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0 pointscrazygringo1y ago0 comments

> Unironically yes.

Do you realize that won't produce more revenue, it will just bankrupt companies and produce less revenue?

Companies are already incentivized not to waste by competition. That's the whole point of capitalism. You don't need taxes for that.

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const_cast1y ago· 2 in thread

A lot of companies are essentially on the welfare of their investors, who may or may not be stupid. Many companies purposefully do not turn a profit, because they're aiming to cheat the market and sell at a loss to push competitors out. A lot of very successful companies operate or have operated this way, and it's incredibly dangerous for the market. It causes the erosion of small businesses and further promotes monopolization. We can try to disincentive that by saying, "hey, you don't want to turn a profit, that's fine, but you still have to pay up".

This is part of the reason why if you look around America today it's going to be 99% big corporate players dominating markets and 1% small businesses barely staying afloat.

crazygringoOP1y ago

> We can try to disincentive that by saying, "hey, you don't want to turn a profit, that's fine, but you still have to pay up".

That doesn't make any sense. You're saying, instead of consumers getting lower prices, they should pay more and that money should go towards taxes. That means, essentially, that you're asking the consumers to pay taxes.

What you're describing is predatory pricing. People have mixed views on that, but if you want to address it, then address it directly. Taxing revenue is a strange, roundabout way of doing it that is going to harm a ton of non-predatory businesses without actually changing the market dynamics of predatory pricing -- because your taxes will be affecting the non-predatory companies even more! Since they, by definition, charge more money and therefore will be paying more taxes on the greater revenue.

const_cast1y ago

The problem is that our current tax system incentivizes the kind of venture-capital fueled market manipulation we see. Companies actively try to optimize for the lowest amount of profit, similarly to how the ultra-wealthy try to optimize for the lowest income.

We have some methods to address predatory pricing but I think it's obvious they pretty much don't work on any scale that matters. When I look around the modern US, I see the least amount of successful small businesses I've ever seen in my lifetime. We're living in a corporate hellscape, and more and more business look to rent-seeking anti-consumerist behavior.

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