>> the infrastructure to run a billion (real) people is going to cost you an epic fuckton
> Let's charge $2/year to be on the safe side. We've now raking in $16 billion a year
With 1 billion users, $2/year gives you $2B/year, not $16B/year.
> offer some dividend
Honestly, I think we explicitly don't want this. We should go for a non-profit model, where the company is required to put most/all of its revenue toward running the business, and cannot distribute dividends. If we have shareholders and dividends and whatnot, that's just an incentive for the owners to push for greater profits so their dividends go up.
You mention utilities, and that just makes me think of my local electric/gas utility, PG&E, which is a public, for-profit corporation, listed on a stock exchange. Years ago they even used to pay a dividend. They completely suck, and have been responsible for people's deaths. This is not at all the model we should strive for when it comes to a social-network-as-utility.
> With 1 billion users, $2/year gives you $2B/year, not $16B/year.
I was doing the max theoretical if we had all 8 billion humans signed up. The better approach would be to do something pegged to the minimum wage in the country but it's pointless trying to create completely theoretical finances for an imaginary company in a forum thread. The general idea I'm trying to get across is we could charge a vastly lower price for these things if there weren't such greedy and power hungry motivations underlying their financial and corporate structures.
> This is not at all the model we should strive for when it comes to a social-network-as-utility.
I agree it does seem like something that it would probably be better served via a non-profit but it's probably a tough sell. Maybe something like a cooperative might be a nice compromise.
> Let's charge $2/year to be on the safe side. We've now raking in $16 billion a year
With 1 billion users, $2/year gives you $2B/year, not $16B/year.
> offer some dividend
Honestly, I think we explicitly don't want this. We should go for a non-profit model, where the company is required to put most/all of its revenue toward running the business, and cannot distribute dividends. If we have shareholders and dividends and whatnot, that's just an incentive for the owners to push for greater profits so their dividends go up.
You mention utilities, and that just makes me think of my local electric/gas utility, PG&E, which is a public, for-profit corporation, listed on a stock exchange. Years ago they even used to pay a dividend. They completely suck, and have been responsible for people's deaths. This is not at all the model we should strive for when it comes to a social-network-as-utility.