[kubb]

In my impression, a lot of people here hold a surprisingly contradictory set of beliefs. They're huge fans of the current economic system, where the main actors are publicly owned companies, and where we rely on profits growing YOY to generate wealth for everyone (who owns the stocks).

And, on the other hand, they're critical of Google which is operating precisely as such a company, and doing exactly what it needs for its profits to grow YOY.

Google is being lead by an MBA, has a very extensive management class, and employs a lot of people. The only way to be a lead and earn good money is to have people under you. The structure of Google is very analogous to other companies in the same sector.

Frequently there's no other behavior that would make sense for Google to exhibit. The job of all the execs in the company is revenue growth.

Could you enlighten me here? Maybe I can update my model with your feedback? Do you believe that you can somehow have your cake (infinite growth) and eat it too (ethical companies which care about the community when the profit margins get slim)?

[fulafel]

Also the elephant in the headline - facilitating mass air travel is of course facilitating the climate catastrophe. Watching megaorps debate about the market rules of how to optimize this harmful activity is its own special kind of grotesque.

[ivan_gammel]

I personally do not own Google shares directly, it’s mostly ETFs. I do not care much about Google and would rather prefer the portfolio to be diverse enough, meaning that there’s enough competition on the market and enough other companies worth investing. We do not need monopolies to prosper, because they reduce the size of the pie. Any fan of free market would agree with me, because when competition does not exist, free market does not exist.

[kubb]

Just saying, I’m not talking about idealized free markets, but specifically what we have right now.

Your ETFs rely on the companies in the basket doing what Google does.

[ivan_gammel]

Maybe those companies should have been smaller and focus on returning money to shareholders rather than on investment in expansion to other markets/products. It all depends on their size and influence.

[passwordoops]

You're right that the company and execs are behaving exactly as they should given the regulatory environment that existed since the 1980s. Namely, do not stand in the way of consolidation and only consider consumer prices for anti-Trust evaluations.

Unfortunately that's a fundamentally anti-capitalist way to go about things because the end result is what Google, and frankly all other dominant, publicly traded corporations are doing right now: profit by increasing rent-seeking and strangling competition rather than out-innovate (e.g 1, for perspective Google's cost of remaining the default search engine is about on par for their average R&D spend; in a healthy, thriving, innovative environment that wouldn't be the case).

The problem isn't Google per se, they're acting as expected. It's the regulatory capture of the judiciary and FTC from ignoring and/or dismantling the laws that would have prevented this environment from occurring in the first place. So we don't have a vibrant, diverse ecosystem anywhere, whether search, washing machines, publishing, defense contractors, etc.

Luckily the tide is turning with the Google trial on right now, and Amazon kicking off soon.

(1) https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrus...

[kubb]

Do you think there should be regulation preventing consolidation in other areas, like land ownership?

[passwordoops]

What does that have to do with enforcing already-existing anti-trust regulation? Anti-trust regulation, mind you, that helped the US mobilize for WW2 and led directly to a golden age for American innovation, standard of living and defeated the Soviets?

[eloisant]

Anti-trust laws are crucial for a well functioning capitalism.

Without them, power eventually gets concentrated into few companies holding monopolies, while the fundamental of capitalism is competition.

The problem is anti-trust laws have not been enforced and we let tech companies hold way too much power.

[kubb]

Do you think the concentration of power should be avoided in general, and let’s say a single person shouldn’t be able to decide on a whim that thousands of people have to do something pointless or harmful, like building a mega yacht?

[danaris]

Dunno about the GP, but I do.

I know it's not something that's going to happen any time in the foreseeable future, but I think it would be fantastic for our society and economy if the top marginal tax rate was 100%, with that tax bracket starting at (just as an off-the cuff estimate) something like $50 million/year, with regular and capital gains income counted together and taxed at the same rate.

Many people witter about how that means there's "no incentive to do better", but a) if you as a person making $50,000, $500,000, or even $5,000,000 per year think that this applies to you or is ever likely to, you are probably wrong, because even the person making $5M/yr is closer to the one making $50K/yr than they are to the one making $50M/yr, and b) if the only incentive you personally respond to is monetary, you are in the minority, because it's plain from empirical evidence and plenty of solid scientific research that the norm for human beings is to care about doing a good job for its own sake—so long as they're not being burned out, beaten down, and kept poor, and especially if they're allowed to do work that they like doing and are given some degree of ownership in it (not legally/financially, but conceptually—autonomy, a say in the process, etc).

More realistically, I'd love to return to something like the tax structure in what many look back on as a golden age: the post-WWII years, when the top marginal tax rate was above 90%, and yet somehow our industry chugged along at a fantastic pace, and people didn't just stop caring because there was "nothing to work for".