Live data from Hacker News

Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

proton.me

61–70 of 163 posts

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#61
post #40

The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison. If that is not possible give them the oligarch experience; frozen assets, interpol warrant, etc. It makes no sense that breaking the law gives milder consequences just as long as your crime is transnational and very extensive in scope.

Why not higher fines? % of profit that increases each time?

Once you reach a certain level of wealth, fines are no longer consequential. When you can restructure both your corporate and personal assets to span multiple countries with different regulations and poor cooperation, you've effective avoided them.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#62
post #40

The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison. If that is not possible give them the oligarch experience; frozen assets, interpol warrant, etc. It makes no sense that breaking the law gives milder consequences just as long as your crime is transnational and very extensive in scope.

Why not higher fines? % of profit that increases each time?

because they will make you (the end user) pay the bill by increasing prices?

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#63
post #38

from the article: > As of seven days and three hours into 2024, they had already earned enough revenue to pay it all off. revenue is not the same as profit. this is basic stuff. from the same article: > Still, revenue is a more accurate depiction of a company’s size and profitability. it seems like this is rookie hour. then we look at the author's previous posts: https://proton.me/blog/big-tech-ipef With new trade de…

The moment people fail to differentiate between revenue and profit, one can safely ignore the rest of the article.

I don't think TFA failed to differentiate revenue and profit, though. I think the point is these companies have enough revenue to pay off the fines, and 358 days to return to profitability for the year, even starting out with an operating loss.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#64

The concept of a corporation is fundamentally unjust. It doesn't make sense that there are entities which have more rights than people. If I do a crime, I go to jail. If a corporation does a crime, they only need to pay a small fine. Not to mention that they have many thousands of people working for them doing crimes on their behalf for which are never caught and never punished. Just the scale of a corporation, makes…

> The concept of a corporation is fundamentally unjust. No it is not. The benefits of the current system are enormous, incomprehensibly enormous. The quality of life enjoyed by the average person even in developing countries would have been unimaginable by many measures to people living just a few centuries ago. All the little first world boys whining on social media are perfectly happy to have clean water to drink,…

> The benefits of the current system are enormous, incomprehensibly enormous.

I completely disagree. You're conflating the benefits of technological innovation which are substantial with the benefits of socio-economic and legal 'innovation' which are non-existent and in fact negative.

It's like there is a really good horse but it's covered in parasites; e.g. ticks and you're praising the parasites for helping the horse win the race. It won in spite of the ticks, not because of them.

If you look at the west (e.g. US, Europe) in the 1800s and 1900s, most families could buy a nice house with land on just one income without even taking on debt. They could achieve this even while there were world wars going on and far less advanced technology than we have today.

The narrative about things improving for developing countries (or any other country) is nonsense. It's thinly veiled propaganda, just like ESG and Wokeism. If things were improving in developing countries, why would people from these countries be trying to immigrate to the west in unprecedented numbers today, even while the west itself is clearly declining? The GDP per capita of essentially all African countries is as low as ever. Only China has been doing well; but that's only because the west gave them a monopoly on manufacturing at its own expense due to short term thinking; which happens to be incentivized by corporate bonus structures in the west.

I don't even want to start talking about the media and how it interacts with big corporations and big government... But it would explain why you think everything is going great; all while an increasing number of people, highly skilled people are living in poverty. The level of deception in the media is unlike anything we've ever experienced before.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#65

If we convert the metric to net income | Alphabet | 4 days 20 hrs 6 mins | | Amazon | 1 day 12 hrs 58 mins | | Apple | 0 day 18 hrs 14 mnins | | Meta | 18 days 17 hrs 19 mins | | Microsoft | 0 day 9 hrs 4 mins | Total: 26 days 5 hrs 40 mins

Congrats, you just discovered percentage calculation...

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#66
post #40

The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison. If that is not possible give them the oligarch experience; frozen assets, interpol warrant, etc. It makes no sense that breaking the law gives milder consequences just as long as your crime is transnational and very extensive in scope.

> The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison

Agreed. But law-makers and politicians in charge of the judiciary have been bought. Laws and the enforcement of them won't change any time soon

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#67
post #40

The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison. If that is not possible give them the oligarch experience; frozen assets, interpol warrant, etc. It makes no sense that breaking the law gives milder consequences just as long as your crime is transnational and very extensive in scope.

There is saying of Muhammad at least Imran Khan (Pakistan former prime minister) keeps reciting/saying that its Muhammad saying that nations have died/have destroyed themselves when the laws for the rich were different from the laws for the poor. I feel sometimes US is going through something like this poor people go to jail for doing things rich/ruling class pay a fine for and it is causing anti state feelings to emerge from different parts of the populace. So far the discontented are separate movements divided along race, education and party lines. But they are mostly asking for the same thing better lives.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#68

If we convert the metric to net income | Alphabet | 4 days 20 hrs 6 mins | | Amazon | 1 day 12 hrs 58 mins | | Apple | 0 day 18 hrs 14 mnins | | Meta | 18 days 17 hrs 19 mins | | Microsoft | 0 day 9 hrs 4 mins | Total: 26 days 5 hrs 40 mins

> Total: 26 days 5 hrs 40 mins

What's the significance of adding up together the rows? Time passes simultaneously for all these companies.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment people fail to differentiate between revenue and profit, one can safely ignore the rest of the article.

I don't think TFA failed to differentiate revenue and profit, though. I think the point is these companies have enough revenue to pay off the fines, and 358 days to return to profitability for the year, even starting out with an operating loss.

And now you are mixing free cash flow, with revenue, with profits...

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#70
post #49
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you imagine adding additional fine to shareholders? Like a reverse dividend? I wonder what disasters or blesses this will cause

Hmm, could we apply a fine to share. Either as fixed amount or percentage at time it is transacted on next time. Basically make them partially non-fungible... So fine is applied at end of some day. Now all shares are marked. And when they are sold next time this fine is paid.

Because as a shareholder, I have zero influence on whether or not the company violates laws?
Post reply on HN