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Comment by andy_ppp

9 years ago

I'm a little unclear how this would work in practice. What is the financial instrument and is it equity in the government or equity in all the companies in the US?

I see no reason why companies would do it and no incentive to take a part of the government (is the US government going to pay a dividend?), I'm not certain everyone having a share they couldn't trade would be worth it. I think the ability to trade state monopolies was tried in Russia, how is that looking?

Finally isn't the stated aim of YC to create companies that are monopolies and use network effects to entrench their positions, accumulating wealth into a few hands?

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andy_ppp

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creaghpatr  9 years ago

>is the US government going to pay a dividend?

First, the US government would have to turn a profit...

  • xapata  9 years ago

    If you think of the population as the government (a democracy, in other words) then our gross domestic product is our collective revenue. How we allocate that revenue to different accounts -- yours, mine, roads, military, etc. -- is just accounting.