> It's a good strategy, if you can afford not to withdraw from the fund on the year (and for several years after) you 97% bet turns sour
If the bet turns sour, you close the fund. The idea is that you grow the fund and take your two and twenty while your bets are winning, and you keep your prior years' two and twenty after your fund collapses.
The idea is that you can simultaneously be protected by the laws of nation-states that you like (protection from pirates), and are free to break the laws of nation-states that you don't like (taxes, drug laws, etc.)
It's an example of Libertarian paradise syndrome; where you want all the comforts of modern civilization with none of the obligations.
I think the Anarcho-Capitalist paradise you're talking about would involve personal contracts with "security" companies to keep the pirates away - although it has never been explained to me what keeps the security company from becoming the pirates.
The Libertarian version involves paying for a military, I think.
I want to move to this libertarian paradise where I'm not affected by externalities and acting selfishly is always pareto efficient. I want to live in this magical place where we don't need government. Where is it?
Nobody suggested you don't need Government. I do believe in an effective Government. What I don't believe is that the Government has to this point been as effective as the tax payers should be holding them to account.
tl;dr: Taxpayers pay $5/hr in benefits to allow the employees of Walmart to be paid a wage under the poverty line.
== EDIT ==
You would agree that rent subsidies flow to landlords, and mortgage tax deductions flow to sellers, right? Why would you not understand that wage subsidies flow to employers?
No I'm going to need a cite for the EITC claim. I speaking about how it specifically aligns motivations and interests, because it is different than other welfare programs.
Or are you just saying all welfare programs are bad? That's not a discussion I'm willing to engage in.
On the edit - yes I agree that part of the subsidy is split, as with all subsidies, but I think the EITC uniquely incentivizes those in the program to work themselves out of it, unlike other programs. That's why I like it so much, because I think other programs do fall under your critique.
> I think the EITC uniquely incentivizes those in the program to work themselves out of it, unlike other programs. That's why I like it so much, because I think other programs do fall under your critique.
This experiment has never been done, but I think we could probably agree on the outcome of this thought experiment: In the absence of any other social programs, the net effect of EITC would be higher employment and lower (employer paid) wages as the demand for labor is (somewhat) elastic, and employers and labor will settle on a lower clearing price for hourly labor at a higher employment level.
I also agree that many welfare programs have a negative impact on work and personal income, as many social services have cliffs that reduce a recipient's net income if their wage income goes over a certain amount. That's not necessarily bad; some people do not have the option of meaningful work, a problem that many think will be exacerbated by automation. If we start actually seeing the 42% unemployment rates that were recently promoted by Trump, then tying social services to income would be devastating.
> but I think the EITC uniquely incentivizes those in the program to work themselves out of it, unlike other programs
No, it doesn't, it incentives them to work their way into the middle of it. Once you're there, like other means-tested programs, it mitigates market incentives to further progress by reducing benefits with increasing outside income, reducing the marginal utility of each additional dollar of income.
Now, it may be that it empowers people enough that the increase in the ability to move up outweighs the incentive mitigation at the top end of the range, and that it is in that way more effective than some other programs. But, it's incenitved have the same failings criticized by UBI advocates as other means-tested benefit programs.
> we as a society don't understand that the purpose of automation is humanitarian.
The purpose of automation is humanitarian in the same way that politicians serve the needs of their constituents, and police protect their communities.
While I reap the positive benefits of all of the above, there are plenty of marginalized people who are harmed by exactly the same forces.
In the gap between theory and reality, there's a lot of misery.
> Lower the taxes and don't let government get their hands on it at any stage of the process. This smacks again of redistribution of wealth and I'm totally against this.
Brilliant! I'm sure that startups will flourish in an environment where there is no functioning government. What I don't understand is why the movie Mad Max didn't show a vibrant startup community with flowing rivers of lattes and soylent, rather than the human misery that comes from the absence of rule of law, retirement, and health care.
Serious question, do you really want to live in a world devoid of "redistribution of wealth", where life is cheap, the working class is treated like disposable trash, and treatable illnesses are a death sentence?
What would it take to convince you that the wealthy contributing some of their riches back to society is the foundation for a functioning civilization?
> Objecting to the redistribution of wealth isn't the same as trying to do away with the rule of law.
The rule of law depends on the redistribution of wealth. Courts, public defenders, police, regulators, juries don't magically appear out of nowhere.
Therefore, it seems obvious that if you are absolutely opposed to the redistribution of wealth, you are therefore absolutely opposed to what most people would consider civilization: rule of law, education, public services, etc.
Do you agree that being part of a functional modern western civilization is impossible without the redistribution of wealth (paying taxes, serving on juries)?
That's not what people mean when they talk about the redistribution of wealth.
The redistribution of wealth refers specifically to taking from those that have more and giving it those who have less. In particular, having everyone pay to maintain the rule of law is most certainly not what most people mean by redistribution of wealth.
> [Netflix's] edge is in software alone, nothing that causes a huge barrier to entry like custom hardware.
Actually, they are a media company. Their "edge" is in content creation and licencing deals. They might have been first-to-market for mass-scale streaming, but streaming video technology is a commodity, and they know that they will live or die by the desirability of their media catalog.
> Netflix for example, is completely at the mercy of Amazon.
Amazon and Netflix were symbiotic for years, as Netflix was a headline corporate customer, and I'm sure they received preferential pricing. And given the quality of Netflix's engineering team, I would be very surprised if they don't have a plan to migrate by the expiration of their contract if necessary.
> "Actually, [Netflix is] a media company. Their "edge" is in content creation and licencing deals..."
That's only partly true. But if you considering a lot of other "media companies" haven't been able to compete with Netflix's ease of use, then you have to ask the question how is Netflix different from any other media company. And the answer is because they are also a software company, where their successes is primarily attributed to making DRM video in browser easy and seamless for average folk.
This answer is in the same category as "Actually, Google is an ads company". That is to say, it makes a plausible case but ultimately wrong.
The original success of Netflix depended on being the first company with a fixed-price-no-ads streaming business model in addition to really good user experience across a wide variety of platforms. I remember being astonished at watching a Netflix movie on my iPhone (when I was still an iPhone user) while riding a train in 2011'ish. It was miles ahead of any other competitor in providing solid, usable clients on multiple platforms combined with reliable streaming in most cases and networks. This was as much a triumph of technology and product design as it was of the content available. If it was only about the content, it would be Hulu (at least in US) instead of Netflix who would be in pole position today.
> The original success of Netflix depended on being the first company with a fixed-price-no-ads streaming business model
Actually, the original success involved putting DVDs in mailboxes.
> I remember being astonished at watching a Netflix movie on my iPhone (when I was still an iPhone user) while riding a train in 2011'ish.
Right, but you're going to be equally astonished in 2017 if you don't get the same level of service from Prime Video, Hulu, HBO GO, YouTube Red, et. al. And in 2019 a YC company will offer a one-click media publishing company that will allow any random joe on the planet to publish a DRM-protected movie available through a world-wide CDN with a pay-per-view payment system.
In 2011 tech was a major differentiator, today not so much. Netflix is moving with the times, that's why they are offering original content instead of being content to provide a good platform to stream other people's IP.
> This answer is in the same category as "Actually, Google is an ads company". That is to say, it makes a plausible case but ultimately wrong.
So Netflix has a six year lead and attendant network effects in it's favor. If you don't believe me, I created a facebook clone in PHP last weekend which works just as well (or better) than the original Facebook. Do you want to join it?
> So Netflix has a six year lead and attendant network effects in it's favor.
I completely agree with you. I personally have a Netflix account, and do not subscribe to other services.
My point is that right now, today, this very instant in time, Netflix is not primarily differentiated on technology, but on having content that their subscribers want; that online video distribution is now a commodity.
> but on having content that their subscribers want
This is where we disagree. I don't even know what content Amazon or HBO or Hulu has at this point. Netflix has already made me a lifelong customer with their product and user-experience in the past 10 years or so that it'll take an earth-shaking difference in content for me to switch (or add) a second monthly bill for content. Netflix is part of social fabric (at least in the US). All of this was won by relentless focus on an excellent product and user experience... and perhaps only a middling content catalog.
Is this more "reality has a known liberal bias" sarcasm? Or as you saying the entire concept of objective truth is leftist propaganda?