2 ms·

Why not just tax the profits of the data companies? If we start taxing data, why not tax any other underlying asset a company makes profits from?

• psd1 12d ago
  Data is an unpriced natural resource. Your pabulum is already priced. We should, generally, tax extraction, because otherwise the externalities are imposed on the public for free. In the case of mining, that's e.g. resources taken from the future; in the case of data, that's privacy taken from the public.
  • hinkley 11d ago
    Data's probably more like air. We are still trying to figure out how to hold people accountable for how they misuse air for manufacturing and power production. Water and soil were easier to work out, but we still flounder a bit. We've been slowly piecing air consumption together but Kyoto failed to deliver a holistic system that people would accept, so here we are experiencing record heat waves and droughts, which broke records that have already been broken twice in the last few decades.