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I have come to the opinion that every successful tech company is basically just an arbitrage scheme to avoid regulations and extract value based on that advanta

• logicchains 8mo ago
  From an economic perspective the majority of those regulations destroy economic value and those companies are unlocking value by finding clever ways around them.
  • gtowey 8mo ago
    No, they just shift the economic downsides to someone else so they can collect the difference. That's what I mean by arbitrage. Someone always pays the price, and now it's you and I.
    • Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
      I agree, once they have bypassed regulations, they use that to essentially rent-seek from their monopoly/their unique position where the rent is paid by us public. Their behaviour is very rent-seeking imo and at moments like these, its best to remind us that even the father of Capitalism, Adam Smith didn't like landlords Had to search up some quotes from adam smith right now but here's a relevant one (imo) to this discussion: "[the landlord leaves the worker] with the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more." - Adam smith
    • holmesworcester 8mo ago
      That's not always true. Regulations increase the cost of transacting and make ranges of transactions non-viable, just like a tax. So there is "dead weight loss", where transactions that would have been mutually beneficially and socially productive are eliminated by the regulation, and restored when somebody finds a loophole, restoring the individual and social benefit. The world is not zero sum!
  • Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
    I can't say this for the companies listed above but atleast within the realm of social media, they also want to bypass regulations and well, we all know how's it going. On a long term, I do feel like there will be a drop in producitivity, thus destruction of economic value because of lack of enforcement of policies/such companies having reckless attitude about them. Many of the products listed above actually seem to be very rent-seeking in my opinion (IIRC Someone on HN once said that from their personal experience talking to drivers, uber takes an approximate at the very least 40% cut or more) (This might be a little off-topic?_ but one thing I think about tech regulations is that Facebook used to see if a young girl/minor girl took a selfie and then if they don't upload it, detect that she was insecure and then try to show them face beauty recommendations. These girls can be our sisters/daughters fwiw. Facebook profits from insecurity/rage-bait and I would say that many social medias are the same as well, its just that the facebook example to me feels so eggregious and should be a uniting front for many to agree that there's a problem indeed. You will be right when you say economical value is generated from profiting from insecurity/bypassing regulations but at what cost?
  • Natfan 8mo ago
    i can find clever ways around d crippling debt, its called robbing a bank at gunpoint
• parineum 8mo ago
  That's what happens when the majority of people don't actually support the regulations. If people thought it was wrong to be an unlicensed airbnb or uber, they wouldn't use them. In reality, those regulations are mostly protection rackets and most people don't care about violating them.
  • lokar 8mo ago
    People were (and mostly still are) very opposed to Airbnb rentals in their neighborhood.
    • aleph_minus_one 8mo ago
      ... but the customers of these Airbnb rentals are not. :-)
      • jquery 8mo ago
        People support anti-pollution measures yet corporations still choose to pollute. Curious.
      • iso1631 8mo ago
        People whose houses are robbed are against robbery, people who rob houses are very much for it.
        • vlovich123 8mo ago
          That’s a false analogy. You have two parties who want to enter into a contract and a third party unrelated to the contract that doesn’t for whatever reason. Just based on contract law and common sense the unrelated party shouldn’t have standing. Now if there’s externalities to the contract that impact that unrelated party sure, but only insofar as to get those externalities addressed. This is not the same as a robbery which involves no contract or a willing counterparty to the robbery.
          • 8mo ago
• staplers 8mo ago
  Bitcoin is not a company