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You still have to pay taxes, at least property and payroll taxes, and comply with laws; and the government can still print money, tax people and corporations, e

You still have to pay taxes, at least property and payroll taxes, and comply with laws; and the government can still print money, tax people and corporations, employ people, give/lend money to institutions at low rates, and pass laws and regulations/obligations which cost labor to fulfill. Likewise, people and organizations owe rents to each other, have covenants they need to fulfill. Your nuclear power plant will never be a money black hole in the way that you mean.

danbruc 12y ago
But then again the marginal costs are non-zero due to state intervention. But let me change the example, I can probably make a more convincing case with software. You have developed the perfect office suite and it is used all over the place. No further development needed. You request a daily license fee of $1 per user. You have also bought and payed for a fully automatic solar powered license server on your private island processing credit card payments and handing out new license keys. Now you have essentially enslaved the people - everyone has to directly or indirectly work a tiny bit harder, produce a tiny bit more goods and services, to pay your license fees and therefore finance your consumption. This is not a big deal if seven billion people have to finance only you, but it is obviously nothing that scales to an entire economy. Even at $1 per day you will collect $140 million per month assuming 0.1 % of the population is using your office suite every working day. That is enough to also pay for your family and your friends, 14,000 friends at $10,000 per month. It still is a pretty tiny portion of the entire population but we are already in a region where only thousands of such businesses would have a significant impact.
- dougabug 12y ago
  Is the state going away sometime soon? Or it's going to stop intervening? Good luck with your $1 a day, "enslave the people" software tax. World of Warcraft generates ballpark the numbers you are throwing out there, although they have some server costs and the game is getting a bit long in the tooth. If you want to keep your slaves you probably need programmers and designers continually improving the product, fixing bugs, maintaining compatibility with and fully utilizing OS and HW upgrades; otherwise, competition (both free and paid) will likely overtake you. If you are immune to competition, you could get hit with anti-trust action on three continents. Your hypothetical 4.67M subscribers surely aren't going to pay $365 a year unless they have an expected payoff in excess of that. When you buy something, does it make it less valuable to you that there are no serfs working hard, endlessly and forever to make it? If that's the case the Beatle's catalog shouldn't still be a multi-billion property, since "the Band" isn't hitting the studio any time soon. Is software less valuable than music, videos, books or other forms of content? Even if magically this never-updated software somehow keeps generating stable revenue forever without any ongoing costs (marketing? accounting? legal?), it still has a finite Net Present Value, with all its costs in the development phase. Are you suggesting there's a catastrophic limit on the allowed gain (NPV / total cost)? Why are investment bankers allowed unlimited upside on their investments without it posing an existential threat to the economy? As soon as you earn your nut, that's it, you're done spending money and engaging in new economic activity? You won't invest, start new projects, buy stuff? Start a spaceship company or solve malaria, maybe run for office or fund election campaigns?

danbruc 12y ago

But then again the marginal costs are non-zero due to state intervention. But let me change the example, I can probably make a more convincing case with software. You have developed the perfect office suite and it is used all over the place. No further development needed. You request a daily license fee of $1 per user. You have also bought and payed for a fully automatic solar powered license server on your private island processing credit card payments and handing out new license keys. Now you have essentially enslaved the people - everyone has to directly or indirectly work a tiny bit harder, produce a tiny bit more goods and services, to pay your license fees and therefore finance your consumption. This is not a big deal if seven billion people have to finance only you, but it is obviously nothing that scales to an entire economy. Even at $1 per day you will collect $140 million per month assuming 0.1 % of the population is using your office suite every working day. That is enough to also pay for your family and your friends, 14,000 friends at $10,000 per month. It still is a pretty tiny portion of the entire population but we are already in a region where only thousands of such businesses would have a significant impact.

dougabug 12y ago
Is the state going away sometime soon? Or it's going to stop intervening? Good luck with your $1 a day, "enslave the people" software tax. World of Warcraft generates ballpark the numbers you are throwing out there, although they have some server costs and the game is getting a bit long in the tooth. If you want to keep your slaves you probably need programmers and designers continually improving the product, fixing bugs, maintaining compatibility with and fully utilizing OS and HW upgrades; otherwise, competition (both free and paid) will likely overtake you. If you are immune to competition, you could get hit with anti-trust action on three continents. Your hypothetical 4.67M subscribers surely aren't going to pay $365 a year unless they have an expected payoff in excess of that. When you buy something, does it make it less valuable to you that there are no serfs working hard, endlessly and forever to make it? If that's the case the Beatle's catalog shouldn't still be a multi-billion property, since "the Band" isn't hitting the studio any time soon. Is software less valuable than music, videos, books or other forms of content? Even if magically this never-updated software somehow keeps generating stable revenue forever without any ongoing costs (marketing? accounting? legal?), it still has a finite Net Present Value, with all its costs in the development phase. Are you suggesting there's a catastrophic limit on the allowed gain (NPV / total cost)? Why are investment bankers allowed unlimited upside on their investments without it posing an existential threat to the economy? As soon as you earn your nut, that's it, you're done spending money and engaging in new economic activity? You won't invest, start new projects, buy stuff? Start a spaceship company or solve malaria, maybe run for office or fund election campaigns?