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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty bizarre approach; surely it would make more sense just to _tax_ them? This is for practical purposes a targeted tax anyway.

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It seems like everyone is picking a different way of extracting money from the tech companies. America seems to favor taxes, EU fines, China donations.

EU is surely for taxes. But the US tech companies try to avoid this as much as possible.

+ The fines are for breaches/violations/abuse and they are way too low to have any significant social impact.

Eg. for the fine of today, Facebook when they acquired WhatsApp:

> Facebook told the commission that it was not able to link the accounts of Facebook users and WhatsApp users.

....

Personally, I think the fines are way too low. Companies are not above the governement.

With this scheme, Alibaba still have "prerogative" on how to spend the fund, hence invest. Also, historically even Xi's poverty eradication didn't exclusively depend on the party apparatus, but also the private player which have their own strength e.g. e-commerce infrastructure like Alibaba.

A higher corporate tax would mean having to compare with other nations over a number.

I don't know. If it's actually going to happen, I somewhat like the idea. You transform the money directly into action without losing a good chunk of it in state bureaucracy, without corruption where bureaucrats hand out subsidies for favors, and probably much more quickly and efficiently.

If it happens, that is. It might also just be a way to funnel money to party apparatchiks in a more direct manner.

I mean, it's better than nothing, but it seems needlessly messy vs a supertax on giant companies.

Slush fund where Xi doesn’t even have to worry about what the CCP wants, he can just point to what his priorities are and ‘poof’ it is done.

This is a more clear and effective demonstration of Xi's power though. Keeping a company subservient out of nebulous fear enforces social order.

The rule of law lets companies hit the boundaries of what is legal without fear, and that is not the goal here.

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