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Comment by klaudius | Hacker News Reader

Now that they have market power and monopoly position in certain areas they lobby for regulation to make it difficult for startups to disrupt them. They used no sales tax and lower wages when they were starting up, but now want to prevent the same advantages for startups.

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> Now that they have market power and monopoly position in certain areas they lobby for regulation to make it difficult for startups to disrupt them. They used no sales tax and lower wages when they were starting up, but now want to prevent the same advantages for startups.

That is an interesting argument and I'd like to hear from members of the community about how they feel about this. (Sorry if the questions feel like they are begging the answer, I promise you I am trying to not bring my biases into this)

Should everyone play by the same rules?

For example, how should countries handle pollution? Do emerging economies (China PR in particular but it applies to all nations) have a different, lesser obligation when it comes to pumping carbon into the atmosphere? Did we (USA) and western Europe get a head start with our economy and therefore should be subject to lower limits on how much we carbon we pump into the atmosphere going forward? Or does this question sound absurd to you?

> That is an interesting argument

It is a terrible argument. Amazon does not control wages, supply and demand curves do. Amazon having lower wages before is simply due to the market for labor at that time having more supply relative to demand (or less demand relative to supply).

They did not have any special laws or circumstances which did not apply to everyone else, regarding the wages they pay. And they still do not.

> Or does this question sound absurd to you?

It sounds like an extremely leading question, or at least a dozen separate questions. But the further you go back in history the more, larger, and nastier questions you find where one country gained an advantage at the expense of another, often including a huge number of human lives. Was it really right for France to insist on reparations from Haiti, for example?

It certainly wasn't right from a Haitian point of view, but sometimes, better put up with it and have a powerful ally during your start as an independent country, whatever the debt cost, than be fighting them forever at tremendous cost for every sides.

Debt between countries don't matter much, and I certainly hope one day we'll have the budget to repay Haiti, but I'm happy we solved it with this infamy rather than murdered each other for decades. It's not the most optimal way we could have behaved, but we've been more abject with former colonies.

The example of China is also a difficult one. If you look at countries, sure they pollute a lot more than Switzerland, but if you look at per capita (or say you imagine China not as a country but as dozens of Switzerlands), then they look quite better.

>For example, how should countries handle pollution?

Just set a cap based on cumulative emissions. 99% of the time such a cap is aspirational though... It may not be achievable or politicians have other priorities.

> set a cap based on cumulative emissions

My family immigrated to America. Given we’re counting the sins of our forefathers, should the cap that applies to me be my origin country’s? Or America’s?

How do we apportion the USSR’s carbon emissions? Or the British Empire’s?

Why should we care about the plight of a startup that wants to use low wages as a competitive advantage?

Wait, so is your argument that it should be okay to pay people dirt-poor wages because Amazon used to get away with it? I get that it's a classic tactic to avoid a loophole in legislation and then build a regulatory moat afterwards, but I don't really feel paying people more is a good example.

And if they had not raised wages people would accuse them that they are using market power to push wages down.

that is usually the case for most regulations. While it's wild west, big corporations are formed. Now the corporations want regulations. It's an old tale, and unfortunately the people think the government introduces regulations for their benefit. Regulations stifle competition and in the end the public suffers on the long term.

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