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EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

juliareda.eu

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Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#191

Post by scotty79 »

nickpp wrote: post #112
scotty79 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There comes a point when the compliance costs exceed the economic surplus available to cover them. If something is not worth doing right maybe it shouldn't be done at all? You are making the same point, opponents of minimum wage. "But I'll go out of business!!!" If your business is that bad, than maybe you should!

Or business will pass the compliance costs to the consumer, thus raising price for all. Those breaking the law and not complying will have a competitive advantage, as well as those large enough to spread the compliance costs over all their production. And thus the raise of the regulation-loving mega-corporation. Wages are the price of work as established by the free market. Minimum wage in effect eliminates less comp…

> ... being robbed by the dignity and opportunities of a paid job ...

Why don't you work for below minimum wage and relate to us what dignity and opportunities it provides.

I worked as a developer and I didn't get any additional dignity from the fact that the job was paid. I got the exactly same dignity when I got same money (and more) for doing nothing.

As for opportunities I don't think there are many in below minimum wage jobs, people tend to describe them as "dead end jobs".

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#192

Post by scotty79 »

chmod775 wrote: post #159
nickpp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or business will pass the compliance costs to the consumer, thus raising price for all. Those breaking the law and not complying will have a competitive advantage, as well as those large enough to spread the compliance costs over all their production. And thus the raise of the regulation-loving mega-corporation. Wages are the price of work as established by the free market. Minimum wage in effect eliminates less comp…

Edit: I thought my parent poster was the same as my grandparent's parent. I removed a paragraph aimed at the latter. Sorry! [...] Just because people earn less and have less money, the economic output in goods won't change. Goods will simply become cheaper. What really matters is WHERE the money is removed from the system because companies/individuals supposedly hoard it, pay low wages, or cost of compliance is high.…

> They may need to hire two additional people or change their manufacturing process to a more expensive one to comply with some safety standards and whatnot. The good might become slightly more expensive compared to other goods, and some economic output will be lost.

It won't be lost. It goes toward preventing work related injury, or harm to the customer. It basically prevents manufacturer from dodging social cost his enterprise impairs on workers, customers and people who live nearby. This way it can be and is included in the price and also it's cheaper altogether because it's almost always to prevent then to treat.

Regulation can save everybody's money.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#193

Post by nickpp »

scotty79 wrote: post #191
nickpp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or business will pass the compliance costs to the consumer, thus raising price for all. Those breaking the law and not complying will have a competitive advantage, as well as those large enough to spread the compliance costs over all their production. And thus the raise of the regulation-loving mega-corporation. Wages are the price of work as established by the free market. Minimum wage in effect eliminates less comp…

> ... being robbed by the dignity and opportunities of a paid job ... Why don't you work for below minimum wage and relate to us what dignity and opportunities it provides. I worked as a developer and I didn't get any additional dignity from the fact that the job was paid. I got the exactly same dignity when I got same money (and more) for doing nothing. As for opportunities I don't think there are many in below mini…

I did. That fist job barely covered food but it taught me how to behave, how to listen and how to work with others. The opportunities and connections it offered put me on the path that took me where I am today. I would’ve done it for free.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#194

Post by charleslmunger »

kuschku wrote: post #66
jpetso wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should it be necessary, this kind of feature is better implemented in the user agent. I'm fairly certain I saw link prefetch+preview extensions for Firefox ~10 years ago. I'd rather avoid that; sending fingerprintable information to random websites linked from e.g. a search result page or an article seems like a great way to unnecessarily expose myself to being tracked and abused in all kinds of ways.

Providing a wouldn't give any tracking capability that doesn't already give.

That's true, but I don't know of anyone who does link previews via iframe.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#195

Post by scotty79 »

nickpp wrote: post #193
scotty79 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... being robbed by the dignity and opportunities of a paid job ... Why don't you work for below minimum wage and relate to us what dignity and opportunities it provides. I worked as a developer and I didn't get any additional dignity from the fact that the job was paid. I got the exactly same dignity when I got same money (and more) for doing nothing. As for opportunities I don't think there are many in below mini…

I did. That fist job barely covered food but it taught me how to behave, how to listen and how to work with others. The opportunities and connections it offered put me on the path that took me where I am today. I would’ve done it for free.

> I would’ve done it for free.

Are you sure? If you didn't have a job (because there weren't enough business good enough to pay minimum wage) but had your basic needs paid for (through basic income) wouldn't you want anything more for yourself? Wouldn't you seek connections and new skills? Probably some people wouldn't, but you?

Are you sure that you owe where you are today only to someone buying lots of your time for a price below reasonable minimum wage?

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#196

Post by nickpp »

scotty79 wrote: post #195
nickpp wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. That fist job barely covered food but it taught me how to behave, how to listen and how to work with others. The opportunities and connections it offered put me on the path that took me where I am today. I would’ve done it for free.

> I would’ve done it for free. Are you sure? If you didn't have a job (because there weren't enough business good enough to pay minimum wage) but had your basic needs paid for (through basic income) wouldn't you want anything more for yourself? Wouldn't you seek connections and new skills? Probably some people wouldn't, but you? Are you sure that you owe where you are today only to someone buying lots of your time fo…

Very sure. If I had UBI I would’ve stayed home, played video games and jerked off.

That first job taught me the value of work, the value of my time, how to get others to give me what I needed in exchange of me giving them what they wanted. Taught me how the world works.

Finally it was a huge motivator to improve - through hard work.

No government-assured income would have been able to give me all that.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#197

Post by greglindahl »

shakna wrote: post #104
pjc50 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would start a new search engine in this day and age? You'd need some really unique features which Google can't duplicate, and the only one which seems to have made it is DDG with their privacy promise.

There's one at the bottom of this page, Angolia. There's a small space for niche search engines, for sites, wikis, blogs.

Yelp apparently has a billion dollars of search ad revenue, so maybe it's not small.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#198

Post by AnthonyMouse »

chmod775 wrote: post #187
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because people earn less and have less money, the economic output in goods won't change. Goods will simply become cheaper. Wait, what? That is obviously not what happens. If 100K people lose their jobs, they have less money which means they buy less stuff. But nobody is going to materially change prices as a result of what 100K people do out of 300M. Those 100K people are just screwed. > Criminals always had a…

> But that's what would happen regardless if the human worker could find another job that pays more than the one being automated. The issue is that the human worker would prefer $5/hour to unemployment, and the employer would prefer a $5/hour employee to automation but prefer automation to an $8/hour employee, so an $8 minimum wage puts the employee on the unemployment line. Putting people who perform work we can do…

> Putting people who perform work we can do cheaper with automation on the unemployment line is a side-effect of a good thing. Think of what the first wave of industrialization brought us.

In that case we should be taxing wages and using the money to subsidize automation. That way it's everyone paying for the benefits of automation rather than only those at the very bottom.

> People can now invest time learning skills they're actually needed for, without reducing economic output (and later supplementing it).

But they could already do this without a minimum wage. There is no law against quitting your crappy job so you can learn a new trade.

> Honestly? Rather than slaving away at McDonalds working for 7 dollars an hour, effectively kissing the ass of that horrible company, just to receive government aid anyways to get me to the end of the month I'd just not work at all.

Again, if people actually believed this and unemployment is really better than a crappy job then why don't they quit?

> Just because you introduce a minimum wage restaurants and junk food chains aren't going to go away.

They do at the margin. A restaurant in the heart of New York City is not going to close on account of raising the minimum wage. One in rural Nebraska very well might.

> They're gonna get more expensive, sure.

...which hurts their low income customers. And wasn't the benefit of automation supposed to be lower prices? That doesn't work when you force the automation by prohibiting its competition.

> But you'll lessen the burden they create on society

How does causing them to lose their jobs lessen the burden they create on society?

> What's really gonna happen is that it'll now sell for $110. Or probably $115 to cover the advertising for the new "High quality ingredients! Now 95% less poisonous!"

At which point the higher price causes price-sensitive customers to drop out of the market and the smaller company fails for lack of volume rather than lack of margins. Either way the smaller company is more likely to be destroyed than the larger one.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#199

Post by AnthonyMouse »

scotty79 wrote: post #192
chmod775 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: I thought my parent poster was the same as my grandparent's parent. I removed a paragraph aimed at the latter. Sorry! [...] Just because people earn less and have less money, the economic output in goods won't change. Goods will simply become cheaper. What really matters is WHERE the money is removed from the system because companies/individuals supposedly hoard it, pay low wages, or cost of compliance is high.…

> They may need to hire two additional people or change their manufacturing process to a more expensive one to comply with some safety standards and whatnot. The good might become slightly more expensive compared to other goods, and some economic output will be lost. It won't be lost. It goes toward preventing work related injury, or harm to the customer. It basically prevents manufacturer from dodging social cost hi…

> It won't be lost. It goes toward preventing work related injury, or harm to the customer.

That's the surplus, not the economic output. To know whether that is a net positive you would have to know what would have happened to it in the alternative. The customer might have paid less and then used the money to pay for something important like medicine or education.

But the economic output is separate from that. The issue there isn't that the customer has to pay more, it's that the amount the customer has to pay is now too much and they drop out of the market. Then they don't get the product -- and if the product was something important like medicine or education, that's quite problematic. And the makers of the product also lose that business, which reduces the total amount of surplus that exists to do meritorious things with. And the government loses the tax revenue. That kind of dead weight economic loss is very bad.

Re: EU censorship machines and link tax laws are nearing the finish line

#200

Post by deadlocked »

Keverw wrote: post #126

So if you link to a website, you are suppose to pay the website you linked to money? That is insane... I hope this doesn't passes or I'm misunderstanding somthing. Links pointing to something is helpful for search engine ranking, plus every link is free traffic basically... Linking seems like a good thing and beneficial to the website and other parties too. I'm sure someone who's article gets on the front page of HN…

From what I understand, 'link' is a misnomer; linking to an article is fine and always will be.

If you do a search on Google for, to use a topical example, the repeal of the 8th amendment to Ireland's constitution, the results are likely to include links to news and Wikipedia articles, as well as excerpts from those articles. This is what the directive is intended to address, the principle being that if the pertinent information is included in the excerpts on the search-engine results page, why would I bother following the link to read the full article?

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