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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The value of the iPhone in labor cost elimination is XXXXXXXXX. The value of the iPhone as a media device on which is listening to workout mixes and watch movies is XXX.

I have no idea what you mean by value. You buy an iPhone because it is more valuable to you than the money you give Apple for it. Are you buying the phone to eliminate labor costs?

The delta between FB's fixed and marginal costs appears unusually large because the marginal cost is so exceptionally low. Its costs of operation versus, say, Citibank, or Johnson & Johnson, is actually quite low.

See my previous comment.

Think flights, not seats.

You were complaining about the low prices of many tech goods (though not iPhones). My point, which seems to have eluded you, is that companies tend to price their goods based on marginal cost. Because it costs Facebook about nothing to serve a marginal user, it can price as it does. As to airlines (or hotels, for that matter), it costs a lot to build the things, but the marginal cost to the supplier of selling that additional seat on the plane or that suite for the night is super low, and that's how they price.

This is an "eating the elephant" sort of discussion that should really be addressed on a company by company basis.

If you could say something that makes sense about just one tech company, we could go from there and try to find a second.

It is. And I am actually in favor of removing "license leveraging schemes" of all kinds. (I think our own licenses, as well as those of CPAs, investment advisors, and many others, should be open to laymen [if you can pass the test, you get a license, regardless of whether you went to school or through training]).

But perhaps the taxi example is a poor one. Perhaps the better example are administrative staff. They're replaced by tech in droves.

So your complaint about Uber is not that it's hard on taxi medallion owners, but that it has been terrible for the back-office staff of the taxi companies? Really? Didn't you just tell me how few buggy-whip makers there were?

Yes. Because the creation of a new tax, like a new agency, means it never goes away. I'd rather that permanent fixture by applied to someone else.

If it never goes away, the indirect tax you pay never goes away. I fail to see how you're any better off if you're charged a tax through tech companies.

I agreed with that. I said a worker put out of a job because of new tech is an externality. If Buyer X stops buying from Seller X and instead starts buying tech from Seller Y, and as a result of this, Seller X's employees are terminated, those job losses are externalities.

No, that's just wrong. An "externality" is a cost or benefit "external" to the market, and so not factored into the market price. Seller X's employees lose their jobs because the market has decided that their market price is zero.

I would rather trade dollars than privacy.

I would rather there were bookstores all over the place, but I am stuck with the distribution of resources that reflects what my neighbors want, and so are you.

This is where the rubber meets the road. No one will support punitive taxation (Eisenhower level rates) on tech-titan level wealthy people. And even if they did, it would be a pittance versus the cost of the safety net expansion needed. So what happens? The oncologist pulling down $350k gets a fat tax increase.

The cost is always carried by the affluent, but not crazy rich.

Whenever we have a conversation about what should be, you avoid questions by cynically observing that change is impossible.

I wasn't discussing whether the farmer received a benefit from a blue state. I was discussing whether he benefited from tech.

Yes, that was exactly my point. If you want to find a single person in the country most likely to have benefited from government subsidies, it is a farmer in a Western red state. And yet you ignore all that to make your hypothetical farmer the victim of government. Honestly, it's amazing. The question is why you think it's so awful that this farmer's taxes might help people like taxi company back-office workers, but don't mind that those workers' taxes have been paying to water his crops. If you want to be cynical about it, which I know you like, cross-subsidy is all over the place when you look for it, so why let that be the reason to stop anything?