I’ve begun to read brilliant new books by Brian Kaplan. Pro Market and Pro Business: I began reading Laissez-Fafaire essays and covered the first 12 (short) chapters. I had found a lot to post, but unfortunately I did teet to agree with almost all of Brian’s arguments. However, there is one chapter on antitrust, and I find myself getting a little tired of it. Even then, probability agrees with the meaning of his argument policy;
Since 2007, Bill Gates has handed over $2.8 billion, 48% of his net worth. Frugal Dad estimates he saved nearly six million lives. I double-checked his sources and estimate that it is plausible.
Back in the 90s, Bill Gates had less advantages, experiencing publicity and legal persecution. The US government sued Microsoft for anti-trust violations. In 2000, Alex Tabarock estimated that the antitrust case cost Microsoft shareholders $1400 billion. Yes, Microsoft has finally reached a favorable settlement. But Gates would have been rich in billions if there were no antitrust laws. . . .
There is a shocking involvement when Gates’ charity is as efficient as most people think. In the case of antitrust against Microsoft, they had a large body count. Gates saves about one life for every $5,000 he spends. If the lawsuit costs $5 billion and he was given 48%, the anti-trust killed 480,000 people. Case’s hymn cost $500 million and if he was woven into it, the antitrust killed a million if he gave an event penny. Imagine how many people are dead today if the government could bring Microsoft to its knes and make the gates bankrupt. It stimulates the imagination.
I had a similar argument about Bill Gates when talking to people, but I think this went a little too far:
“By standards, Gates himself kills millions of people because he can’t give more,” you might object. If you’re a consequentialist, that’s exactly right. We are all murderers in the eyes of Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer. However, if you stick to the common sense distinction between “kill” and “dying,” Gates is innocent and the government continues to commit crimes.
I don’t think any of them are common sense interpretations. I am a consequentialist and I don’t think refraining from charity is murder. I also don’t think that the “common sense distinction” would guilty of the US government committing murder in this case.
Antitrust includes bush efficiency and fairness issues. I’m skeptical of whether the US government’s antitrust incident against Microsoft has made the economy more efficient, and I think Brian is skeptical too. As a result, our policy view could be in roughly the same location. However, Brian’s post was not efficient and implicitly focused on the effects of redistribution, so I would like to address the comments.
The logic in this chapter suggests that income from the wealthy to the middle class is bad for utilitarian reasons, as they have far higher prpecence to help the world’s poorest. For Bill Gates, that’s the probability. However, public policies should not be built on how they affect individual singularities. Rather, we need to consider the overall effect of the redistribution policy. Many rich people spend their wealth on consumption and donate to causes such as wealthy universities and awakened foundations.
Antitrust is a strange example to use when dealing with this kind of issue. In interiors, it makes great sense to think about the optimal design of tax and transfer programs based on the assumption that transferring billions of dollars to billionaires will help the poor around the world.
If Bill Gates is typical, it might be best to sharply raise middle-class and middle-class American taxes, while sharply cutting billionaires’ taxes. But in that case, even better policies are the rapidly progressive sales tax system, with revenues like foreign aid programs recently reduced by the people of Doge. As most voters believe charities start at home, they may argue that redirecting money to this poor country is politically unrealistic. It is true, but it is also true that the harsh tax policy on the middle class is not particularly popular.
So, what’s politically ugly? One answer is that what comes out of Congress this year is the only multi-purpose, viable tax policy at the moment. I see such reasoning as an overly defeatist. The highly progressive sales tax on wealthy people is not an easy sell in Congress, but certainly not unpopular than adopting a highly attractive income tax system. The highly progressive sales tax system has made Bill Gates never discourage him from stopping to help the world’s poorest people. However, this plan does not require you to worry about billionaires’ welfare when thinking about optimal tax and optimal antitrust policies.
Again, it is not certain that Brian opposes the policy view. But in a world where many people are actually cooperatives, I think it’s unnecessaryly provocative to suggest that if our wealthiest billionaires are even richer, the world could be better. You can go to the same place with a sudden, progressive sales tax without turning off potential fans of free markets and large corporations.
When it comes to antitrust, we will focus exclusively on efficient issues (which primarily means attacking government barriers to entry), leaving the issue of redistribution in the tax and relocation system. If the Microsoft case was counterproductive, it was academics that made our economy less efficient.
