[simonh]

>(e.g.: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc.) aren't running to make the internet free and open but to squeeze out more profit margins for their respective shareholders and nothing more.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" - Adam Smith, 1776.

[TheOtherHobbes]

"It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter II.

[simonh]

Another excellent Smith quote with which I fully agree, and one often overlooked by avowed Smith fans, though I don't see it's immediate applicability to the issue at hand.

[rusk]

If you made such a statement unquoted you’d be branded populist

[C1sc0cat]

Hard left socialist in the USA

[isostatic]

What does rich mean? High revenue? High profits? High wealth?

[onion2k]

Yes, all of those things.

[isostatic]

Currently only high revenue is taxed (at a personal level). Wealth isn't taxed. At least not in the UK. I guess in the U.S income tax deductions mean it's skewed a little more to profit rather than revenue.