Catching up on some of the "Little Tech" rhetoric from a16z. A lot more to say here.
But one thing that stands out as a rhetorical flaw in the pitch: curbing Big Tech startup acquisitions is listed as bad for little tech. Even as little tech is presented as the enabler of competition and innovation, contra Big Tech's market consolidation. Consolidation that is, of course, facilitated via acquisitions.
Taxing equity is also, of course, very alarming to investors.
But the argument that this hurts innovation and competition also falls flat IMO. Taxing unrealized investment value would check the overhype-to-acquisition cycle that makes VC's rich, but directs so much energy and capital into overvalued bullshit that doesn't meaningfully work/help people/etc.
@hbons, @Mer__edith, does that taxing unrealized gains ensure fairness (curious as that is an important value, too)?
Do you get all that tax money back if, say, the next day, a stock market crash wipes these gains? Less dramatically, if you have unrealized losses, do you get compensated for that?
@hbons, all down for us revisiting how we handle property (and also all in favor of better wealth distribution)—but that seems fundamentally unfair.
After all, it can bankrupt a person without them actually owning *anything*:
* Person owns $50,000 total and puts them in stock
* Stock explodes to $500,000 (not sold, i.e., gains aren’t realized)
* Person needs to pay, say, $100,000 in taxes
* Stock crashes to $10,000
* Person lost $140,000, is bankrupt.
It seems fairer to tax actual gains.
Money is just a technology that filters a global signal to local action. The flaw in the desing, fear drives us to engineer stores of value because human lifespans have a spectrum of security. Fear drives us to store value in ways that corrupt that global to local signal. Maybe replace income tax with an appreciating asset tax that includes the artificial assets that are equities and land value? Makerspace for the old and unemployed with guaranteed access to startup funding?
@Mer__edith this reads like an angrily typed setup but..yes I do? (except for the "maximizing their number alone" bit of course)
In general, young organisations can move faster and are more flexible to adress the needs of their environment than older, established organisations. Older orgs have inertia and ressources on their side.
@Mer__edith You want Small Tech, this is Small Tech:
https://small-tech.org/about/#small-technology
It’s the exact fucking opposite of what Marc fucking Andreessen and his fucking cabal of fascist-adjacent VCs stand for.
@whvholst @Mer__edith Oh I’ve been in the EU Parliament sitting on a panel next to a Facebook drone.
It did not go well for them.
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
Meredith Whittaker
Hylke Bons 🥜
Jens Oliver Meiert
Jason
Marcel WeiĂź
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