2,601 karma · joined March 2, 2009
It isn't enough to have resources in the ground. They are worth zero until extracted and turned into products and services. And for that you need technology, companies and entrepreneurs.
When you tax "the shit out of rich people" that's what you lose. You can do it exactly one time - next time you won't have what to tax.
They do, through second order effects. Read up on them.
> Customers don’t care.
Of course we care. We get attached to the brands we buy and value the services and products they provide. And most of all we care about reduced competition.
Besides, a vicious cycle in which antitrust creates monopolies to only take them down later is a nightmare for consumers.
Incumbents by definition. Besides, crushing your local businesses in favor of foreign competition is not a very smart strategy.
> boutiques and lifestyle businesses
Which are also obeying startups laws and thus are simply not started under an onerous regulatory regime.
Haha, you’ve never built a startup have you? Try it and let me know how easy it is to become incumbent. :)
Which won’t be any new business, since you know, no startups. So we’ll patronize whatever state-granted too-big-to-fail monopolist is left and then whine for more regulations when their planes fall from the sky.
Which no startups have. So, antitrust favors incumbents, of course.
> money they've made operating in the competitive space cleared out
Again, not startups. It’s incumbents that take advantage of opportunities like that.
Can't outlaw them - we still need them to quickly inform & educate the masses. The governments will definitely use them even if just for "good" purposes. Who will define "good" though? In a world without ads people will not build an immunity and any ad will have such an effect that the temptation to use it will become irresistible to anybody in power. And mark my words: they'll use them for worse stuff than smoking and eating.
Also, we'll loose all ad-supported free stuff. And there is a lot there, like pretty much all media. The poor will be the most affected, too, since stuff can be paid with money or attention and they have no money.
> Tobacco industry
I don't know any smoker that is not aware of the dangers. But what they get out of it makes it worth it to them. Believe it or not, most people do not live to maximize their life expectancy, they have other criteria as well - like pleasure or enjoyment of life. Otherwise everybody would start their day with 4 hours in the gym and walk everywhere.
> After advertisement was abolished, Tabacco use went down significantly.
I'm sure there were many other measures taken as well.
> the obesity epidemic [...] believe advertisement has something to do with it
How about the food pyramid pushed by governments that was full on processed carbs? How about the vilification of fat & meat made by the medical establishment I believe? How about people naturally choosing comfort and pleasure over hard work and restraint? How about partners working both with little time left to chop and cook at home?
I doubt you need ads to explain the obesity epidemic.
> I've never seen an ad for not eating. I've never seen an ad for not buying a pair of shoes.
Because we must eat and have shoes - we can't not buy food or shoes. None of those ads made me buy, they just influenced my purchase decision. And I see plenty of ads for health advisors and nutrition experts that tell me to eat more veggies and less sugar. Maybe they are not on main stream media, but alternative media is full of them.
> The trick is getting them to do it and letting them believe they made the choice.
If I wanted to protect my kids from that, I would expose them to more ads, not less. Because they would be even more vulnerable to ads if they saw fewer of them.
I believe that for the best ideas to win, we need to debate more, read more and learn more - not to burn the "bad" books.
Do you have a concrete advice on how to deal with ideological tangents like the "late stage capitalism" meme? Flagging obviously doesn't work. Answering it is frowned upon (it's "feeding it").
Finally just ignoring it would leave a HN full of leftist ideas and anti-capitalism snark. They are already here, heavily upvoted. Is that something you want? HN is a gathering place for hackers but it also educates and inspires. An HN where businesses are the bad guys and capitalism evil is not an HN that inspires startups and founders. So my question is: what do you want and recommend?
Thank you!
It's only debatable among people who never built a business in their life, not not among entrepreneurs.
> Microsoft falling prey to antitrust only led to a new generation
The slap on the wrist Microsoft received with the antitrust action was completely inconsequential on the subject matter (browser bundling) but managed to discourage the company and thus reduced competition exactly when we needed it the most: at the onset of the mobile wars which were fought and won by companies already founded at the time of the lawsuit - instead of startups. Because regulation favors the incumbents. Always.
And you can't count the unfounded startups but I am not happy with the state of competition in today's high-tech scene. I remember when there were dozens of compiler, word-processor, spreadsheet, OS and microcomputer companies competing in the 80s and 90s. I blame it squarely on government regulation: the Microsoft lawsuit and Sarbanes-Oxley. Their chilling effect on startup creation was clearly visible in the 00's.
The value captured by the owners is a tiny slice of the value provided to the society. For example, the value I get from my iPhone is much much greater than the money I pay for it - it's just logical, I simply wouldn't buy it otherwise.
And the value received by the owners is the well deserved reward for creating the business - a very hard and low chance of success endeavor - but essential to our society.
Everything in my life is created by private businesses: from the clothes on my back, the food I eat, the car I drive, the house I live in to the computer I earn my living and write this on.
I lived in a society without private businesses, under communism, and everybody was cold and starving.
Any private business's primary mission is to serve its customers - in order to even exist.
The end result will be even less competition and more monopolies - inviting additional government intervention in a vicious cycle that ends up with only large, incumbent, too-big-to-fail corporations on an overregulated market. Like how it's in the EU for example. Or the aerospace industry in the US.
Politicians are quite happy with this state of things since their role is expanding and everyone is asking for their help. The ones suffering are, of course, the consumers having fewer and crappier choices...
And I care about every single business since I know that the more competition there is - the better and cheaper the products and services will be.
Ever heard of second order effects and chilling effect of regulation?
But does that mean that they control me? Only if this information comes from only one side and is well integrated in my regular trusted information streams overwhelming my defenses. Like propaganda. Or a Guru. Or an academic institution.
Ads on the other hand are quite easily defeated because they are both clearly delimited and coming from numerous, competing directions. In a world without Ads I would be very vulnerable to them. In our world though they are reduced to a more utilitarian function: to inform me. They tell me what options are out there, what is available and how to get it if I so choose.
I don't think they can "make me" do anything against my own interest or even change my mind. They can merely inform me and I have no problem with that.
Ever bought something you didn't actually want? Were you persuaded to want something? What was the exact mechanism? Were you lied to? "Made to" somehow?
> net positive for the world
How exactly do you find out what is "net positive for the world"? Who assigns the the values and who does the tallying?
It is usually quickly followed by dictatorship though, since force must be used to keep people living under it. Otherwise productive people will naturally pursue prosperity for themselves and their loved ones, which leads straight to capitalism.
But I guess without a serious study my belief is hard to check & validate.
Capitalism is the only one that brought plenty - because there is an incentive to do so.
I do know excellent engineers working solely remote. Not on my team though, and they are freelancing contractors. Different organizations, different dynamics.