> All I can really find is that Google's operating expenses are around $261 billion as of this year[1], and their revenue was $385[2] — and since operating expenses are usually at least substantially payroll, it's hard to tell

It's unlikely that this is mostly for payroll. From AI I got:

"median total compensation per employee was approximately $279,802 in 2022, and with 183,323 employees at the end of 2024, total estimated compensation (salary + equity + benefits) likely exceeds $50 billion, or ~14–15% of total revenue"

So maybe it's not 1% as in Varoufakis talk but even if it's 15% of revenue that's also quite low. Also keep in mind in this AI reponse it includes equity (stocks) so that in this way employee is becoming investor/shareholder.

Regarding the Tesla disabling, maybe he means the fact that Tesla remotely disabled FSD when someone sold their car. I thought I remembered Tesla disabling the vehicle completely, and I distinctly remember aspects of the story (the vehicle wouldn't do more than some low mph and said to pull over), but I can't find any reference to that story now.

Google has 180k employees, let's assume 200k average salary, that's 36 bil, 10% of the revenue you posted.

He's made a slew of false claims before I turned off the video. Among which is the idea that companies like Facebook are merely valuable because of the "labor we provide". In fact, they make money through advertising and sharing data with advertisers. If socializing was all there was to value, these companies would be redundant. The service provided is content-delivery in various forms, that isn't free and it isn't something "anyone from the CS dept" would do as well.

To call it "labor" to share boomer-humor memes and use Marketplace (i.e. users doing what they want on FB) is stretching the term. As with youtube, the prolific creators on instagram and the like also make piles of money. Yet it's being framed as though they're putting all this effort for the company's benefit only.

Tesla: Data sharing with 3rd parties is a fact they themselves advertise: https://theoffroading.com/does-tesla-sell-driving-data/ Are they being paid for it or is one of the companies amazon? I couldn't find that information, but frankly: if the tech is in place and used, why wouldn't they? GM does so with insurance companies: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

Tesla does have the ability to remotely disable your car: https://theoffroading.com/can-tesla-shut-down-your-car-remot... Again: the tech is there and as we already experienced with John Deer machinery will be used when called upon https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrain...

Not sure what 'blaming capitalism' has to do with the content of the video in the link we're supposedly discussing. (Advantages ... for whom?) It's speaker says that our situation is post-capitalist, and that we're in a feudalist economy now.

> they attribute to capitalism what is actually the fault of a lack of regulation

Regulation works in a theoretical world where the rules of the game are set by an outsider entity, which is powerful enough to enforce said rules and yet completely separate from economic power.

In real life, players affect the rules: lobbying, marketing, media ownership, cronyism…

I really wonder how you define "capitalism" such a that the capital owners aren't one of the most important actors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz1UqXySpvY&t=2214s

Context: the speaker Lea Ypi is a professor of political philosophy. She grew up in socialist Albania, and here she's talking about how during her studies of political philosophy in Rome, her Western "socialist" classmates had a fantasy about socialism, and didn't want to hear about her experience growing up in socialism/about the socialist countries that have failed.

I have a feeling you're doing the same, just with a different -ism.

> easy enough to deal with but while the rich rule the world, there is little interest.

Then it’s not easy enough to deal with is it? And capitalism seems to have created this situation so you could are the that this is inherent in the system.

If capitalism itself is the reason for not being able to pass good regulation, then what would you call that ? We are living in a world where corporations are people and it’s ok to lobby

When you add regulations to capitalism you will, in due course, get socialism.

Even wealth taxes are ineffectual and have been tried, but wealth limits is pants-on-head stupid. If you want to redistribute wealth, you need to generate it first. If wealth were zero sum we'd still be fighting in caves over sticks. This is the most anti-liberal and anti-prosperity idea next to "degrowth".

Inequality is mostly a red herring and not a core issue in and of itself. Public spending as % of GDP has only really been going up for over a century, and we expect UBI and the like to be in our future. Meanwhile we're already seeing what those excesses can lead to in France if we're not careful.

I wonder if the average person in America is feeling the benefits of a huge tech sector.

Who cares how well the businesses do? Only the wealthy in the US benefit from that. I’ll gladly swap and go to Europe where I don’t have to worry about falling into medical debt if I am unlucky.

Yet you can still have a very decent middle class educated person existence with no anxiety of debt or illness. If you think you can just go to the us and be in the 1% by all means do and be happy (at the expense of the majority of others). Otherwise stay, and enjoy social democracy’s unsung success in guaranteeing stable live to hundreds of millions by making it hard to get to the capitalistic excesses of the us.

> As an European I have to say, perhaps the American approach is better.

It's not better, it's just more attractive. The EU isn't the only country with regulations, every single other western country does, every single other first world country does.

The US allows greed to flourish at the expensive of it's people. That might be better for the people developing the tech, but it isn't better for society in the longrun.

As someone who lives in the heart of Silicon Valley, there are HUGE downsides to letting industry write their own tax law / loopholes and playing one jurisdiction against the other for special tax incentives.

The local governments in this area are mostly starved of funds, despite having the world’s largest companies who pay their executives and rare talent among the highest compensation in the world.

The big tech companies can afford to hire private security with staff larger than the local police departments.

And they NEED that security to keep the homeless people in tents and broke down RVs from parking on their property.

The homeless and jobless end up breaking into the houses of everyone who can’t afford private security. If they don’t become thieves or druggies, then they are a broken husk of a person.

When companies don’t like the neighborhood, they pick up and move to the next hot city and the cycle repeats there.

This isn’t the fault of big tech alone, but don’t pretend like the US has figured out how to balance society and taxation.

Consider that "successful" has evolved from innovating products that make our lives better to a strong focus on ad tech, surveillance, social media, and slop.

remember EU had Nokia and Skype and that was before overregulation. What happenned? Both got sold out because EU doesn't have money printer and petrodollar. EU cannot compete even if it would reduce taxes and decrease regulation because they cannot protect their best tech companies from being bought by dozen of billions of printed papers. Most even such companies are on US stock exchange because that's another different money printer.

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Which country doesn’t tax their companies or people? Whether it be tariffs, income taxes, sales taxes, VAT, property taxes, minerals taxes, etc., all countries tax.

Taxes are a necessary evil for society and order. The USA tried to have zero ability to tax the states/people and that only lasted about 10 years before that national government failed and they tried another constitution with more national government powers.

You aren’t arguing “against taxes”, you just have a different opinion on the taxation regime and the coefficients. The sooner you recognize that, the faster your discussions with other humans might actually yield productive results.

do you have your own private army to protect you in a taxless world?

Apart from the market (obviously), the companies also enjoy infrastructure, resources (mostly finite) and they also produce byproducts that the society has to deal with (pollution, addiction of population etc).

So who pays for these? What you are suggesting is government subsidies of companies. This sounds like communism to me.

What is your view on taxes?

It worked in the past.

How would at tax on HN even work? Does it have revenue?