3 ms·

That isn’t a tax by the normal definition, just seizure.

by lazide 1mo ago

scotty79 1mo ago
Shares aren't a real thing. They are paper invented out of thin air with intent to pull the money out of capital market. There are already many rules about what you have to do be allowed to sell them to the public. Adding a rule that 10% of whatever you print must be put under national democratic control is not inconceivable.
- lazide 1mo ago
  Shares are proxies for ownership/control. What you are proposing is literally what China does to ensure CCP control of all businesses. Do you really want whoever is in power at the moment to have (even more direct) control over every business in the country? Because that is literally how you do that.
  - scotty79 1mo ago
    > Shares are proxies for ownership/control. Connection between shares and ownership is tenuous at best and rarely exercised. > What you are proposing is literally what China does to ensure CCP control of all businesses. 10% is not control. China is not democratic. Given that, Chinese companies seem to be doing quite well under those conditions. Better than Western ones. > Do you really want whoever is in power at the moment to have (even more direct) control over every business in the country? Do you really want all economic power to be controlled in undemocratic manner rather than democratic? Because that is literally what we have now and society and governments are getting impoverished and companies are getting outcompeted too.
    - lazide 1mo ago
      Hardly, it's quite a clear relationship and exercised constantly - if you do the math re: share classes and look at what a corporation actually does. In most large corporations, 10% is often the largest single shareholder and/or bloc. In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh? So no congress, no laws, no vote of the people after they pick whoever is 'in charge'. Doesn't sound very democratic to me?
      - scotty79 1mo ago
        > Hardly, it's quite a clear relationship and exercised constantly - if you do the math re: share classes and look at what a corporation actually does. Look at the stock market. Out of billion trades maybe one is related to actual ownership of actual company. “Shares are mostly casino tokens tied to the success of a company - or rather, the perception thereof. > In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh? It could be shares without any control rights. Still reduces the amount of resources outside of democratic control. Not by taking control yourself but by removing it from unelected individuals.
        lazide 1mo ago
        And yet Zuck (as majority actual shareholder) has everyone by the balls at Meta. That everyone retail seems okay buying shitty share classes doesn’t change what I’m saying, just that most retail investors are chumps. So you want the gov’t to be an even bigger chump?
        scotty79 1mo ago
        Chump who got a 10% of trillions of dollars for free? Any day. You are a chump only if you paid for it. And government never should. The idea of government borrowing money is insane. In theory it was supposed to punish government for overspending, but it doesn't because the punishment is just included in future overspending. Government gets poorer and since they represent us, we get poorer. And more and more money lands in the hands of petty tyrants. And Zuck owns meta. He has 57% of voice so he can single handedly make any decisions forever. Not very democratic. He has 13% of shares, which as I mentioned are basically casino tokens he was allowed to create out of thin air (at barely any cost) and sell to capital holders to get their actual money into meta.
        lazide 1mo ago
        [flagged]
  - triceratops 1mo ago
    > Shares are proxies for ownership/control. But they don't have to be. There could be a law that shares paid as tax have no voting power. The government gets capital gains and dividends but no votes. The sovereign wealth fund could be required to be structured as a black box, with visibility into it severely constrained. Selling is governed by a strict mechanical algorithm, or at random, to prevent indirect pressure by the government ("Do what we say or we'll dump all your shares").
    - lazide 1mo ago
      Hahah, why?
      - triceratops 1mo ago
        To tax automation. That's where this thread started. Someone said you can't tax automation and I showed how you could tax it. I'll expand on a theme I've written about many times before. We want businesses to become more efficient and productive. We want them to produce more with less labor. This is highly desirable. But we tax that ever-shrinking pile of labor more and more to make government finances pencil out. That makes no GD sense.
        lazide 1mo ago
        None of what you’re proposing actually does that
        scotty79 1mo ago
        What we are doing now for sure doesn't do that.
        lazide 1mo ago
        Cool, so we should change everything and hand more power to the government which is already enabling all this with no plausible reason why it would even make it better?
  - inigyou 1mo ago
    China is currently the most prosperous country in the world. Maybe we should copy whatever they're doing.
triceratops 1mo ago
Not at all. Before the widespread availability of currency, taxes were always paid in property. Farmers paid with bushels of wheat or turnips or whatever.
- lazide 1mo ago
  Those are goods. Shares are also not property, in the real sense. They are fractional ownership.
  - triceratops 1mo ago
    > Those are goods. Potato property. A property is whatever you own. Do you or do you not own the contents of your fridge? > Shares are also not property, in the real sense. I assume by "real" you mean "land". Who cares? > They are fractional ownership. So you acknowledge that shares are property then.
    - lazide 1mo ago
      [flagged]
      - AnimalMuppet 1mo ago
        No, there was a valid point there. "Fractional ownership" and "not property" don't seem to fit together - unless your claim is that only land counts as "property". You didn't explain at all how that works. To a post pointing out your contradiction, you said "ignorant word salad". That's not an answer; that's an evasion. So at the moment, to this bystander, you're losing the discussion, because you're the one evading the other guy's point. Would you care to actually answer it? Or should we conclude that you have no actual answer, but still won't admit you're wrong?
        lazide 1mo ago
        Man, alts are out of control eh? Getting pretty obvious eh! Feel free to do some legal analysis, and figure out what definitions of ‘property’ have evolved out over time so we can argue why ‘real property’ is called what it is.

That isn’t a tax by the normal definition, just seizure.

by lazide 1mo ago

That isn’t a tax by the normal definition, just seizure.

Shares aren't a real thing. They are paper invented out of thin air with intent to pull the money out of capital market. There are already many rules about what you have to do be allowed to sell them to the public. Adding a rule that 10% of whatever you print must be put under national democratic control is not inconceivable.

lazide 1mo ago
Shares are proxies for ownership/control. What you are proposing is literally what China does to ensure CCP control of all businesses. Do you really want whoever is in power at the moment to have (even more direct) control over every business in the country? Because that is literally how you do that.
- scotty79 1mo ago
  > Shares are proxies for ownership/control. Connection between shares and ownership is tenuous at best and rarely exercised. > What you are proposing is literally what China does to ensure CCP control of all businesses. 10% is not control. China is not democratic. Given that, Chinese companies seem to be doing quite well under those conditions. Better than Western ones. > Do you really want whoever is in power at the moment to have (even more direct) control over every business in the country? Do you really want all economic power to be controlled in undemocratic manner rather than democratic? Because that is literally what we have now and society and governments are getting impoverished and companies are getting outcompeted too.
  - lazide 1mo ago
    Hardly, it's quite a clear relationship and exercised constantly - if you do the math re: share classes and look at what a corporation actually does. In most large corporations, 10% is often the largest single shareholder and/or bloc. In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh? So no congress, no laws, no vote of the people after they pick whoever is 'in charge'. Doesn't sound very democratic to me?
    - scotty79 1mo ago
      > Hardly, it's quite a clear relationship and exercised constantly - if you do the math re: share classes and look at what a corporation actually does. Look at the stock market. Out of billion trades maybe one is related to actual ownership of actual company. “Shares are mostly casino tokens tied to the success of a company - or rather, the perception thereof. > In democratic countries, we pass laws and let that do the talking. If the gov't owns direct shares, whoever is in charge of the gov't is de-facto the 'controller' of them, eh? It could be shares without any control rights. Still reduces the amount of resources outside of democratic control. Not by taking control yourself but by removing it from unelected individuals.
      - lazide 1mo ago
        And yet Zuck (as majority actual shareholder) has everyone by the balls at Meta. That everyone retail seems okay buying shitty share classes doesn’t change what I’m saying, just that most retail investors are chumps. So you want the gov’t to be an even bigger chump?
        scotty79 1mo ago
        Chump who got a 10% of trillions of dollars for free? Any day. You are a chump only if you paid for it. And government never should. The idea of government borrowing money is insane. In theory it was supposed to punish government for overspending, but it doesn't because the punishment is just included in future overspending. Government gets poorer and since they represent us, we get poorer. And more and more money lands in the hands of petty tyrants. And Zuck owns meta. He has 57% of voice so he can single handedly make any decisions forever. Not very democratic. He has 13% of shares, which as I mentioned are basically casino tokens he was allowed to create out of thin air (at barely any cost) and sell to capital holders to get their actual money into meta.
        lazide 1mo ago
        [flagged]
- triceratops 1mo ago
  > Shares are proxies for ownership/control. But they don't have to be. There could be a law that shares paid as tax have no voting power. The government gets capital gains and dividends but no votes. The sovereign wealth fund could be required to be structured as a black box, with visibility into it severely constrained. Selling is governed by a strict mechanical algorithm, or at random, to prevent indirect pressure by the government ("Do what we say or we'll dump all your shares").
  - lazide 1mo ago
    Hahah, why?
    - triceratops 1mo ago
      To tax automation. That's where this thread started. Someone said you can't tax automation and I showed how you could tax it. I'll expand on a theme I've written about many times before. We want businesses to become more efficient and productive. We want them to produce more with less labor. This is highly desirable. But we tax that ever-shrinking pile of labor more and more to make government finances pencil out. That makes no GD sense.
      - lazide 1mo ago
        None of what you’re proposing actually does that
        scotty79 1mo ago
        What we are doing now for sure doesn't do that.
        lazide 1mo ago
        Cool, so we should change everything and hand more power to the government which is already enabling all this with no plausible reason why it would even make it better?
- inigyou 1mo ago
  China is currently the most prosperous country in the world. Maybe we should copy whatever they're doing.

triceratops 1mo ago

Not at all. Before the widespread availability of currency, taxes were always paid in property. Farmers paid with bushels of wheat or turnips or whatever.

lazide 1mo ago
Those are goods. Shares are also not property, in the real sense. They are fractional ownership.
- triceratops 1mo ago
  > Those are goods. Potato property. A property is whatever you own. Do you or do you not own the contents of your fridge? > Shares are also not property, in the real sense. I assume by "real" you mean "land". Who cares? > They are fractional ownership. So you acknowledge that shares are property then.
  - lazide 1mo ago
    [flagged]
    - AnimalMuppet 1mo ago
      No, there was a valid point there. "Fractional ownership" and "not property" don't seem to fit together - unless your claim is that only land counts as "property". You didn't explain at all how that works. To a post pointing out your contradiction, you said "ignorant word salad". That's not an answer; that's an evasion. So at the moment, to this bystander, you're losing the discussion, because you're the one evading the other guy's point. Would you care to actually answer it? Or should we conclude that you have no actual answer, but still won't admit you're wrong?
      - lazide 1mo ago
        Man, alts are out of control eh? Getting pretty obvious eh! Feel free to do some legal analysis, and figure out what definitions of ‘property’ have evolved out over time so we can argue why ‘real property’ is called what it is.