
Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers - thisisnotatest
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-19/tech-workers-backing-candidates-looking-to-break-up-their-employers
======
pytester
Wasn't too surprised to see that Bloomberg neglected to mention a pretty self
evident reason why tech workers might want that
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

I'm pretty sure that if the anti-trust litigation in 2001 hadn't battered
microsoft then tech wages would not be as high today. Competition among
employers is good for wages, and the fewer and bigger the employers, the less
the competition.

~~~
option
I am not quite sure that smaller companies can offer higher wages.

Also, keep in mind a story of Bell Labs - the innovation power house hugely
responsible for tens of Nobel Prize winning inventions such as transistor and
solar cells. You need an insanely rich and powerful parent company to fund
something like this (only Alphabet is kind pf doing it these days)

~~~
pmoriarty
_" You need an insanely rich and powerful parent company to fund something
like this"_

Or the US government, which funds the overwhelming majority of basic research
in the world.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
There's a sense in which both systems tax ordinary folk to pay for science.

In the Bell Labs system, the tax is the monopoly price paid by folks on their
phone bill. In the other system the taxes are collected by the government.

There's a lot of money to be made migrating such taxes to the private sector
where private individuals can take a cut.

This is one of the reasons it's often profitable to campaign against things
like the public funding of science (e.g. the recent attacks on the NSF).

------
esotericn
This is only surprising if you subscribe strictly to Sinclair's quote:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
on his not understanding it."

In reality, many many people work at jobs that they don't believe in. I
personally haven't been able to hack it - I'm too stubborn to keep my mouth
shut at appropriate times.

But ultimately, people can and will vote against "their own self interest". I
vote for and fund environmental parties, despite that meaning I will
personally lose out in a lot of ways, because it's the right thing to do.

That's part of what being a mature adult is. Recognizing that it's not all
about your personal status and/or livelihood.

~~~
xen2xen1
The quote is highly contingent on one thing, that a man's salary is hard to
replace. For most of humanity, it is. I'd wager if you work at a FANNG company
you don't view it that way. Hard to get quite as much, maybe, but getting some
making $250k to move to $200k a year is much, much different than someone
moving from $45 a year to $30k a year, or $25k a year.

~~~
esotericn
I don't think you can generalize that much.

Personally none of that stuff mattered once I earned more than like, twice
minimum wage. Nowhere near $200K.

Maybe that's a US thing, since you guys have so much tied up in work (health
insurance etc).

I just think about having enough money to get by and help people around me,
employment fits around that, not the other way around.

Sure, people who are actually earning biscuits as a wage are basically slaves.
So it goes.

FWIW I don't work in adtech, I think it's bollocks and that everyone doing it
should stop.

~~~
bcrosby95
It goes pretty fast if you have kids in the US. We have twins and preschool
alone is 700/month. You're also supposed to save like 500/month/kid for
college - we have 3 so that's another 1500/month. Minivan to lug everyone
around is 600/month.

~~~
lonelappde
Student loans can pay public school tuition, and anyway $100K plus a decade of
investment interest is quite generous for public school, or private school
with a scholarship (aka not a diploma mill) or ivy league school with
financial aid for non-1%ers. And counting both daycare and saving college
tuition is double-counting on an annalized basis. A minivan costs $600/month
only if you buy new and trade in for another new car after 5 years. It's under
$400 if you keep if for 7-10 years. Your $2800/month is only $1000-$2000 in
the real world.

------
justanthrtchguy
Maybe they are donating to candidates who they believe are good for everyone (
including themselves ) and not just good for their employers who could care
less about them in most cases. Voting on one issue is a sure way to get a
candidate who is against you when they ignore that issue.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Yes, this. I vote for candidates that will do right by my children, other's
children, the future of our planet.

------
recursivecaveat
Pretty telling that the idea of voting against one's own financial self-
interest, even as a single part of a large platform, is a wild idea to these
business journalists.

~~~
adrr
Having a few large companies that have colluded to keep salaries down by
having no poaching agreements doesn’t seem it’s good for tech workers. Having
a bunch of companies and a competitive labor market is much better for tech
workers.

~~~
kmlx
"salaries down"

if anything, all IT salaries need to come back to earth. i assume via massive
taxation from the likes of warren and sanders.

~~~
lonelappde
Why should capitalist do-nothings and mangament capture all the wealth of a
company? Lower pay for labor is an acceptable consequence of lowering consumer
prices, not a goal in itself.

------
alfalfasprout
One thing I've definitely noticed is the culture of fear in tech about not
appearing "progressive enough". Given that tech workers, especially in the bay
area tend to come from fairly privileged backgrounds with relative financial
stability and also live in safer areas they tend to underestimate the
importance of reducing crime and maintaining a strong economy.

This definitely provides a "psychological safety net" that tends to push a lot
of these people to vote for more radical leftist candidates that may be
directly against their self (and future children's) interests.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Or alternatively, they believe that it's in the collective best interest of
the country and future generations to elect candidates who are proposing
stronger regulation to address income equality, rather than candidates who
propose that income equality either doesn't exist, doesn't matter, or will
sort itself out without regulation.

Your phrasing suggests that you think someone like me who believes in the
strong regulation approach is just "virtue signaling," but I would suggest
that it's because I've looked back at the US in the last century and couldn't
help but observe that there's a strong and consistent correlation between
market regulation and the economic success of the lower-to-middle class.
Income inequality dropped dramatically with the New Deal, the notional
"American Dream" largely came about in the post-WWII economy -- and the move
toward radical deregulation and trickle-down economics in the 1980s coincides
with a sharp rise in income inequality, a concentration of wealth at the
highest ends, and dramatic fraying of safety nets for the lowest ends. It is
not unreasonable to look at all that and say, "Hey, maybe there was something
to that whole 'market regulation' thing after all."

------
habosa
I don't get why this is so shocking. The future of the company I work at is
not the most important political issue to me. I don't want to have a good job
in a bad country.

I'll happily vote for Elizabeth Warren and if she does break up the company I
work at I'll deal with that when it happens.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Breaking up big tech companies is undoubtedly good for the workers, create
more competition in hiring. It would probably send money downwards and be a
huge boon to innovation tbh.

~~~
skybrian
Well, maybe. But on the other hand, the biggest tech companies seem to pay the
most? Why is that?

~~~
treis
Say you write some code that increases conversions by 0.01%. Thats worth 10
bucks to momandpop.com compared with millions to Amazon. No wonder that
programmers can make more at Amazon.

~~~
tdhoot
Analogy doesn't really hold up. Increasing conversions by 0.01% probably takes
an hour at momandpop.com and maybe a year or more at Amazon. Not to mention
low-hanging fruit already being picked at large corps.

~~~
sidibe
A lot of things at big companies aren't ever going to be worth doing at little
companies. In cloud companies they spend tens of millions of dollars going
after 1-2% efficiency gains that really make a big difference when many of
these little gains are all stacked and applied to billions of dollars of
equipment. Maybe if these companies got broken up, several little companies
could sell these little gains, but that seems much less likely than one of the
broken up companies naturally becoming big again and doing it themselves.

This field has a ton of natural incentives to scale as big as possible. I feel
like the main beneficiaries of breaking up big tech companies are business
people and lawyers getting to insert themselves everywhere to interface
between groups that used to be the same company.

------
bobbytherobot
A decade of working in Bay Area tech meant watching kids of rich parents get
rich off dubious business plans by creating a startup in San Francisco while
their parents buy them a house, pay their expenses and tap into their networks
for seed funding all the while the company loses money for over a decade while
they become millionaires from selling shares during rounds of fundraising.
Then I go for the big guy where they are profitable, but then we are chasing
the quarterly earning report because we are scared of what Jim Cramer will say
about us instead of the everyday impact on the people who use our products.
Yeah, I'm disillusioned with it all. I just want to practice my craft to build
useful software for people and live a nice life.

~~~
Gibbon1
> we are scared of what Jim Cramer will say about us instead of the everyday
> impact on the people who use our products

Reminds me of a thing I read by someone that worked Broadway for at that time
40 years. He said the best thing for Broadway would be to take the NYT art
critics out for a ride in the country. Because no one was making plays for the
regulars or the tourists, they were making plays for the critics. Same
complaints have been made about the wine industry.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
It's a great anecdote, but it's hard for me to read that and not immediately
think "then explain Andrew Lloyd Webber, please."

~~~
Gibbon1
Guy made a comment about that, said they've been running cats for the last 1
years because they are afraid to try anything new. If they put on a new play
and the critics don't give it a top rating no one comes and they lose money.

~~~
Gibbon1
Opps meant 12 years. Currently Cats has been running for 38 years.

------
cableshaft
I'm not entirely convinced breaking up Big Tech will be a net benefit, in fact
that position weakened my support for Warren.

But then again, I also don't work for a FAANG (I do work for a big
corporation, and they don't need broken up, they're imploding just fine on
their own), so I wouldn't be included in that statistic anyway.

~~~
kmlx
breaking up big tech (sanders, warren):

\- US short sellers dream: will truly and finally cripple the US and its
dominant IT companies; long overdue as US is at most a medium level country

\- huge rise in Chinese IT companies; left without competitors assume the
Chinese giants will simply control everything and everyone; a new era of
Chinese world dominance begins

------
radicalbyte
Are "we" backing these candidates because of their social policies, or because
they're going to be the best leaders at this critical point in the fight
against the climate collapse?

As a group tech workers are highly educated in the STEM fields. We understand
the science and accept the conclusions. So we know what we need to do.

That and Warren in particular is positioned as being so fantastically
competent that it's very easy to see our group getting behind her.

------
mc32
To some degree I agree that some of these companies have too much control over
users and collect too much information and give users too little control in
that.

With that said, I feel there’s some irony in this. These companies essentially
have encouraged and enabled these attitudes in their workforce thinking this
would make the employers look like they shared the same goals and had to good
of workers in mind. Essentially they thought coöpting the workforce was
possible without negative outcomes. History shows this doesn’t work, unless
you are a tyrant and have absolute control and have real ways to control them
outside of work.

For example Mao could have his PLA and could have his Red Guards and use them
to achieve whatever policy he wanted, no matter how ill advised.

~~~
hos234
Zuckerberg is known to rave about Emporer Augustus achieving 200 years of
world peace through "harsh methods".

So they cherry pick whatever stories they want from history to justify their
mistakes.

~~~
methodover
Do you have a source for the Zuckerberg quote?

~~~
jlarocco
Not hard to find...

I think the original is here:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-
zucke...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-
fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy)

And then there's a ton of commentary about it:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/what-a...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/what-
attracts-mark-zuckerberg-roman-hardman-augustus)

[https://theconversation.com/mark-zuckerbergs-admiration-
for-...](https://theconversation.com/mark-zuckerbergs-admiration-for-emperor-
augustus-is-misplaced-heres-why-108172)

...

------
jedberg
I’m not very surprised. I’m a big fan of Warren but not a big fan of her
break-up-tech policy.

But I realize that her heart is in the right place and I think what she says
will benefit the country.

So I’m willing to accept what might be a bad idea (breaking up tech) for the
good ideas that come with it.

------
debatem1
I'm a tech worker and I'll be voting Warren.

Technology really does have the power to change the world and the lives of the
people in it profoundly. It is important to recognize that some of those
changes are areas of public interest, public concern, and even public policy.
The government will-- and rightly should-- demand that such changes be shaped
not to cause unnecessary harm.

------
WalterBright
Keep in mind that the top 1% pay 37% of the Federal income tax receipts. If
their wealth was removed, who else would pay that amount?

------
opportune
There’s nothing wrong with voting against your own (direct) interest. In fact
what goes against your direct interest can be more than made up for indirectly
by making a fairer or generally better society.

Obvious example: green energy, generally speaking, is less economically
efficient than fossil fuels (yes, it’s getting better everyday, that’s not the
point). We are probably all going to be slightly worse off economically while
we transition to green energy. But that doesn’t mean the transition is not
worth doing to avoid all the long lasting, externalized negative side effects
of fossil fuels.

------
wpasc
I'm sorry but this article is beyond stupid. It is a narrative in search of
data.

Opening line:

>Silicon Valley software engineers seem more loyal to the left wing of the
Democratic Party than to their own employers.

Then proceeds to include no data that any donations are actually from software
engineers.

Then the actual amounts:

>Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who has called for breaking up
Facebook, Amazon and Google, raised more than $173,000 from tech industry
employees in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg News’s analysis of
public data on political contributions from employees at 10 large tech
companies.

$173,000? Candidates raising money is usually discussed in terms of millions
raised. so 173k? how is that newsworthy? that could be 173 ppl giving 1k.

~~~
vuln
I find it weird that she picks and chooses. Limits the execs but takes money
from the low level employees.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-limits-
donatio...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-limits-donations-
from-some-bank-tech-execs-11571148004)

~~~
methodover
I see no contradiction there. She’s fighting against the influence wielded by
those at the very top of the ladder.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I wonder what the support is after Warren revealed her tax plans?

I would think that increasing the capital gains taxes and requiring taxes on
stock appreciation regardless of they are sold would affect Silicon Valley
workers who often have a large part of their competition as stocks/equity.

~~~
mcv
For that reason, big Wallstreet banks have threatened not to support Warren if
she becomes the Democratic candidate. But apparently plenty of employees of
those Wallstreet banks do support her for exactly that reason: they know
better than anyone that the situation at the top of their employer is
unhealthy.

------
Reedx
It is odd that so many otherwise tech savvy people are supportive of 20th
century solutions to 21st century problems (to borrow Andrew Yang's phrase).

People don't want to use the 4th best search engine or twitter or airbnb. We
all know this. These kind of things are naturally winner take all and will pop
up elsewhere on the global stage if we push them down here.

Instead, apply a VAT. This would be a productive and holistic solution to a
21st century problem.

~~~
dmode
Honestly, in a way, it is almost two sides of the same coin. Warren knows that
breaking up a company will not pass muster through Congress, and we will
settle on a compromise which is a VAT. On the other hand, if you start with a
VAT, the compromise will be nothing

------
cyclecount
I work at Google and I’m voting for Bernie Sanders

------
jdjdjjsjs
Smaller tech companies will almost certainly be better for workers.

More competitive companies mean more demand for workers and higher salaries
for workers.

More competition also likely means more innovation and better prices and more
choices for customers.

The only people possibly losing out even slightly are the preexisting owners.

------
lawrenceyan
I prefer Andrew Yang's method of adding on a general value added tax in
addition to providing a basic income. This ensures a distribution of wealth
that guarantees a minimum base while not discouraging people from aiming
higher by forcing a cap on income.

~~~
mcv
I support basic income, but I'm not a big fan of value added tax. It's a
corporate tax that ends up being paid by consumers. Investments and buying
abroad is often except, so it ends up as a somewhat regressive tax.

~~~
lawrenceyan
So something in the vein of an increased capital gains tax?

------
sedeki
Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an
outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.

~~~
malvosenior
I think it's generational. SV in the Gen X era was highly libertarian. The
Millenials in SV seem to be mostly left wing or even socialist. Broadly
speaking that is, exceptions abound.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
A lot of social democrats start out as libertarians and then move left once
they see the bigger picture of power dynamics beyond the individual.

~~~
methodover
This was my experience as well. Started off as a libertarian. But then I
started working, first in the lobbying industry, then in Silicon Valley.

Meritocracy is not as good an idea as it seems to be in practice.

~~~
perl4ever
"Meritocracy is not as good an idea as it seems to be in practice"

Why not just consider that it is a label which may not apply to the reality
you observe? Have we gotten to the point where considering that any X is not Y
is considered a "no true Scotsman" fallacy?

------
habosa
I work at Google and I'll be voting for Elizabeth Warren.

~~~
thundergolfer
Would you also vote for Bernie if he got the primary?

~~~
habosa
Yes, I'd never vote for Trump.

------
bryanlarsen
Standard Oil, Bell, etc. Anti-trust breakups have a history of being good for
employees and share holders. I'm fairly confident the same would happen here.

------
marcoseliziario
Monopolies are also bad for labor, last time I've checked.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
What a surprise. I'd love to be a billionaire, but I like Sanders opinions
about whether they should exist. I'd love to be worth enough for it to hurt
me, but I like Warren's wealth tax idea. I'd love to pay lower taxes, or less
progressive taxes, but I'm happy to support those less fortunate. As a matter
of fact, I'm not even a single-issue voter! Perhaps most controversially, I
think altruism is good for society. Shocking, I know.

What a crazy idea, voting against your own interest. _gasp!_

~~~
zozbot234
Wealth taxes are actually _bad_ for society, and _especially_ bad for
altruistic people who care about the less fortunate. A wealth tax is a tax on
capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it
hugely hurts those who _need_ capital the most. If you care about lowering
inequality without hurting folks more than you have to, what you want is a
mildly-progressive consumption tax. (I.e. an income tax which exempts most
savings and investments from counting as income.)

(Oh, and perhaps get rid of assorted insanity such as Prop 13 in CA, so that
the real estate market can become functional, and those who own lots of
expensive real estate pay their fair share.)

~~~
tfehring
Government spending in capitalist countries creates returns to capital.
Financing that spending almost entirely through taxes on labor, as the US does
today, means that government spending is (in part) a direct transfer from
labor to capital.

Also, capital is not a scarce resource in the US today. For firms that would
be worth investing in but don't have access to capital on reasonable terms,
the reason for their lack of access is a combination of incentive problems and
inefficiency on the part of e.g. VC firms, not because the capital isn't out
there. It's true that a wealth tax would increase the cost of equity, but the
Finance 101 strategy of "only initiate a project if the IRR of the expected
cashflows is greater than the cost of equity" isn't really meaningful for
startups since the future cashflows are so uncertain.

If by "those who _need_ capital the most" you mean charities and not startups,
a wealth tax would just incentivize giving more to charities and doing it
sooner.

~~~
zozbot234
> Government spending in capitalist countries creates returns to capital.

Mostly, it doesn't. It boosts the value of _specific_ , scarce assets. The
increase in e.g. land values that's directly attributable to government
spending is a lot more tangible than any fuzzy effect on rates of return for
capital. _This_ makes most government spending basically a transfer from the
productive (labor and capital) to the rent-seekers, but that has nothing to do
with capital per se.

> isn't really meaningful for startups since the future cashflows are so
> uncertain.

Uncertain cashflows make the effect _more_ meaningful, not less. Few investors
will be well-positioned to fund a firm with hard-to-assess future cashflow, so
capital is meaningfully scarce for those firms.

------
carapace
In re: "Silicon Valley software engineers seem more loyal to the left wing of
the Democratic Party than to their own employers." Specifically, _loyalty_ to
my "own employers."

These are the folks ("dozens" of companies) who colluded to cheat their own
developers of est. $8 _billion_ dollars:

[https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-
valle...](https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-
celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/)

[https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-
wage...](https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-
cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/)

\- - - -

FWIW, "anecdata": I worked at one of the FAANG companies for about two years,
and, yeah, hell yeah, the one I worked at should be broken up IMO.

An "exploded view" form would introduce buffers and breaks in very (IMO)
appropriate places while still permitting the innovation and economic growth.

Put another way, I don't think the economics of scale apply as cleanly to tech
industry as they do to mass production. You want more communication rather
than less, and that takes time/energy/attention.

------
robomartin
The only reason anyone in the US supports these people is because they have
never lived in the socialist big government utopia these politicians champion.
In fact, not even the politicians themselves have lived in the society they
propose! How is that for a brilliant starting point.

Ask anyone who has experienced these ideas in the flesh and you’ll find
someone absolutely perplexed that US voters don’t laugh these people out of
office.

As the saying goes: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice,
they are not.

All US voters really know about these ideas are the promises and a distorted
theory and history that conveniently leaves out the horror, the reality, of
these ideas. They have been implemented time and time again in various forms
across continents and time. And they have laid to waste everything they touch.

You’d think people would have learned better by now. Sadly, that required an
educational system rooted in fair historical exposure rather than one that
pushes a single ideology at every level. This ignorance of history leads to
repeating mistakes.

Here is the other fact that absolutely floors me: Nobody can name a single
nation —not one— which, after adopting these policies, has elevated itself to
a level even remotely resembling the success and accomplishments that can be
attributed to free market capitalism.

Sure, capitalism isn’t perfect, nothing ever will be, yet it has elevated more
people out of poverty, cured more disease and improved the lives of more
people than anything else in recorded history.

The allure of these twisted ideas comes at the intersection of a badly
educated public and the promise of solving all problems by taking from those
who have more. Easy proposition.

Reality is that it never solves anything and often creates more problems. The
$15/hr minimum wage “solution” is one of the best modern examples of this
effects.

The other element naive supporters miss is that the politicians proposing
these ideas never live the reality they want you to live. They never live it
before or after they are elected. See if you can name even a single politician
who has, anywhere in the world and across modern history. That should tell you
something.

~~~
dmode
I have no idea what you just said. I personally, have lived in Denmark,
Netherlands, and Germany - quite socialist, and big government places, with
public healthcare, education, childcare, strong safety nets, unions, worker
protections, so on and so forth. And life was freaking great. In fact, in
Netherlands, you only needed to work for 36 hours. Those were the happiest
times of my life.

~~~
robomartin
Those are not socialist nations, not even close. This is a common response
that has no basis in reality.

For example: Have any of those nations taken over and nationalized large
businesses? Have any of those nations grown government so large that a massive
percentage of the population depends on it to survive?

Those countries are as capitalist as you can get in practice. They just happen
to have one or more well developed social programs that compare favorably to
the US. This is commendable, BTW, and there is no reason for which the US
should not actually do better than all of these nations put together on these
fronts. The reason we do not is because our politicians, well, suck.

When people point at just a handful of European nations and claim them to be
examples of socialism doing well, the usually point at Nordic countries and
even places like Germany and the Netherlands, as you did.

This false assertion is always based on a single data point: Healthcare. Or,
by extension, high taxes and healthcare and maybe education. Nothing else.

Well folks, universal healthcare does not make a country socialist. Show me
where Karl Marx explained this was the goal of socialism and you might have a
point.

It's even worse when you truly look a the economies in these countries and
understand how it is they are able to do as they do. For example, having an
oil-based economy that supports great social programs --which is like winning
the lottery at a national level and using the money intelligently.

The reason the US does not have an equivalent healthcare system is because
politicians, on both sides of the ideological divide, have been focusing on
the wrong variable in this complex multivariate equation: Insurance.

The US does not have a health insurance problem, it has a health costs
problem. Until that side of the equation is balanced the situation will not
improve, whether you go to Medicare for all or do something else. This is a
business, and you have to balance costs if you want to improve outcomes.

What are the cost drivers?

The first layer might be a heavy regulatory framework that makes everything
more expensive. Regulation is important and necessary. Over-regulation, to the
point where the cost of doing business is negatively affected, is bad for
everyone. Just try to develop a medical device or drug in the US and see what
happens.

I have been wanting to develop a specialized hearing aid for what is known as
"Single Side Deafness" for quite some time. It's impossible without a massive
amount of money and likely not a large enough market to make it worth
investor's funding such an effort. The impediment isn't in technology, it's in
the onerous and extremely expensive (in time and money) regulatory framework.
We end-up with investors and intelligent folks devoting their money and smarts
to figuring out how to get more people to click on links than devoting their
time and money to solving important problems.

Why is it that Europe and others pay so much less for the same drugs and
devices that are so expensive in the US. Because we develop them here and the
US bares 100% of the cost of the US regulatory burden. In other words, we, in
the US, pay for what it cost to do business here. The rest of the world pays
for the basic COGS on these products plus some profit. The difference is
massive. If the various European nations had to pay for the actual cost of
developing anything sourced from US companies their medical systems would
crack and crumble. The UK's NHS is and has been in trouble for some times
precisely due to the cost side of the equation, something that is
unsustainable [0]. In 2017 the NHS's budget represented over 30% of public
spending. Something like that is not sustainable. The net result is that care
goes to hell, people have to wait months for care and others who are able to
end-up paying for private care (negating the entire concept of these systems
being the solution to healthcare).

That's just ONE of the cost drivers in the US. Next you have to look at tort
reform. For those not familiar with the term, it means lawsuits, doctors,
clinics, hospitals, medical device and drug manufacturers exposure to being
sued.

This is a problem in the US that permeates almost every aspect of life to
varying degrees. For example, if you run a website today you can be sued any
time if you don't implement ADA accessibility guidelines. I am NOT saying the
ADA guidelines are a bad thing, what I am saying is that in the US we use a
sledge-hammer in the form of lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits rather than a
more rational and less socially costly process.

In the medical field, the cost of lawsuits is massive. Which also means
insurance costs are large. Doctors, depending on specialization, have to pay
for very expensive protection (insurance) against predatory attorneys looking
to make a buck from any mistake they might make when treating a patient. The
cost for hospitals and medical device and drug manufacturers is equally
massive.

There are repercussions to this structure. A simple example is that doctors
will order and perform a battery of sometimes unnecessary tests on patients
simply because of the threat. Nobody wants to go to court and have to face
severe career-ending penalties, so they order tons of tests to cover their
behinds. Medicine ceases to be about the patient when doctors are worried
about lawyers.

Yet another cost driver is the high cost of university education in the US,
and, in particular, medical education. When a doctor graduates with US $300K
in debt they cannot earn below a certain threshold. Their lives will soon
include added costs for a house, car and eventually a growing family with
their own cost structures. They will also need insurance for their home, cars,
healthcare and practice. Without charging enough for their services they
become enslaved to the cost of their education. As it is, most will require
decades to pay off these loans.

The cost of our education is out of control precisely due to government
intervention. When a government guarantees loans as they do universities
charge massive amounts of money for their degrees. The result is a chain
reaction of costs at every level that affect the competitiveness of our
medical industry in more ways than one.

It's easy to point at a few countries in Europe and, just because they have
"socialized" medicine and high taxes conclude that's utopia and the US's
problems are due to evil capitalism. A more intellectually honest dive into
the realities behind these issues reveals a completely different scenario, a
truth where most of the failings in the US are easily attributable to failures
in policy and politics and government becoming far more involved than they
should.

And then there's the "life is great" assertion and yet we don't see hundreds
of millions of people wanting to move into any of these nations. In fact, if
they don't control immigration tightly they would crumble in short order.
Interestingly enough, if the US made immigration free and open we would
probably easily double our population in a very short period of time. Everyone
wants to come here, including people from the countries you mentioned. I also
presume from your comment you no longer live in any of those countries. If
life was so great, why not? The most common answer to that question is, lack
of opportunity. Everything comes at a cost.

[0] "10 charts that show why the NHS is in trouble"
[https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572110](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-42572110)

~~~
dmode
Those are overwhelmingly described as socialist nations in conservative media
and is the north star of 99% of democratic policies

Edit: rest of your response. Where do I even start. Hundreds of millions of
people are not looking to move to Europe ? Do you even read the news ? Have
you heard about the refugee crisis in Europe ? Have you read about the divide
between immigrant community in Europe ? Have you read about boats crossing the
Mediterranean every day ?

~~~
robomartin
What media says, conservative or otherwise, has no relevance here. These are
not socialist nations, period. This isn't even debatable. And, frankly, it is
amazing anyone would believe this in a day and age when it is easy to google
stuff and learn.

For example: Is Denmark socialist?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzEPKrHalaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzEPKrHalaY)

Get this, Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage! How socialist is that?

You are truly confused about a ton of stuff here. Of course I know about
what's going on in Europe. I've only been going there for nearly thirty years
with great regularity. I have watched as these uncontrolled migrations have
devastated entire areas and the culture in some locations. Terrible stuff.

I digress. You are comparing things that have nothing to do with each other.
For example, these migrants are escaping war and, in some cases, genocide.
They could not care less where they go so long as it isn't where their feet
happen to be during the war.

As a descendant of genocide survivors and one who had extensive conversations
with my grandparents, I can tell you that they didn't get out their World
Almanac and Political Science books along with world economic reports to
figure out where to go; they got on the first ship, train, cart or horse that
got them the hell out of there.

Please, stop and do a little reading. I'm sure you are an excellent person and
one of great intelligence, you are simply operating with the wrong information
and, as a result, have reached very flawed conclusions. The good news is this
can be fixed if you are willing to consider things might not be as you have
grown to believe.

------
hogFeast
Turkeys voting for Christmas. If you break up the large companies, this system
will collapse. The reason why Facebook and Google are allowed to light massive
stacks of shareholder cash on fire (in pay and acquisitions) is because they
have a monopoly which churns off cash, and are protected by supervoting
shares.

Very good for investors though. They can buy the monopoly and sell all the
OSS/moonshot bullshit.

