[jclos]

As a fellow Frenchman I agree. Now don't get me wrong, I am for high taxes, high social safety nets, public universities, public healthcare, and even public maintenance of the arts. I am also for public money helping promote French culture and language. But the way French cinema is incentivised is a scam on the public, it just contributes to old dinosaurs putting out garbage movies to put money in the pocket of the same big name French actors, and taking a cut in the process to fill their own pockets. I would prefer that that money was put up in the form of investment for independent filmmakers, or just diverted towards our crumbling universities.

[koolba]

What does it mean to be for "high taxes"? I'm for the government taxing enough to pay for whatever services it's offering but that should be as low as possible.

Governments are an extreme example of any other bureaucracy. They always find a way to spend every dollar they're collecting and usually more than that too.

[jclos]

I see what you mean, I expressed myself badly. Obviously the government should not be wasting the money it is collecting, and they should be taxing just enough so that they can fund the services they offer. What I mean is that I am not for cutting the number of those services just for the sake of saving a few euros.

[Radim]

How magnanimous! Such a generous heart.

The problem with socialism is, you eventually run out of other people's money.

[jclos]

How does the social ownership of means of production even relate to what we are talking about? Or are you referring to social policies in general? In which case there are multiple models of market-based socialism, in which social benefits (public healthcare, public education, public transport, government-subsidized housing) are used to boost individuals' purchasing power (they are healthy, they can work better jobs, they can be more flexible with where they live) and inject that money into the economy by keeping a happy, healthy and educated population.

[sametmax]

I'm sorry, I can't hear you, the sound of the US administrations declaring bankruptcy is too loud.

[koolba]

Swinging things back to startups, apparently that's the problem with a lot of SV business models as well.

"You're losing money on every order?!"

"Sure but we make it up in volume!"