finspeech's comments

No need to rephrase. That was indeed my question. Fact of the matter is, you need money to participate in society at large. I don’t see why it’s bad that Twitter’s not any different. I’m not here to defend Elon’s principles, but if charging people money for a service is bad, then that’s quite the indictment on society.

I think a case could be made for it. Or something like only taxpayers get to vote since they are effectively deciding how to spend their collective dollars. This is how companies operate with shareholders and that seems to work and people don’t bat an eye at it.

And those that made bad choices that the market doesn’t agree with are punished accordingly, by losing their money and thus influence in future decisions

But is that actually bad? Don’t we want the people making decisions to have skin in the game? People use money everyday to express their preferences, why shouldn’t we use it here?

This is the way it should be. People need to have skin in the game and this is in line with my suggestion on how Twitter can solve both its revenue problem and its content moderation problem all at once.

The idea is to auction off the rights to ban/allow controversial users. Twitter collects money for selling this right and the people that feel the strongest about whether or not someone’s speech should be allow on the platform can have a direct say in that decision—all they have to do is put their money where their mouth is. If they don’t, then it’s obviously not worth it to them to have someone be banned or allowed on Twitter.

Let the free market sort out what speech is acceptable. It’s dynamic and is a better representation of what society actually wants at any given time compared to any other system.

Elon should embrace this especially as he just found out that the government was doing exactly this by paying Twitter to censor people. Why not just open it up to everyone?

> Isn’t every product margin an opportunity for competition?

Yes. Which is why marginal revenue does trend towards marginal cost, contrary to what you’re claiming. High margins are a signal to the market that more supply is needed

> Trickle down isn’t real.

Trickle down is a misnomer. It’s actually more like trickle up as all it means is that people who make the money get to decide how to spend it vs. having a centralized, top-down organization (the government) decide how to spend it

> Money does get hoarded, but it’s not enough to be meaningfully helpful at purchasing power.

If hoarded money is not enough to meaningfully help purchasing power then the other side of that coin is that the increased profits of these companies is necessarily not enough to meaningfully effect purchasing power in a negative way. In both cases, it’s the same amount of money, just on different sides of the ledger

Yes that is true, but under the assumption that prices are only raising due to corporations increasing them, then my original post comes into play where for everyone that is worse off, there is someone necessarily better off. Thus the consumer as a whole is unaffected. Because again, if that money is hoarded then that means the hoarder is consuming less and thus supplies are increased for everyone else. Or they are investing and just spending that money into the hands of a different group

Yeah, but there are plenty of people who do own assets. It’s not just the 1% that owns all the assets.

Plus, the market, and peoples’ places in it are not static. Many lower income people are lower income due to the fact that they are young and don’t have the knowledge/experience of their older peers. They don’t stay that way. They are able to earn more and save/invest more as they level up their skills

Increased profit margins can be entirely explained by an increase in the money supply (remember those pandemic stimulus checks). Supply of goods stayed the same, or even decreased as people stopped working and producing, and the supply of money increased. More dollars chasing the same (or less) amount of goods. That alone can explain increased profit margins. If you’re claiming corporate greed or monopolistic abuse then you must explain why these companies weren’t doing this all along. Why have they all decided to increase their prices together all of the sudden? Occam’s razor applies here.

Now let’s walk through how price increases actually occur. During the pandemic, people started buying out all the toilet paper at their local grocery store. When this happens, what does the grocer do? They put in an even larger order in for more toilet paper than they usually do as they see they are selling out quickly. After all they want to make sure they are stocked up for their customers. Well, all the other grocers around the country and the world are doing the same thing. Unfortunately, the TP co. only has so much supply and production capacity, so they sell to the highest bidder.

Now the grocery stores that were able to procure the TP, had to pay a higher price than usual. Of course they want to make a profit so they will have to increase the prices they charge to customers.

And if people are spending more money on TP, then that means that have less money to spend on something else. So just because one industry sees increased profits, doesn’t mean they all do. In fact, it means other industries see lower profits.

Now apply this dynamic to the oil market/industry.

And California seems to be uniquely an outlier in terms of gas prices compared to the rest of the country. Is it either a.) oil companies are extorting Californians for some reason, or b.) onerous regulations California has put on fossil fuels and oil companies that has cause the price of oil to be so high compared to other states? Again, Occam’s razor

> Real wages have been flat for median workers since the 70s

Real wages for workers in what context? The US? The industrialized nations? Perhaps the better explanation for this (assuming it’s true) is that the median worker in industrialized nations has had productivity that has grown at a slower rate than the median worker in developing markets.

Would be interesting to see what the worldwide statistics are for CEO to worker pay.

> They do that specifically by depressing the wages of their employees to make room for dividends.

Can’t “workers” also be shareholders? If not in their own companies, then at least in any publicly traded company. The world isn’t cleanly divided into “worker” and “owner”. People can be both. And again, those dividends have to go somewhere. My original post applies here, where it either gets hoarded or invested, and no matter which one happens, it is beneficial to the consumer at large.

I’d consider “trickle down” to be quite the misnomer. I think “trickle up” is more apt because in the end, all it means is that the people who make the money in the first place, get to decide what they do with it as opposed to being taxed and sending their money off to a centralized (often divided and inefficient) govt to decided what to do with it.

I’ll grant this, but no matter what it’s called, ultimately no group (consumer vs. business) is better or worse off. In such a spiral it’s just the nominal numbers that are changing and not the ‘real’ numbers

What keeps this from happening, I think, is the presence of competition which would stop both cohorts, workers and businesses, from increasing their prices indefinitely

> It doesn’t have to be collision

It does have to be collusion, otherwise competition to keep prices low

> don’t deny it is a possibility while witnessing it as a reality

I’m not denying that profit margins (of some companies) are higher. I’m claiming that it is not to the detriment of the consumer at large. Also for every company that is seeing increased profits, there’s another one that is seeing a decrease

> Why does it have to go to wages?

It has to go somewhere, right? Even if it goes to “shareholders” or “executives”, or “private equity”, either they are hoarding it (increasing everyone elses purchasing power) or they are investing it (spending it on someone elses wages).

The act of buying Twitter just transfers money from one person to a group of other people (shareholders) who are then free to do what they want with their newfound liquidity. Again, if they hoard that money, then it increases purchasing power for everyone else, and if they invest/save it, then it goes to paying peoples wages

Setting aside the almost impossible feat that every business could collude to arbitrarily double their profit margins, even if your assumption is granted, it would ultimately have no effect on consumers as a whole.

So, assuming businesses are more profitable, they ultimately have 2 things they could do with that extra profit:

1. Hoard it and do nothing with it

2. Invest it

In the case of 1, doing this is tantamount to taking money out of circulation (i.e. lowering supply). When the supply is lowered then everyone else’s purchasing power increases which is a benefit to them.

In the case of 2, investing it, either by starting new businesses or loaning it, means that they are effectively redistributing that money to others in the form of wages. Which is beneficial to workers who also happen to be consumers.

1. Yeah I agree, it is, albeit a bit more indirect. By making it more direct and explicit then content moderation can be more granular and have a tighter feedback loop and ultimately controlled by users—which I think is a win

2. If there’s one thing I know about wealthy people, it’s that there’s wealthy people on both sides of any given politcal/social issue. So for every one that wants to allow certain speech there will be one that wants to ban it. Also people can organize from the grassroots to form large pools of capital and have their voice heard if the issue is important enough.

3. Although your hypothetical is a bit sensationalist and off topic, I’ll entertain it. If the outcome of such a scheme really did lower the homicide total by 10%, then it’d be hard to argue against it vs. the status quo as it is an objectively better outcome.

Level 21: Financialize speech.

Give the power of content moderation directly to the people by harnessing markets.

Want to ban/allow Ye or Trump? Highest bidder gets to decide. Gives another revenue stream to Twitter and takes the content moderation decisions out of Twitter’s and Elon’s hands.

I’m just making the implicit, explicit. At least this way it’s not done in back rooms by power brokers, but out in the open in which everyone can participate.

Also, the People have money too. They can organize. I just want to give them a chance to organize and have a seat at the table.

Agree with everything you said. Especially that what is acceptable speech is dynamic and it’s hard to define.

I view the boundaries of acceptable speech as a resource. And like other resources in which we need to allocate in society, we use the power of markets to come to the “fairest” allocation that we can.

I believe Elon could implement a “free speech market” on Twitter where Twitter creates an asset which gives the owner the right to ban or allow a particular controversial user. This asset is then auctioned off (providing revenue for Twitter) and then the users get the ultimate control over who is or isn’t allowed on the platform.

This also has the benefit of taking the decision making out of the hands of Elon and those at Twitter and giving power directly to the people.

Yeah, excellent idea. Definitely have to delegate and decentralize the verification process if you want something that’ll scale.

And if Musk doesn’t implement this users could perhaps do it themselves with a browser extension where each user verifies those they interact with and deem notable. Then as you scroll Twitter you can see which accounts have been verified by those you follow. Get a Web of Trust situation going on.