ucaetano

92 ms·

781.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> The question isn't which abstract model is better, the question is how we build some sort of conventions that work better than what is happening now. Oh, sure, there's potential for improvement. But so far there hasn't b
782.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> None of the above sound bad in themselves. Actually, all of them are bad in themselves. Government-granted monopolies reduce innovation and consumer surplus, inhibit competition and stagnate an economy, leaving it weak and unable to co
783.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Co-ops are just the same as guilds, oligopolies, etc. They are (usually government-sanctioned or government-protected) producer organizations that set quotas and approval processes to reduce the threat of competition and new entrants, usual
784.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> price inflation is a signal of monetary inflation No, you don't need monetary inflation to have inflation. > malinvestment is not productive, in fact it is destructive. Sure, but investment to supply additional capacity isn&#x2
785.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> As I said. I bet you've heard that your whole life, too. It's good to question things you've heard your whole life. Sure, and it is questioned. But this isn't just "something I've heard", but somethin
786.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Nice job missing the context: Inflation is good not because of inflation itself, but because of what it signals: a growth in demand outpacing the growth in supply. If supply is not outpacing demand, there are no investments in additional ca
787.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Inflation is good. Too much inflation is bad. Not because of inflation per se, but because of what inflation measures. Inflation comes from a imbalance in supply and demand. If demand in an economy is growing in a healthy way, you'll h
788.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Sure: "Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s" The level of stupidity in this quote is unbearable. Basic fact checking for
789.
by ucaetano 9y ago
That's actually quite a poor book. It essentially defines debt as any, absolutely any, sense of liability towards another being. When you define it like that, it isn't only true that debt predate money, it's obvious. Besides
790.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> How does having a company that contributes effectively zero to your country make that nation better off? It isn't "zero" at all. That's not how economics work.
791.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Sorry, it doesn't make any sense at all from a global economics perspective. You seem to want completely isolated countries with no international trade. There's no such things as parasitic businesses, "right of revenue"
792.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Go ahead and close your country for foreign companies then, that has worked out well in exactly 0 times in history. Your "parasite" analogy doesn't make any sense. Trade relationships add value to both sides, but if you wish
793.
by ucaetano 9y ago
That doesn't make any sense. If your product costs 100 to make in country a and you sell it for 100 in country b, you're not having any profits. But if you want to ignore that and charge non-existing profits in your imaginary coun
794.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> My UK based company pays taxes in the UK on its profits, but a US company could come in and undercut us with the mechanisms already discussed. That's why this is a trade war between countries with different tax rates. And they don
795.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> As I asked in my reply above, why should investment in country A come at the expense of tax revenue in country B? That isn't right. That's perfectly right, unless you're suggesting that every country should have only loc
796.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Not sure I get your point. This is how accounting works, you need to allocate the actual costs of creating and operating a business. And this isn't any special for tech. Tech companies are not asking for special treatment, they are cur
797.
by ucaetano 9y ago
They do, and they frequently release the numbers (often calling it non-GAAP). The issue is that accounting is very complicated. Like really, really complicated. And that's because you're trying to make a lot of very different comp
798.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Sure, but it is up to the countries to get together and change them. If companies are paying fewer taxes by following the law, don't blame it on companies, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. I am completely in favor o
799.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> a levy on revenue isn't an awful idea if it's correctly applied, but there might be better solutions. It is a terrible idea, because it tends to favor companies that have their cost base in the country. In other words, local
800.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> profit you would have made by normal accounting standards These are normal accounting standards.
801.
by ucaetano 9y ago
That practice is not only the standard in accounting, but somewhat impossible to move out of. As I mentioned in another post: Profit is a complex calculation when talking about cross-borders. If your company spends $20B in country A, $0 in
802.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> True, in that it would better to fix the underlying problems that allow companies to pretend they have no profit Profit is a complex calculation when talking about cross-borders. If you company spends $20B in country A, $0 in country B
803.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Sure. But that doesn't have anything to do with my comment. As information goes, [A, B] is more valuable than [A], and the value of [A] declines with how many people/companies have A.
804.
by ucaetano 9y ago
Not really, data is replicable, assets aren't. So you can buy a company, strip all of its data, and resell for a similar value than you bought it for. You can't do that with asset stripping. But, on the other hand, if the data str
805.
by ucaetano 9y ago
I don't think that there's an issue with someone reading 100 reviews of a certain restaurant on the internet, and summarizing them by writing a new review: "Most people who talked about it mentioned the great salad bar, but s
806.
by ucaetano 9y ago
I added some content making it more useful, thanks for the feedback :)
807.
by ucaetano 9y ago
In other news, people are found to act in their own self interests and game whatever rules and systems are in place for their own personal advantage. Further research reached the surprising conclusion that CEOs are people too, and game the
808.
by ucaetano 9y ago
> It doesn't follow that a "single monolithic ledger" means Bitcoin is decentralized Oh, I never mentioned that. But the implication of the single, monolithic ledger is that it isn't partition-tolerant, if you don&#x2
809.
by ucaetano 9y ago
One way to do it is to think about which parts are centralized vs. distributed vs. replicated: discovery, authentication, processing, storage, files, etc. Take bitcoin, for example: the ledger is centralized (there is a single monolithic on
810.
by ucaetano 9y ago
AFAIK you can just take the source data and apply your own weightings. For example, based on your own personal spending. Also, calculating inflation can be very tricky. If every new iPhone costs the same, can you say that inflation = 0, or

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