You all supported creating these idiotic subsidy programs to encourage businesses to do certain behaviors. Then you act shocked that certain businesses do certain behaviors in order to take advantage of the subsidies? And have some underlying tone implying there is something nefarious about this? #REF!

There is no free lunch

Call me when someone is offering genetic testing with some consequence to them if they get it wrong. Until then, this should be treated as if it were a scam.

You seem to have wandered off somewhere that has nothing to do with this conversation. I am not interested in your opinions about the best country to live in. In support freedom to choose where you live and reduction of all barriers, to the extent possible, in the way of you choosing where you live. The safety net provided by Germany has nothing to do with this. I claimed that the min wage reduced output and increases unemployment. You said the opposite. I asked how you would explain per capita GDP, a measure of output, being higher when min wage is lower. I asked how you would explain unemployment rate being lower when min wage is lower. These are two results directly in conflict with your assertion. You ignored both points in your response and instead essentially said these things are okay because of a better safety net. That is a non sequitur and I am not really interested.

Peer-to-peer communication... Like prices? This is just getting funny. You keep insisting you have some novel perspective and all you do is make an argument for why free and competitive markets are the utopia you seek. You are an example of what I see so frequently, which is someone who understands markets very well as far as what needs to exist to function well, yet has no idea that markets actually provide all those requirements already, if left alone.

You didn't talk at all about record low interest rates for 7+ years, which I found interesting.

That is not very correct. Investors know what the company is doing on the accounting side, in all but very rare fraud cases. Companies like you're talking about are pretty clear on what drives their Non-GAAP measures and they make an effort to explain why the non-GAAP measures are the "right" ones. It's a joke in the investor community how divergent GAAP and non-GAAP rev and earnings become over time. They know. They just invest anyway because they "know" others will too.

Um, no, you are exactly wrong. Uber is valued at $41b because of public stock market traders. The private investors are willing to pay $x, where $x is less than the valuation after IPO minus the time cost of money. This is all driven by idiots investing in the public stock market. They are the engine car that pulls the train.

> There are European countries with minimum and average wages much higher than ours, and they don't have those problems.

I'm sorry but I'm not sure how you would know that. You would need to compare their output currently to their output in an alternative history / parallel universe where the min wage were lower. Barring that, it's interesting that you say this but don't address why almost every EU country has a lower GDP per capita that the U.S. Granted, GDP is a flawed measurement, but feel free to look at other similar measures. The EU also has a higher unemployment rate. About double in fact.

So if I am saying that a higher min wage reduces output and causes unemployment, and you're telling me I am wrong based on what actually happens in the real world, I would have expected some addressing of these numbers. While I am not using them as proof of anything, it does seem to run counter to your claim that the "theoretical arguments" don't have predictive power in the real world.

I love when people who have no understanding of econ101 tell me I don't understand Econ101 and then spend the rest of their comment proving that they don't understand econ101.

Companies don't care about making revenue. They care about making profit. A company absolutely will choose to earn less revenue when it means more profit. Because every hour of Sally's work is a net $1 loss in profit, earning $13 in revenue through Sally's work means $14 loss in costs. The company will always be better off not having Sally work.

I think you have the wrong idea of what it means to work hard. It doesn't mean be inefficient at a task. It means be persistent as you identify growth opportunities and worthy calculated risks. Many people do not do that and look for a "safe" 9-5 job where thry operate in a well defined box and don't have surprises or expectations of upward mobility (except s cost of living raise).

I didn't talk at all about monetization. I would continue explaining, but it is clear that you cannot allow yourself to understand, probably due to worry that your long-held worldview might come into question. Best wishes.

This is a very limited view on competition. Competition creates organization and cooperation without a central plan. Your view is too limited because it ignores that resources are much more plentiful in competitive markets.

Right. I forgot about how there is no competition in open source software. What Linux distribution do you run, by the way?

The world organizes itself by competition. It's not always monetary competition. But it is competition.

I think you read my comment too fast or something.