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Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

I see it from a different, but quite related, perspective (maybe unpopular in HN as this comes from a left-wing mindset that seems to be outside the Overton window in many places, and particularly in the US).

If things get automated so much that a company ends up being a few guys in suits collecting the profits while the robots do the work, the governments might as well expropiate it. At that point, whatever the company does has been trivialized so much that the usual advantages of the private sector (competitiveness, etc.) become moot. If it also creates no jobs, there isn't really much to lose for the state (and thus its citizens) from expropiating it and using the profits to give citizens a living wage (be it for working or just a guaranteed wage like an UBI).

And then there's no need to tax the robots, the money goes to the state anyway.

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I am really impressed with how you take the generally accepted wisdom of, "the government is less efficient that private industry" and then add if this organisation is so robotically efficient then the logic against governments doesn't apply.

It's an interesting piece in the puzzle of how to make society work when AGI and robots take our jerbs.

The wisdom of, "private sector is more efficient than government" only applies when there are market incentives for efficiency: Specifically, there must be competing private businesses to lower costs, and the market consumers must not suffer from extreme negative consequences (e.g. death or homelessness) for refusing to participate.

>"private sector is more efficient than government" only applies when there are market incentives for efficiency

OTOH, depending on the government and the tax rate, the incentive for inefficiency in government itself can overwhelm any existing efficiency or incentive for that kind of thing elsewhere.

Then nobody will bother starting new automated businesses – in your jurisdiction, at least. Just like I didn't start a company in my home country, where any reasonably successful business will be “expropriated” (although the beneficiaries will be some oligarch friends of Putin in this case).

No one will start them if no one can buy the products. You are just being a drain on local resources. Few companies produce no waste, no noise, use no electricity, use no water, make no use of roads... and so on. Your company is simply exploiting the land and resources without bringing value to the folks that live there - and that is the point.

Act like you are part of the community and wider world you live in or don't be in business, in other words.

No one will start them if they are not profitable. [1] So yeah, you can tax those a little bit, but there's some threshold. And starting a business elsewhere is an option for an automated company, so if it's more profitable (or convenient, or reputable) to do it people will do it.

Point in case #1: Delaware. No corporate income tax, favorable court system, and no questions from your business partners have made it the preferred state for US startups nowadays.

Point in case #2: Estonia and its e-Residency program. No corporate income tax, fully digital company registration and management even for foreigners, and absolute minimum of bureaucracy for SMBs (admin time is like 1 hr/year, to fill out an annual report). Not sure why we don't see more companies registered there.

[1]: If you start a business that you know for sure wouldn't bring you profit, you're starting a non-profit :^)

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And of course, in the country you live in, you're also paying income taxes on your salary, and VAT on your purchases. (I'm paying mine all right, in case you're wondering.) I don't like the notion that you must pay taxes to be considered ”bringing value to the community”, but it's not like you as a business owner can avoid taxes completely anyway.

> a few guys in suits collecting the profits while the robots do the work, the governments might as well expropiate it.

i dont think the logic follows.

Those "few guys" are the people who put up the risk capital. If the risk pans out, and they succeed, only to get their reward expropriated, then why would anyone ever take that risk?

Corporate taxes should be sufficient.

Not my downvote, but,

>Corporate taxes should be sufficient.

As we have seen, these type of taxes on predatory corporations are proven insufficient to curtail the predatory activity.

If this was corrected, then non-predatory corporations and ordinary workers would not need to be taxed at all once a jurisdiction had reached a certain level of prosperity overall.

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