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Nobel Prize Winner Argues Tech Companies Should Be Changing The World (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Tech companies are competing to serve the wealthy, argues the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, complaining there's no "global vision," with big innovations instead "designed and dedicated mostly for commercial successes... while trillions of dollars are invested in developing robotics and artificial intelligence for military and commercial purposes, there is little interest in applying technology to overcome the massive human problems of the world." A genius in the tech industry "can dedicate his work to creating a medical breakthrough that will save thousands of lives -- or he can develop an app that will let people amuse themselves."
As an exception, he cites the low-cost Endless computer, which runs Linux and has 50,000 Wikipedia articles pre-installed to enable offline research -- plus more than 100 applications -- for a price of just $79. "One part of Endless's business is operated like a conventional, profit-seeking company, while the other part is a social business that provides underserved populations with educational, health, and creative services they were once denied. Endless is already being shipped around the globe by four of the five largest computer manufacturers. It has become the leading PC platform in Indonesia and much of Southeast Asia. It has also been selected as the standard operating system for the Brazilian Ministry of Education, and in coming months it will be adopted as the primary platform by a number of other Latin American countries."
The article is by Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered the concepts of microcredit and microfinance, and is taken from his new book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions.
As an exception, he cites the low-cost Endless computer, which runs Linux and has 50,000 Wikipedia articles pre-installed to enable offline research -- plus more than 100 applications -- for a price of just $79. "One part of Endless's business is operated like a conventional, profit-seeking company, while the other part is a social business that provides underserved populations with educational, health, and creative services they were once denied. Endless is already being shipped around the globe by four of the five largest computer manufacturers. It has become the leading PC platform in Indonesia and much of Southeast Asia. It has also been selected as the standard operating system for the Brazilian Ministry of Education, and in coming months it will be adopted as the primary platform by a number of other Latin American countries."
The article is by Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered the concepts of microcredit and microfinance, and is taken from his new book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions.
In fact, it is a pretty good indicator for the opposite. In capitalism, people tend to forget that and that harms humanity as a whole.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
those who need it, can't afford it. those who can afford it, don't need it.
Like all giant corporations, Facebook/Google/Apple/Microsoft/etc. exist first and foremost to monetize the great unwashed masses. Part of the manipulation required to do that most effectively was convincing them that there was any other goal than that.
Social engineering comes later - after everyone involved already has more money than god - but there was never any reason to believe Zuckerberg et. al.'s aspirations along those lines were of the "solving world hunger" variety instead of the "privatized Ministry of Truth" variety.
There's been a lot of controversy over the Peace prize of late.
Note that Muhammad Yunus started the Grameen Bank which has reduced worldwide poverty by some insane amount - something like 40% of all poverty in the world has been eliminated by this one idea(*).
This guy deserves his medal, and perhaps his stature and accomplishments should be taken into account before people start dissing his opinions.
He's not just a random blogger that got an article in BuzzFeed.
(*) With significant follow-on benefits, such as increasing childrens' dietary protein, leading to better health.
It raises the question, does the world have a destination? If not, should it? no and no
Even nobel prize winners are trying to make a quick buck from publishing their books, instead of spreading their ideas to a bigger audience free of charge. Definition of irony?
theres no room for morality, compassion, or anything else. made greed great again.
News at 11...
Lets get serious. Any company that pushes a leftist agenda is a company that is only really lying to itself. Wait. I meant to say lying to its consumers. I'm almost certain the executive board just sit in the boardroom laughing daily about the naivety of their consumers.
As for Nobel prize winners. They have about as much credibility as the president of the US, past and present (did you see what I did there hahaha).
Right up there with actresses not having the bang the Executive Director of the movie their auditioning to get the role. That never happens either, does it?
I'm sorry but being able to write some app to amuse people isn't some amazing feat of programming prowess. It's absolutely nothing like doing any sort of biomedical sort of engineering at all. They are completely different fields with entirely different skillsets.
I mean I understand her overlying point, but she also overestimates what "tech companies" can actually accomplish. There are many problems in the world that cannot be solved by a computer.
Silly article. Person writing the article presumes that:
1) People's time is free, and/or already have large fortunes enabling them to focus on pet projects
2) Everyone has the same moral compass, that nudges them towards helping humanity where (1) is true.
3) Recent inventions of the smartphone and other internet developments are somehow not good enough and don't help the world in any way.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
The best minds of this generation are being put to good use optimizing ad revenue and building detailed personal profiles to better tailor ads.
Why should they waste time on toy projects like cancer cures and climate change?
Blame those pouring trillions into military & commercial instead of real human problems and not tech geniuses.
there is little interest in applying technology to overcome the massive human problems of the world.
Completely false, even says so in the summary. Throughout history, if the general population was upset with the ruling class they overthrew them. With automated factories and armies, total control will soon be put in the hands of a few people, unlike all of history. Heck, with all the automation there won't be a need for the plebes to create the luxurious life they are accustomed to. I'm pretty sure Oligarchs agree, this will overcome a massive human problem.
A huge amount of money, capital, and intelligence is going to waste in Silicon Valley. SV companies used to grow naturally by creating tangible products that customers wanted to buy. Now it's nothing more than a roulette wheel fueled by venture capitalists competing to see who can monetize human behavior or spy more effectively. Other than the few companies that still make hardware, the biggest names in SV would be useless middlemen if the original vision of the internet as a peer-to-peer, decentralized system were properly realized.
Instead we have companies like Facebook paying the best and brightest CS researchers to get more people to click on ads, create better surveillance systems, and write fucking PHP transpilers. Since Facebook's profits are drawn from negative externalities affecting us all, it seems only fair that a large portion of those profits be taxed and redirected towards something that actually matters to people other than Mark Zuckerberg.
Ignorant commie - the world is changed by POWER not technology. President Trump will bring the United States into the golden age of knowledge, with or without Silicon Valley and its' Marixst sympathies. MAGA!
Not tech charities.
What does this Nobel prize winner expect? For the top tech talent to get together and solve a bunch of poor people problems for free? Who pays for it then? Who invests in it? Who pays to implement the solutions?
Tech companies can only do what people are willing to pay for, otherwise they become bankrupt tech companies.
Start your tech charity, Mr. Nobel prize winner, and go DO SOMETHING instead of expecting everyone else to do it for free. Idiot.
Inevitably, zero freedom.
They should make money. That helps employ millions and makes their lives better. Working on projects with no profit means not employing the best and probably going out of business altogether.
Do pro bono work on your own time. Donate time and money as you see fit. But donâ(TM)t cajole or force others into it. Thatâ(TM)s not solving anything.
This guy has no idea what he is talking about.
Science is about discovery not invention. Technology is about invention, not science, but it has other limits.
That means we can't decide to use science to solve problems - I can't decide to discover FTL travel, I can just investigate promising quantum physics and pray that I will stumble upon something that will be helpful in that direction. But I am honestly just as likely to discover a new source of power.
Technology is about invention - I decide to build the best dating app and get one that actually lets you exclude people that own cats because I am allergic (Seriously, why don't the existing dating apps already do this????)
But technology is limited by two factors - 1) proven science and 2) the inventor's experience derived creativity. Most technologists solve problems they experience. It is hard enough to do that ; solving problems you have never experienced is much harder.
If you truly want people to solve the problems of the poor than you need more scientists that grew up poor.
Don't blame the mostly middle class scientists for not fixing the problem of the poor. Blame the governments and educational organizations for not educating the poor.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
No. Hell no. Grameen Bank is a wonderful program to allow small businesses access to capital. To become capitalists.
The 40% reduction in poverty was due to third-world countries embracing globalization. China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Belarus, etc.
No. Hell no. Grameen Bank is a wonderful program to allow small businesses access to capital. To become capitalists.
The 40% reduction in poverty was due to third-world countries embracing globalization. China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Belarus, etc.
The Grameen Bank was written up in the November 1999 issue of Scientific American.
NAFTA came into force in 1994, so most of the benefits from Grameen happened *before* the push towards globalization.
And for the record, bringing people out of poverty through globalism is temporary, because the root cause of poverty is corruption and globalism doesn't change that.
Most of the wealth to China went first to the people, then to the government. The government now has all the money, and the people would return to poverty in a heartbeat if the global demand dried up.
Not so much with the Grameen bank.
China is throwing tons of money at worthless projects: cities with no residents, massive investment in research with no accountability for quality, and huge state-sponsored projects that regularly fail - such as bridges and dams.
All that wealth coming from the US has gone to waste.
What's worse is that globalism is pulling us down into poverty. Highly trained Chinese can come to this country and get jobs, but highly trained Americans can't similarly go to China. You can't become a Chinese citizen even if you marry a Chinese citizen.
Globalism is one-sided, and makes our country weaker in every possible way. The wealth flows from the richer country to the poorer, where it is wasted.
At any rate, the Grameen bank was an idea that actually worked.
Even if you are philosophically opposed to capitalism, you have to admit that the Grameen Bank, as an idea, works.
> A genius in the tech industry "can dedicate his work to creating a medical breakthrough that will save thousands of lives
A genius in one field may not be fully immersed in another field. Meaning, the people that cross boundaries are likely to have 2 degrees. I may be great at hammering out C code for databases, but doing genomic matching or analyzing fluids and determining drug interactions is a whole other discipline. To make the breakthroughs the world needs means primarily having a degree in another field and knowing how to program. A person well versed in data structures can make your program faster, but cannot determine what the data means and how to act upon it. So, don't pick on programmers...we're good at what we do. Instead, encourage non-programmers like doctors/researchers to learn how to code. Others can refine their ideas from the prototype.
That is just how the capitalist game is played. You can do anything you like in this world As long as you make a PROFIT doing it. TFA might just as well have railed against capitalism. And trying to change capitalism in the USA is even harder than changing gun laws.
It seems like the $79 model is very similar to a Raspberry pi plus a typical canakit or similar (i.e, case, power supply, sd card, cables-- typically about $60 with the pi included) Of the two I'd lean towards a Raspi for it's versatility and ubiquity making packages available for it. Just having Wolfram, Scratch, and Minecraft in the Raspberry pi in working form is arguably more important than having Wikipedia, which you could just get on a USB stick. At least it's a push in terms of value and transformative impact.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Technology companies don't have the insight or the depth to 'change the world', and technology in and of itself isn't going to accomplish jack shit. It's about PEOPLE, geniuses. So tired of the talking heads.
Technology is too busy causing problems to be solving problems.
From an economic perspective, philanthropy is a sign of a very unhealthy economy.
Philanthropy is only really possible when a market participant has made excessive profit. Excessive profit is typically found in situations where there is severe economic distortion, whether it's due to monopoly conditions, excessive regulation, or some other factor preventing proper free market competition.
Due to this distortion, consumers are forced to pay a price far higher than they want to pay. Essentially, the consumers are overcharged.
Philanthropy is the act of returning a small portion of this excessive profit. But even then it rarely goes to the consumers it was originally extracted from. Rather, it often goes to an unrelated third party, such as an academic institution or a charity. All in all, it results in a very poor allocation of resources.
Had the market been functioning properly, there would have been sufficient competition to drive down prices to a far more reasonable level, eliminating much, if not all, of the excessive profit that was being extracted due to market distortions. Since there would be little or no profit, there would not be inefficiently-allocated resources available to be used for philanthropy.
Money replaces all-knowledgeable Party (Elders, Elites, etc.) when it comes to decision what to produce or what to invent. No single entity has sufficient knowledge to say that we should produce "A" and develop "B". Market indirectly incentivizes engineers to work on certain things, simply because ppl are using their resources to show their interest in this particular domain.
Thus, the solution isn't in technological companies solving poor nations' problems (as I see, the idea there is for companies to provide stuff for poor out of thin air or something), but for nations to encourage healthy economic practices in their countries.
That's what a lot of people do not understand. A company cannot provide food, shelter, medicine, or whatever unless they make a profit. If there is no profit in it then they cannot pay their wages, pay back investors, and have money left over for when times are thin or to invest in expansion.
Profit is good. Greed is a natural instinct. People understand greed. It is with greed that businesses stay in business to feed another natural instinct, charity. When people have enough to see to their own needs they tend to see to the needs of others. Those that don't see charity as a virtue can be tolerated, and may in fact be necessary for human survival. People with unrestrained charity are also seen as not right in the head. Giving their food up to the point they starve themselves is not healthy, for themselves or society.
I keep seeing people claim we should increase taxed the wealthy because "they can afford it". What is that other than greed? These people see others with more so they send the government to take it from them. That's just theft by proxy.
I remember a history teacher in high school making fun of "trickle down economics". He said that the taxes on the wealthy was reduced on the theory that the wealthy would use that tax money to invest in more business but they instead bought expensive cars, went on vacations, and generally lived it up. I bought it, trickle down economics was bad. Then, years later, something made me think of this some more. These wealthy people put a lot of people to work building those cars they bought, making their lavish parties, carrying their clubs at golf courses, and so on. They still invested in the economy. Even if they stuffed all that money under a mattress it still helped the economy since that was a store of wealth that could be added back when they couldn't afford those big parties and golf trips. They'd still have to buy food. Even if it stayed there until they died that money ended up in the hands of their children where they'd spend it on food, housing, clothes, and of course luxuries like caviar, lobster, plane tickets, and tips to the golf caddies.
We cannot grow total wealth without getting wealth disparity. Taking money from the wealthy and giving it to the poor rewards poverty. That's not the signal we should be sending as a society. Punishing the wealthy only because they are wealthy is paving made of good intentions that leads us down a road to where we don't want to go.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
With what? Narcissism?
Tech companies ALREADY change the world by developing and selling products. They don't need a "grand vision" from On High.
Reminds me of the Python skit about how to play the flute: "How to play the flute. Well, here we are; and you blow there, and you move your fingers up and down here." That's all we need to do. And we'll cure all diseases. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As much as I enjoy using linux as a daily driver, aside from a flurry of publication on popular tech sites between July to August 2017 for their launch in Indonesia, I haven't heard a single thing about Endless being a leading PC platform on any field of computing.
> Tech Companies Should Be Changing The World
They already are changing the world by taking away our privacy and monetizing on that.
I have recently become involved in a BioTech startup
Our goal is to demystify the human genome; while the cost of sequencing a human has gone down by a factor of a MILLION in 15 years (blowing away Moore's "Law"), not so the ability to analyze it. Now, using the absolute best technology, we hope to finally unravel the mysteries from 3.5 billion year old spaghetti code (your DNA randomly programmed by natural selection).
In short, we hope to provide EXACTLY what was promised/feared in the movie GATTACA (which I just saw recently), as human-ly (or A.I.-ly) accurate a statistical analysis as possible of what your genome says about you and your future. Of course, I'm hoping that because of OTHER ground breaking technologies (CRISPR-cas9), our future may not be as dystopian as what was in the film, since we will hope to "cure" your genetic flaws. (And anyway, was that future so bad? They had dozens of space flights a day to far off destinations like Titan, so matching genotypes to jobs seemed like it made for a prosperous efficient society. Also, to be honest, perhaps the main character should have died during liftoff, his genetic heart condition, already foreseen while on a treadmill stress test, dooming him and the entire mission.)
What I'm getting at is that while changing the world with new technologies may be good, you might get unwanted effects. (Consider all the Puerto Ricans without cash because the ATM machines don't work). It works both ways of course, the recently approved CURE for some forms of blindness utilizes the H.I.V. virus to get the CRISPR genetic editing mechanism into the eye, so a deadly disease has been repurposed. But then, of course, H.I.V. could be re-weaponized to deliver the "gene drive" capable of wiping out entire species.
I think that is the point of "Homo Deus" or Man the God, a book which talks about our world, species and biosphere changing technologies is about. Basically, compared to our ancestors, we ARE gods, or at least demigods; capable of traveling enormous distances, living long (mainly) illness free lifespans, accessing much of all knowledge almost everywhere, anytime. We don't need super-science like portal guns or the uber-genius of Rick Sanchez, although he clearly realizes that with his abilities and knowledge "I am a god". (He says this in the White House while casually massacring the security staff.)
However not only is our wisdom failing to keep up (who ever named Man "Homo Sapiens"?) but our laws, regulations and policies are a patchwork net that has much more to do with local political considerations than any understanding of the issues. (See Change, Climate). And then there are some bad actors, people who are not answerable to anyone but willing to use these god-like powers towards their own ends (Kim Jong-Un, I'm looking at you).
So, while I'm (obviously) betting that sci-fi-tech will vastly improve our future, I have been spending some time thinking about the possible consequences. Should we allow ANYONE to get the results of our genetic tests? Just doctors? Can the authorities access them? Do they need a court order? What if they're from a "repressive" regime? What about insurance companies? Employers? Vending Machines? Let us hope that those geniuses who decide not to code amusing Apps but tackle real problems, spend some time also thinking about what-ifs.
1.) Trying to explain to idiots how they're doing things wrong and trying to correct them? ... Very difficult. As soon as they're overwelmed they'll start voting for Trump and Co. and things will go downhill from there.
2.) Exploiting idiots and getting obscenely rich whilst giving them PHP doodads / toy apps or virutal swords? ... Very easy. You just once need to fathom how truely unbelievably stupid most people are and what stupid shit they will spend money on, then you're good.
Bottom line:
While I get that we need to save the world (Elon Musk is showing us how it can be done) I also get the enticing proposition of simply manipulating the masses and enjoying yourself while doing it. If you get bored, then you can go about saving the world. Which is basically what Bill Gates and the likes are doing.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Then I saw "Peace Prize" and stopped reading. For just a moment though, I thought someone truly brilliant had something important to say.
Good job with the headline guys - it totally got my attention.
In this article, Yunus calls for Silicon Valley to develop a smartphone for the poor. I define that as being any smartphone that has been on the market for about three years, and which still sells.
The rich are early adopters, willingly paying premium prices to be first to try technology that may or may not catch on. They might find themselves with an iPhone that has innumerable uses - and they would have been among those to try Google Glass, and look silly doing so. Tech that survives the early adopter filter then goes to the mass market, where it slides down the cost learning curve and the user experience learning curve until it becomes a cheap commodity for all.
And the CEOs of Tech Companies Argues They Should Be Charging The World with more subscriptions and license fees.
dedicate his work to creating a medical breakthrough that will save thousands of lives -- or he can develop an app that will let people amuse themselves
That's obviously false. Many (if not most) breakthroughs are only possible because the science is funded by profitable companies.
Tech companies ARE changing the world, and in big ways, mainly through the concept of "disruption."
This new fad, "disruption," is the process by which idealistic, know-nothing millennials have a fleeting thought about some amazeballs invention that can't even be built, don't bother to think it through, declare it the solution to all the world's social ills, and then demand it be forced upon the world, in spite of the sum total of civilizational knowledge on how to actually solve problems.
Yep, fsck 'em, I say. I've made a bit of money, and I'm 'pulling up the draw bridge' to make sure my neighbours, and definitely that grubby looking guy I see on the way to the shops don't get any of it. I mean, I know I'll never get any further up the ladder, because of the millionaires and billionaires all keeping all their money to themselves, but hey, at least that grubby guy down the street won't get any of mine.
"Punishing" the wealthy to give up a little more than they currently do doesn't really punish them. Most of the super-rich (people with multiple billions in personal wealth) wouldn't notice if you took a million dollars off them each year. It wouldn't affect their buying power, it wouldn't affect the output of their investments, and they won't materially suffer for it. In other words, what looks like a large amount of money here, makes almost no difference at all.
Shockingly, there are people who just happen to live somewhere very poor. They were born because their parents are so poor that if they don't have some kids to help out with the work around the house, they won't earn the few cents they need to buy a decent meal, or to fix the hole in the roof. They have to have quite a few kids because there's a good chance a couple of them will die during childhood due to disease and malnutrition, so it's not like they can just produce kids 'to order' either. Such people can't work themselves out of poverty in anything like a reasonable timeframe because they have near-zero income. That means they don't have any spare money to buy an extra bag of seeds to grow more crops, or to keep the goat alive for another year. If someone gives them an extra bag of seeds today, they go from a daily income of $1 to $1.01. That extra one cent can be used to increase their output next time around, and so on. In other words, a tiny amount of money here helps to dramatically accelerate the rate of 'wealth creation' in a vast number of people.
As for stuffing money in the mattress - that's effectively what the super-rich are doing. Their personal spending is massively outstripped by their income, and so more and more money is being removed from the economy and into their hands. They're not spending it all, and so the flows of money around the economy are reduced. Do too much of that, and you get a recession - which absolutely won't affect the super-rich as they move off-shore, making the problem even worse.
I doubt that technology can solve the most fundamental of human problems: the fact that at bottom, we're uncivilized brutes. When things break down, which the always do at some point, we revert back to that state. Just read about the civil war in Liberia a decade and a half ago. Read about the sheer brutality that broke out. It broke out because it was lying just beneath the surface of the people there the entire time. _There's_ a problem technology has not even tried to solve.
We're not used to that sort of thing in the West, because somehow, the West managed to (most of the time anyway) find a way to rise above that level of brutishness. Not that we can't forsake it and become like the Third World of course...
So if you have an idea for how technology can be used to preserve and spread civilization to those parts of the world that don't have it now (I'm thinking of you, Africa, and you, most-of-the-Middle-East with your hideous treatment of women), that would be a damn good use of it. From what I've studied, I'm pretty sure just wiping out basic needs is not enough.
I'm sick of hearing about technology companies doing this that and the other thing. Technology is a tool, nothing more. You want an amazing medical breakthrough? Look to someone who knows something about medicine and biology, not a "technology company." No doubt technology is a huge help in many cases, but the ideas are driven by people who understand the problems, not the technology. What technology companies should be doing is working on making better tools, and let people who understand the underlying human problems use the tools.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Am I the only one that saw the ad for Endless computer and thought, "Heh! I could get one and delete the wikipedia stuff to make room for more games!" ?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I bet you wouldn't notice if someone took a few dollars from you to send their kid to school in Zanzibar.
Indeed they are plenty of innovations available ! If big tech companies was not that much innovations focused it would be best ! Check this http://ventilons.canalblog.com... you'll discover solutions for our world ! Cheers !
For the first two, if you provide employment, then there will be no poverty.
But this case contradict the goal of the third one. If there's human activity, there will be carbon emissions.
The only case where all his goals would work would be if there's no more humans at all.
This assumes everyone able to, wants to work. But in the real world, there are a lot of slackers. Therefore 0% unemployment will never happen.
In order for that to make any sense you'll need to explain how the "communists" at Foxconn operate differently than "capitalists" elsewhere. (They don't.) But now that you've been locked into this ideologically inflexible binary thinking, you're ready to jump to defend their exploitation. Check and mate. You are owned.
Everything that accomplishes to a certain level is then monetized and the user experience diminished.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Sure I'd notice; it's a coffee a week but I'd notice. Just like the guy on a million a year would notice he can't holiday in Switzerland any more. We could both go without but that's not the point.
The guy with a 300 million in the bank, who's earning a million a month: That's 2 super-cars or half a NY apartment, isn't going to be buying a car every other week, or an apartment every other month. That's why trickle-down economics doesn't work.
The US idea that rich people will make more businesses is equally deluded: At that level of income, he can make money without building factories and hiring employees. Besides, making stuff means that people must stop buying something else to support his factory: The total growth available is less than the cost of factory; which is called 'losing money'.
They don't operate differently. The make a useful product and keep labor costs as low as possible, as they should.
Foxconn isn't forcing anybody to work for them. So, when people choose to work for them it is because their alternatives are even worse. Therefore, no matter what you may think of the working conditions, Foxconn actually improves the lives of the Chinese workers working for them, and the fact that their lives are so miserable to begin with is the result of decades of communism.
As Robinson once said: "The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all."
(I would also point out that working hours and suicide rates at the expensive, highly competitive university I went to were longer/higher than at Foxconn. If people believe something improves their lives in the long run, they are willing to subject themselves to such stressful conditions.)
Humanity have to change drastically, we still have to deal with the same problems since more than 4000 years, the only thing changing is technology but humanity is still the same, we're still facing the same wealth consolidation from imperialism (which was supposed to be dead since the beginnning of democracy, even the Greeks knew that representative democracy was a step to direct democracy because it needed not smaller goverment but smaller countries all linked by solidarity and mutualism).
So Wikipedia is now the defacto disseminator of all factual knowledge? Swell.
Nope, the profit is unnecessary. Wages paid are not profits. Payments to suppliers are not profits. Operating costs are not profit. All of those are expenses. So is research, development, and investment. Profit is revenue minus expenses.
Are you going to claim that trickle-down economics works? Since Reagan started his voodoo economics, most increases in wealth have gone to a relatively few already wealthy people, and much less to people who actually work for a living.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yeah, we should tax the poor more than the rich. That would motivate the poor to become rich too.
Nope, the profit is unnecessary.
Sure it is. How else do you motivate people to invest? Tell them they would have the same amount of money they started with? Oh, but they get to help people, that might motivate them. If you tell them they'll lose money, but help people, that might work too. What would work even better is to tell people they will make money AND help others.
Even corporations that are legally non-profits can make a lot of people a lot of money. The NFL was a non-profit until the public outcry over what they thought was an abuse of the system forced them to change.
You can argue on this all you like. The best you will get from me is an agreement to disagree. If there is no profit then investors will leave for profitable ventures or because they just plain run out of money.
Are you going to claim that trickle-down economics works?
Of course it does. These people will buy products and services, and people will work to produce those products and services. The people that know how to produce value will gain wealth, and when they die they will hand it down to their kids. How does trickle down economics NOT work?
I'll tell you how excessive taxes don't work. It takes money from people that know how to make money and gives it to people that don't know how to make money. These people will have an incentive to not produce value because the government pays them regardless if they produce. The people that know how to produce now have an incentive to not produce because the government now takes every extra bit they earn. If they cannot keep what they earn they they will have the same whether they work or not. So, they will make the natural choice to not work. It's not that all work stops, people still need to eat, but instead of making money they are just paying the bills.
Taxes should be for the funding of the government, and nothing more. There is a theory of maximum return on taxes that I cannot recall the name of right now. If taxes are 0% the government gets nothing, because zero times anything is nothing. If taxes are 100% the people won't work because they also know that zero times anything is nothing. If the government wants to maximize tax revenue then taxes need to be low. People used to think that high taxes maximized tax revenue until Reagan came along and lowered taxes. Now people had money to spare on things like cars, houses, and fancy clothes, and everyone had more money to spend. Yes, the wealthy got wealthier, but so did everyone else. With more people making more money even a low tax rate means more revenue for the government. Many politicians know this. They almost have to. They must not care, being so fucked in the head that they'd rather buy votes for their next election than see a stable economy for the next generation.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
There are non-profit corporations that do a lot of things without returning any money to investors. Profit is not always necessary.
Profit is what is returned to investors, either as dividends or in the form of increased value of the company. Non-profits don't have investors in that sense. They do pay people, sometimes handsomely, and buy things, but none of that is profit.
When I criticize trickle-down economics, I'm talking primarily about the empirical results, which were to make the rich richer and largely detach the workers from productivity increases.
Your claims about taking money from those who know how to make it and giving it to people who don't depend on the idea that money shows how much people have created wealth. Money is at best a leaky abstraction here, and there's plenty of discrepancies between money made and wealth made or people helped. Actions can be evil and yet profitable.
You're thinking of the Laffer Curve in your last paragraph, and you've gotten it wrong. Reagan's tax cuts decreased government revenue, showing that we were on the left side of the Laffer Curve, and so it is irrelevant in discussions of taxation.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
When I criticize trickle-down economics, I'm talking primarily about the empirical results, which were to make the rich richer and largely detach the workers from productivity increases.
Reagan's tax cuts decreased government revenue
The tax revenue as a percentage of GDP decreased but total revenue increased. What also decreased was unemployment and inflation. The workers saw these benefits, and relatively quickly too. The first year or so sucked but things got better. A lot better. Homelessness was a big problem and then it wasn't. There were still homeless people, because there will always be homeless people.
Actions can be evil and yet profitable.
I won't dispute that. Profit itself is not evil, it is required for a healthy economy. People must make money. A non-profit corporation can still make a profit, but there are rules on how it can be spent, invested, and such. Being a non-profit does not mean the corporation is inherently beneficial either. Actions can be evil and not profitable.
Let's get back to this...
Nope, the profit is unnecessary. Wages paid are not profits.
Now you are just playing with words. Sure wages are not leaglly profits but someone got a profit. People made money on this "non-profit" corporation. That's profit. It may not be profit that is taxed under the federal income tax laws but it is profit. If a non-profit entity makes too much money then they have to get rid of it somehow so it doesn't show as a legally defined "profit" on their books, so they might be rid of it by giving all the employees a bonus. Someone, a lot of someones, made money. That's profit.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.