Tug Boat;314987 wrote:Thrugelmir;314985 wrote:Tim D;314949 wrote:Thrugelmir;314742 wrote:Rookie Investor;314736 wrote:Google search is miles ahead of the competition still.
Monopolies wield the power to erase the competition from the marketplace.
True in any market. But in tech especially economies of scale (the marginal cost of scaling up software systems is tiny compared with scaling manufacturing or a services organization) and network effects (the value of a network scales exponentially or even faster with the number of nodes in the network) means big inevitably gets bigger without strong external forces to counter it. Since you can't get big without getting good, and you can't get good without getting big... big wins every time.
I was thinking more along the lines of how the large US corporates operate. Brazenly aggressive. Tax avoidance. Funding politicians to lobby. Treating employees as s*** . A broken form of capitalism.
I’ve worked there it wasn’t like that. We worked hard and rewarded well. Enjoyed what we did. You can’t avoid tax. Companies don’t fund politicians, you treat your employees very well.
Wish we could bring that attitude to the UK
Of course you can avoid tax. Why do you think that the IRS is pursuing Microsoft for it's arrangement with Puerto Rico where it pays 0% corporaton tax. At least $39 billion of profit has been channeled through there. A wheeze dreamt up by KMPG by transferring all of Microsoft's IP rights there. The factory in Puerto Rico only employed 85 staff at the time it was set up.
Likewise why Apple has had large cash balances on it's balance sheet. Unable to repatriate the funds back home as would be liable to US taxes. Keep it offshore in places like Ireland. Where the tax jurisdication is more corporate friendly.
Musk lives in Texas as there's no state income tax.
Bezos lives in Florida and pays 8% capital gains tax on selling down his Amazon share holding.
No great surprise they are Trump funders.