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Comment by loa_in_ | Hacker News Reader

I'm getting really angry at companies squatting names that are basically common nouns. This practice should be banned. It's something I though was more cyberdystopian-esque not reality, but here we are in the future.

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As somebody whose primary intellectual interest is how digital communities conceive of themselves and how cultures are curated online, I am not thrilled about 'Meta' to say the least.

Thanks for stealing the shorthand I had for explaining what interested me.

And never mind what a mess it's going to make for any of us who are interested in metadata versus data.

Thanks, Mark. I love it.

>"squatting names that are basically common nouns"

I feel like we should be using the term "scalping" instead. It is much more accurate.

That's probably not an ideal solution given the history of that word.

Perhaps, but scalping in the modern vernacular applies to people buying limited items and then price gouging because of scarcity. And, now that I think about it, "squatting" is also capable of carrying negative connotations when it comes to history in North America.

A land value tax solves this.

A land value tax in the metaverse - I hadn't considered that before. I wonder what cryptocurrency will be used in the metaverse?

You should probably google "Decentraland".

A land value tax for names? Or well copyrighted ones. I suppose brand reputation could have a value. It could also lead to companies cycling names for cheapness. Imagine say using Toyota-2022 as the offical name for Toyota.

The notion sounds a bit silly on the surface, but good enough at least for serious classroom discussions and evaluation.

Perhaps a land value tax only for dictionary words that relate to the field of use. If Toyota builds a brand reputation, then they should be able to hold on to that brand value without being taxed on it.

Good point! Someone should invent a more general term though; at first I was wondering what taxing Facebook's land would do.

Perhaps "self-appraisal tax"?

Maybe "inelastic resource tax" or "squatting tax"?

One general term, though it's kind of unsatisfying, is "economic land," and it can refer to things like electromagnetic spectrum too. Any finite resource that that is a factor of production and can not be expanded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(economics)

For namespaces, there is extra value for particular names that come not from any work the owner of the name performed, but rather that comes from the productive activity of others. If I squat "olives.com" in 1994 and wait for the web to get big, and then sell the domain in 2000 to a hottest new direct to consumer olive startup, then any profit from that should really be taxed away. All that "value" came from the work of others that made the web into a valuable place to own some "land."

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