Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

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> And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family?

The fact that you, for example, don't have any goods or services that, say, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos wants does not mean Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have all the wealth and you have none.

Wealth is not a fixed thing. Wealth can be created. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are rich because they founded companies that created enormous amounts of wealth. Say what you like about Windows and Amazon, but Windows made personal computing available to everyone, not just the affluent who could afford a Mac, and Amazon has made cheap products and easy, fast shipping available to everyone, not just the rich who could afford to hire personal shopping and delivery services. And the wealth those companies created had to be spread among everyone, by the very nature of what they did. Windows would have been useless if it were just Bill Gates' personal OS, and Amazon would have been useless if it were just Jeff Bezos' personal shopping service. The whole point was to make those things available to everyone.

Similar remarks apply to everyone who creates wealth. The people who grow the food you eat grow more than they need just for themselves. Then they trade the excess for other things they need or want. The same applies to you. Want some food? Create some wealth that you can trade for it.

The real complaint that can be made about the "1 percent" or "0.01 percent" or "elite" or whatever term you want to use, is that they have created a system that makes it harder for everyone else to create wealth, by putting all kinds of regulations and complications in place that only they know how to navigate. But you don't fix that problem with more regulations and complications. Nor do you fix it by just confiscating what the rich have now and redistributing it; that only works once. You fix it by scaling back all those regulations and complications so more and more people can create wealth themselves instead of having to wait for a few "elites" to do it.

Regulations are the only reason Windows even exists. If had not been for government antitrust laws and their enforcement, IBM would have stifled the PC market before it even began.[1] The thing about these cases is that they don’t even have to fully succeed to open the space for competition. The case against Microsoft continued this trend, providing space for Google and the monopolies of today. So regulation isn’t just good for society, it’s necessary to ensure a competitive market.

Taxation ensures that all of society benefits as the collective wealth increases. It pays for shared resources, and provides for a shared safety net. Taxation isn’t confiscation, it’s the cost of doing business and thriving in a complex society. Trickle down and deregulation are awful policies that only destabilize.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html

> If had not been for government antitrust laws and their enforcement, IBM would have stifled the PC market before it even began.

Your reference takes a viewpoint that is, to say the least, questionable. IBM didn't even comprehend the PC market. If they had, they would never have given the license for MS-DOS to Microsoft. Nor did they comprehend the market for graphical user interfaces when they told everyone in the late 1980s that yes, OS/2 would be wonderful when it came along but there was no rush, they were much more concerned about coming out with new mainframe hardware and software. Bill Gates didn't want to wait that long, and the result was Windows. IBM had no clue what he was even doing until it was too late.

If you want to look at what antitrust law really accomplished, look up what happened to Alcoa Aluminum. Their "violation" was providing aluminum more cheaply and in greater quantity to their customers than any competitors could. Their breakup in an antitrust lawsuit made aluminum more expensive and scarcer, causing huge costs to industry and ultimately to consumers. Your rosy view of the benefits of regulation is a myth.

> Taxation ensures that all of society benefits as the collective wealth increases. It pays for shared resources, and provides for a shared safety net.

If that was all our tax money was used for, I wouldn't complain. But it isn't.

Not to mention that much of the money the government spends doesn't even come from explicit taxation; it comes from printing money, which has the same economic effect as taxation--us ordinary citizens have our buying power reduced--but is more politically palatable because most people don't understand what is being done to them.

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