hogwash. people should not be allowed to call ideas smart if the ideas can't be labelled the opposite way too.
I make positive contributions, I add intellectual material. I just explained how accounting works, did you understand it before I explained it? Where is your contribution to that effect?
I believe contributions should stand on their own, I don't need a reputation to support my contributions, they are that good, but my editorial voice is always the same, I'm not hiding behind different points of view: I'm not trolling.
If you don't like my contributions, no skin of my nose, I won't make them, just say so, instead of being a prig.
Bill Gates actually is a very weak intellectual who coasts on a reputation he doesn't deserve. As such, by giving bad advice, he harms the economy.
This is a really stupid idea, here's why (and this is not my opinion, this is how GAAP accounting works):
1. businesses already pay tax on their profits (if robots increase profits, that's increased taxes paid), and
2. owners of businesses pay income tax again (at a higher rate than workers, but deferred) on those same profits when they are extracted from the business (as higher salaries, dividends, capital gains, etc.)
3. if a business hires a worker and pays the worker, that money gets subtracted from the profit because it is a cost, a business expense so that subtracts from the tax the business pays and it subtracts from the income the owner of the business pays tax on.
4. instead, that labor money has taxes extracted from it when it is paid to the worker.
See? Taxing robots is nonsense.
So, you could make an argument that tax rates should go up or down, be progressive, flat, capital gains, etc. etc., but ... but ... what do you all think Congress does all the time anyway? This is the fiscal side of the Red State Blue State tug of war. What that tug of war does not need is more ill informed ideas.
(It's OK you don't know this, PP, I didn't know it before I learned it, but BG does not get a free pass...)
Bill Gates is pretty much retarded: kids, he didn't graduate from college and it shows; stay in school. I'll give $100 to anybody who can send me a link to something smart and non obvious that Bill Gates has ever said.
1. I completely understand what you mean. You missed a "higher level" point I was making.
2. in this world, companies keep business ideas for themselves and customers don't publish their needs
3. in this world (where companies keep ideas for themselves and customers don't publish needs) we also have websites like HN where libertarians tell us about the glories of free-market capitalism because it creates both wealth and cool new innovations if only the govt would get out of the way
4. they justify their beliefs on the bedrock foundation of microeconomic ideals and point to Silicon Valley unicorns as the apotheosis of free market capitalism
5. I'm simply pointing out that the assumptions of microeconomic theory entail a good bit of-what-I-will-call "informational socialist ideal assumptions" that are incompatible with disruptive unicorn wealth creation, and where you point to unicorns I see "market failures" (that's microeconomics for the failure of a market, not the failure of companies within the market)
6. The ideal you talked about is compatible with the idealized assumptions of microeconomics, and if free market champions were championing actual free market microeconomics, we would have something closer to your ideal.
7. To put it a different way: Nobody talks about the dry cleaner/auto repair shop etc. "being first to market" or keeping their product mix a secret, and life is good the way most people earn their livings. We don't need to rig our economic system to be friendly to Bill Gates getting rich, he never did anything innovative except monopolize a microcomputer revolution that was already happening.
8. Innovation would still take place (more!) as Zuck, Gates, Jobs, Brin... they'd have been perfectly happy walking away with $50 million. The billions represent damage to our economy.
9. This is not my opinion or personal ethics. This a bedrock of microeconomics, dead weight loss.
| In my ideal world, it wouldn't matter what ideas companies have. All that matters is the "needs" of customers
your "ideal world" is actually (surprisingly) the world of free market capitalism.
You see, most "free market" "private sector" types base their views on microeconomics, "let the market decide" what "the market clearing price" is, there will be no shortages, price gouging is a signal to competitors and new market entrants...
But they forget that microeconomic theory is entirely based on some assumptions and axioms, one of which is "perfect (symmetric) information", buyers, sellers, competitors, and investors are assumed to all share the same information, no secrets, and without that openness, the market will never find the market clearing price.
creating wealth is not the raison d'etre of free market capitalism; cheap and abundant goods and services for consumers is
I make positive contributions, I add intellectual material. I just explained how accounting works, did you understand it before I explained it? Where is your contribution to that effect?
I believe contributions should stand on their own, I don't need a reputation to support my contributions, they are that good, but my editorial voice is always the same, I'm not hiding behind different points of view: I'm not trolling.
If you don't like my contributions, no skin of my nose, I won't make them, just say so, instead of being a prig.
Bill Gates actually is a very weak intellectual who coasts on a reputation he doesn't deserve. As such, by giving bad advice, he harms the economy.