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Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

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Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#151

Post by rayiner »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #80
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add in the visa/immigration issues. A large percentage of the workforce in SV is imported from outside the country. While the business wing of the Republican Party loves cheap labor, there are other wings that oppose it. Once upon a time the labor wing of the Democratic Party would have been against importing labor but the influence of that wing has waned considerably while the business wing has established itself in…

> " A large percentage of the workforce in SV is imported from outside the country. " Imported mostly from East and South Asia, from very socially conservative cultures. I wouldn't be so quick to assume that they're necessarily aligned with the Democrats.

They mostly are, although this is a recent phenomenon. Growing up in the 1990s, Indians/etc. in my area we heavily republican, consistent with their higher income levels and general social conservatism. In the 1996 election Asians went for Dole by a slightly larger margin than white people. But today, Asians vote Democrat at a higher rate than Hispanics.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#152

Post by foogazi »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #54

What a surprise. I'd love to be a billionaire, but I like Sanders opinions about whether they should exist. I'd love to be worth enough for it to hurt me, but I like Warren's wealth tax idea. I'd love to pay lower taxes, or less progressive taxes, but I'm happy to support those less fortunate. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a single-issue voter! Perhaps most controversially, I think altruism is good for society. S…

No one votes or acts against their interests

People have different interests or motivations

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#153

Post by dlp211 »

rayiner wrote: post #149
dlp211 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America subjects you to tax as long as you remain a US citizen, and we have an exit tax. Simply moving to another country does not absolve one of their burden unlike in the EU. I don't know what economic freedom means, but the last time I checked, the US is doing just fine in the Capital department. And a VAT is highly unpopular.

Giving up US citizenship is pretty easy. “Economic freedom” means a legal and regulatory environment that encourages relatively unfettered economic development. It generally means low taxes on corporations and capital, strong enforcement of property rights, and streamlined regulations. While the US is doing well on that front relative to say Bangladesh, it’s falling behind the other Anglosphere countries (U.K., Canad…

> Giving up US citizenship is pretty easy.

Easy yes, cheap no.

Considering that Hong Kong is at the top of that list, it tells me that maybe "economic freedom" is not necessarily the thing to optimize for.

Or to put it in other terms, I don't believe that any singular -ism is the solution.

> As to VAT being “unpopular”—that’s a very odd statement.

How is that odd? We have an economy driven heavily by consumption, a VAT would make everything more expensive and would be seen as a tax on the poor and middle class.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#154

Post by dilyevsky »

skybrian wrote: post #26
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #16

Breaking up big tech companies is undoubtedly good for the workers, create more competition in hiring. It would probably send money downwards and be a huge boon to innovation tbh.

Well, maybe. But on the other hand, the biggest tech companies seem to pay the most? Why is that?

Because nobody would work there otherwise (edit: given the choice ofc).

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#155

Post by Viliam1234 »

twobat wrote: post #35
skybrian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe. But on the other hand, the biggest tech companies seem to pay the most? Why is that?

At least in my region (Eastern Europe) the question is: why is it that the smaller companies can't pay a living wage?

I have a mathematical model that would explain this behavior, but I have no idea how much it corresponds to reality.

Imagine that there is a psychological line that most bosses want to reach, for example "to become a millionaire". This desire is the same whether you live in a richer or poorer country, and whether you have twenty or two thousand employees. The word "millionaire" is simply a magical word which does not automatically adjust to e.g. "3.2-million-aire" just because you have more employees or live in a different country. Also, "millionaire" these days in Eastern Europe refers to million euro, just like in Western Europe, and not much different from million dollars in USA, i.e. it is country-independent.

Now if we assume that the million is a fixed psychological goal, this is easier to reach in a large company than in a small one. If you have two thousand employees, you need to make 500 euro per employee. If you are okay with becoming a millionaire in five years, that's 100 euro per employee per year, which is barely noticable. But if you have twenty employees, during five years it makes 10 000 euro per employee per year. They are going to feel that. (Also, the higher the costs and average salaries in a country, the less the employees will feel those 100 or 10 000 euro per year.)

According to this model, employees in small companies in Eastern Europe should be paid very little. But their bosses should still become rich.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#156

Post by rayiner »

dlp211 wrote: post #153
rayiner wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving up US citizenship is pretty easy. “Economic freedom” means a legal and regulatory environment that encourages relatively unfettered economic development. It generally means low taxes on corporations and capital, strong enforcement of property rights, and streamlined regulations. While the US is doing well on that front relative to say Bangladesh, it’s falling behind the other Anglosphere countries (U.K., Canad…

> Giving up US citizenship is pretty easy. Easy yes, cheap no. Considering that Hong Kong is at the top of that list, it tells me that maybe "economic freedom" is not necessarily the thing to optimize for. Or to put it in other terms, I don't believe that any singular -ism is the solution. > As to VAT being “unpopular”—that’s a very odd statement. How is that odd? We have an economy driven heavily by consumption, a V…

> Considering that Hong Kong is at the top of that list, it tells me that maybe "economic freedom" is not necessarily the thing to optimize for.

It certainly seems like one of the dimensions to optimize for, considering that also ahead of the U.S. on that list are pretty great places like Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand. Also Singapore and Taiwan, places that went from poverty to prosperity in a couple of generations thanks to economic freedom.

> How is that odd? We have an economy driven heavily by consumption, a VAT would make everything more expensive and would be seen as a tax on the poor and middle class.

It's odd to say that something that has been universally adopted by the liberal democracies of every other OECD country is "unpopular."

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#157

Post by option »

toast0 wrote: post #139
deevolution wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you break up alphabet?they will just move their corporation over seas, set up in africa and avoid any monopoly breakers. The government has no power over these companies. They would have to raid the offices and send the ceo to prison before alphabet agrees to break their monopoly.

Restructuring the company as Alphabet with a set of subsidiaries was a start to setting up lines to divide the company along. The way to divide up Google is into the ad network, the search engine, operating systems, and everything else. Allow them to contract each other on public FRAND terms to start with, but setup annual reviews to consider a bigger hammer. If they play games with moving house to avoid jurisdiction…

you do understand that ad network pays for search engine, right? And operating systems isn’t exactly a profit generator either...

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#158

Post by vidarh »

abalone wrote: post #94
vidarh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarianism started on the far left - The "original libertarian", the anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacque, attacked Proudhon, the "original anarchist" for being a "moderate anarchist, liberal, but not libertarian" for his regressive views on women. Right-libertarianism was an attempt to unite the libertarian parts of the left with socially liberal elements on the right against authoritarian ideologies; their main di…

> Right-libertarianism was an attempt to unite the libertarian parts of the left with socially liberal elements on the right against authoritarian ideologies; their main distinction are views on property rights I don't think this is correct at all. What's called right libertarianism or laissez-faire capitalism emerged in the mid 20th century (e.g. Ayn Rand). It stole the term which had historically been a left term a…

It was Murray Rothbard that popularised the use of the term libertarian on the right. Rand very explicitly rejected the label when faced with it. You're right that she is an important figure for right-libertarians, but she was highly critical of them. The use of the term on the right somewhat predates Rothbard - e.g. Mencken used it, but never pushed the term publicly.

Rothbard, while highly critical of the left, did very explicitly seek some sort of rapprochement with left-libertarians. E.g. see "Left and Right: A Journal of Liberterian Thought" [1]. Here's a retrospective at the Mises institute[2] (with the caveat that it's the Mises Institute..).

While I sympathise with some of your criticism of right-libertarianism; I find their fetishistic approach to property rights highly flawed, for example, at the same time there are a lot of right-libertarians who are much more moderate and accept and understand the need for trade-offs rather than the kind of absolutist approach to property rights that e.g. Rand pushes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_and_Right:_A_Journal_of_L...

[2] https://mises.org/library/rothbards-left-and-right-forty-yea...

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#159

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

zozbot234 wrote: post #66
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #54

What a surprise. I'd love to be a billionaire, but I like Sanders opinions about whether they should exist. I'd love to be worth enough for it to hurt me, but I like Warren's wealth tax idea. I'd love to pay lower taxes, or less progressive taxes, but I'm happy to support those less fortunate. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a single-issue voter! Perhaps most controversially, I think altruism is good for society. S…

Wealth taxes are actually bad for society, and especially bad for altruistic people who care about the less fortunate. A wealth tax is a tax on capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it hugely hurts those who need capital the most. If you care about lowering inequality without hurting folks more than you have to, what you want is a mildly-progressive consumption tax. (I.e. an income t…

Capital being slightly more expensive for individuals worth $50M or more, is a far cry from "capital is more expensive." Capital being cheaper for the 99.9% of people at the bottom than it is for the 0.01% at the top actually seems like a good thing.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#160

Post by fmajid »

deevolution wrote: post #128
dickeytk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between big companies and monopolies. Big companies will likely always be the ones offering the highest salaries and they'll always exist. Once they monopolize the labor market though: they'll no longer have a need to offer those wages as high (even if they're the highest within the market).

How do you break up alphabet?they will just move their corporation over seas, set up in africa and avoid any monopoly breakers. The government has no power over these companies. They would have to raid the offices and send the ceo to prison before alphabet agrees to break their monopoly.

Structural separation: you can't run a search engine and at the same time services that are the subject of it. For Amazon, you can't run the marketplace and at the same time sell own-brand (AmazonBasics) products. For Apple you can't run the app store and also sell apps.

It's in Warren's program, although of course the devil is in the details. Lina Khan is the thought leader on these issues (I am sure there are others, but like Hal Varian and Carl Shapiro, they tend to get coopted by the monopolists).

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