Apr 17•3 min read
Modern Economical Nonsense - Zug Tax and How to Run your Own Monopoly
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had criticized Apple for changing developers by 30% for in-app purchases via the App Store. His solution to bring fairness to the creator, charge you 47.5% for using my platform! Baby! As much as it sounds outrageous to you, Meta’s justification is we are running a meta monopoly!
Can Meta prevail this time?
Let’s explore.
Table of Content
Monopoly Nation
Monopoly is Bad
Metaverse Monopoly
BlackRock goes into USDC
Crypto Narrative
Choices
In Conclusion
Monopoly Nation
The best way to make profits in the short term is to become a monopoly. You can control the supply of goods and services. There is an abundance of demands waiting for your supplies. In the past, people controlled salt, sugar, food, coal, petroleum, steel, diamonds, gold, and many commodities. Then, it evolved into controlling utilities like electricity, natural gas, water, cable television, phone, internet, and medical services. There are also monopolies of transportation, trade, professional sports, alcohol, tobacco, software, computer chips, genetic technology, military equipment, entertainment, and many more to come.
Monopoly is Bad
Economists point out that monopoly leads to less innovation, losses in quality, and higher inflation to dump into customers. But is monopoly always bad? Yes! Because it takes away welfare through the exploitation of the short-term profits and creates a long-term problem that is harder to deal with. They will sacrifice innovation to exchange for profits. But we all know innovation is a key to driving society forward. However, the position opposing monopoly has changed since. Some actually believe that monopoly can be beneficial.
Metaverse Monopoly
https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1515338651831521288
Meta can charge you a 47.5% pay cut because they believe they will become a monopoly. We hope regulations can help prevent the monopoly game but the government has its own problems when dealing with a monopoly. Imposing a 47.5% charge on creators is similar to taxing creators who use their platform.
BlackRock goes into USDC
https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1511349657997348874
Another news that shocked the crypto community is that BlackRock entered investment with Circle with a $400M funding round. The community previously believed stablecoin companies can operate on their own. However, when an investment monopoly enters the market, the future may have changed. It may become a corporate central reserve bank that is influenced by an investment monopoly.
Crypto Narrative
There is a way to prevent monopoly in the crypto narrative. One of the benefits of using crypto is to prevent one from the control of the entire crypto market and influencing the market price. However, the technology only applies in the mining operation. Will that apply in the crypto market also? What if one can buy out the majority of the cryptocurrency, will that make one dominate the market?
Choices
To let monopoly win, customers will have no choice but to choose their goods and services. In modern days, it is harder to become a monopoly and crypto makes it even harder. Even though Meta can charge you 47.5%, it does not make you only choose their platform. There are many stablecoins to choose from in the crypto market. Monopoly can take a significant portion of the market, but they cannot control the market without making more competition with other competitors.
In Conclusion
Monopoly is coming but our innovation will not stop from here.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
Resource
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/do-monopolies-actually-benefit-consumers
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/265/economics/are-monopolies-always-bad/
https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/12/blackrock-fidelity-and-others-to-invest-400m-in-usdc-stablecoin-issuer-circle/
