, depriving them of the opportunity to profit from reducing waste.

robertlagrant 2y ago
I broadly agree, with two caveats: 1) some of the extra cost is used to buy state of the art treatments and systems, that help drive down their cost in other countries, and 2) it's been just as captured by legislative tug of war over the decades, that cause strange loopholes and constraints.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  https://marylandmatters.org/2024/01/19/report-finds-some-drug-manufacturers-spend-more-on-advertising-executives-salaries-than-new-research/ https://marylandmatters.org/2024/01/19/report-finds-some-dru...

scarface_74 2y ago

Company provided health care makes it harder for people to leave and start their own business that might compete with them

danaris 2y ago

This is because the money is only one aspect of it—not that they don't care about money; of course they do. But they also care about the power. They especially care about entrenching the new stratified class system they've been putting into place. Single-payer healthcare would make us plebes less dependent on them, our neofeudal overlords. You can see this in things like proposals to improve working conditions. They would cost nominal amounts, and there's plenty of research that shows they would increase productivity, employee morale & retention, etc, but if they make it harder for the managers to treat the workers like unworthy peasants, they don't get done.

opo 2y ago

>"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." That quote is from Ronald Wright. It appears to be a paraphrase from this Steinbeck quote. In the actual quote you can see Steinbeck is not trying to criticize the poor, but rather champagne socialists: >...Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck https://classic.esquire.com/issue/19600601/print https://classic.esquire.com/issue/19600601/print