Comment by IG_Semmelweiss

Believe you're talking about conserving cash through reduced taxes since this guy was against paying taxes.

However, spending a premium on cloud services over what you could with an on-prem capital investment does not help your cash position.

His tenant of frugality would have conflicted, especially since the cloud premium can easily exceed the tax rate - that is to say, paying taxes would have been cheaper

Section in your linked article about frugality https://www.colinkeeley.com/blog/john-malone-operating-manua...

In any case, spending on this either opex or capex doesn't help you gain or lose marketshare. Conserving cash can help, so you'd want to employ the lower cost option regardless of what line of the financial statement it hits - it's not going to be cloud if you follow that thought through

If cost was equal then opex gives a tax advantage, most companies are valued on EBITDA so still may not be their priority to optimize tax spend - a lot of other methods to avoid taxes. But the environment I've operated in I choose to capex because it conserves cash (is cheaper) and improves EBITDA optics (is excluded)