This is another reason why I can't understand anyone who works in software of what is generally thought of as "technology" likes Yang. He does not understand. He likes to talk about "MATH". And while the numbers he uses may work out, I wonder how he acquires those numbers in the first place.
Also, it often seems like he needs "ENGLISH" more than "MATH". Because "technology" is a meaningless word. A carburetor is technology. A ramp is technology. Just about everything is technology in some fashion.
So. We already tax technology, if indirectly, through taxing goods and services.
Then there's the railing against the large targeted-advertising companies (I guess that's what they have most in common). There's technically been a trade already. Our data for their services.
And then there's the fact that he's now doing the thing he's complaining about: data harvesting.
And to top all of that off, the issues you just mentioned. This guy can't even harvest data effectively or efficiently. Or identify people who can. And I'm supposed to trust him to create legislation affecting those companies? Or identify people who can? He has just blatantly demonstrated he does not have those skills.
> Then there's the railing against the large targeted-advertising companies (I guess that's what they have most in common). There's technically been a trade already. Our data for their services.
So for whatever service they offer, we give them data. And extra secondary income from every third party they pass that same data along to. And the risk of first party data breaches. And the risk of data breaches from any other party that gets access. And likely that same data getting scraped by aggregators just from being used.
The deal is by no means equal, and we the customer pay dearly.
I'm quite happy with the idea of making it expensive to retain any data that's not required by law or explicit operational need.
Yang himself is not really a tech guy (he's an econ grad who became a lawyer, then ran companies and non-profits).
But looking at his book and platform, one can't help but notice that it heavily incorporates ideas that are popular in tech circles (UBI, automation, etc). Then on top of that he spends time talking about non-mainstream topics like Ranked Choice Voting, blockchain, etc. Who else talks about these things on the debate stage?
Also, it often seems like he needs "ENGLISH" more than "MATH". Because "technology" is a meaningless word. A carburetor is technology. A ramp is technology. Just about everything is technology in some fashion.
So. We already tax technology, if indirectly, through taxing goods and services.
Then there's the railing against the large targeted-advertising companies (I guess that's what they have most in common). There's technically been a trade already. Our data for their services.
And then there's the fact that he's now doing the thing he's complaining about: data harvesting.
And to top all of that off, the issues you just mentioned. This guy can't even harvest data effectively or efficiently. Or identify people who can. And I'm supposed to trust him to create legislation affecting those companies? Or identify people who can? He has just blatantly demonstrated he does not have those skills.