Xueba's computing system

Chapter 256 The Logic of Technology Tax
After Lin Yuan was sued by Tesla this time, his image on the Internet suddenly became glorious again.

Previously, because he occupied the country's mid-to-high-end food delivery market with Tesla food delivery, he was criticized on the Internet as a new-age comprador and was a target of condemnation by everyone.

But now, his reputation has suddenly reversed and he has become a representative figure in the fight against darkness and evil.

Lin Yuan was even given the image of Nezha because the movie that just premiered during the Spring Festival was full of elements such as white palaces, green eagles, and the US dollar symbol, which was almost a blatant allusion to the other side of the strait.

With the two things in place, Lin Yuan was given the title of a rebel, even though he was passive throughout the whole process.

Lin Yuan does not have any great ambitions. In his opinion, his move to open source Tesla food delivery is just doing something he thinks is right.

If he were given another chance to choose knowing the immediate consequences, he would definitely not do it that way, and he wouldn't even think about getting involved in the food delivery industry.

Lin Yuan did not consider himself a hero. Although he had his own ambitions, he had never thought of sacrificing himself.

However, he accidentally stood on the world stage.

This is the wonder of life. When you go on stage with excitement and nervousness, you may find out one day that going on stage was your own decision, but leaving the stage was not.

Lin Yuan's life has been greatly affected. He can no longer travel freely, let alone go shopping. His schedule needs to be reported to the security team in advance, and his diet has been changed to special supplies.

In addition, Lin Yuan’s security level has been upgraded because his move to open source Tesla takeout led to the slump in the Eagle Country’s stock market.

After Tesla opened its takeout service to the public, Tesla's stock price fell sharply on Eagle Stocks. This was the first wave of impact.

Musk originally wanted to raise the stock price by constructing future profit expectations. Because the intellectual property rights of Tesla's food delivery algorithm belong to OpenAI in name, as long as they focus on the future prospects, even if the current profit expectations are weakened, the stock price will rise sooner or later. Because the core of supporting the stock price is the story about the future.

At the same time, Musk also wants to use this opportunity to get OpenAI back on track.

After OpenAI was strongly involved by the big hardware companies, it has been under pressure to make short-term profits. Musk does not think that AI can be done with such a quick-success strategy. He is really fed up with the old money thinking of the big hardware companies, which only knows path dependence. Like the Windows operating system, it makes money by selling software licenses, but AI obviously cannot make profits in this way.

An open thing should form an ecosystem through openness to achieve profitability. Making money by selling software licenses? Come on! Those old money guys are simply living in the last century.

It is precisely because of this that Musk has been secretly supporting Lin Yuan's move to open source.

But the chaotic situation in the Eagle Country broke all this, and things did not develop as Musk expected.

The fierce internal strife in the Eagle Country has spread to all areas of the country, even the stock market.

OpenAI has already invested 200 billion dollars, but the old money in the United States only saw the huge investment and the extremely low input-output ratio. They did not reflect on why their own scientific research input-output ratio is so low today. They only saw that after investing 200 billion, there is still no possibility of short-term profit.

Therefore, the idea of the old money guys is very simple, which is to push up the share price of OpenAI as soon as possible. Regardless of whether OpenAI itself can make a profit, they will first absorb global hot money through the stock market and realize profitability first.

This operation cannot be said to be completely wrong, because this is how it has been practiced in the information technology field in the United States for many years.

But they never went so far before.

Just like talking about toxicity without considering the dosage is like calling a hooligans, when looking at things one cannot ignore the weight.

In the past, American hawks would find a balance between pragmatism and storytelling. Today's leading companies in the technology industry, such as IBM, Oracle, FB, etc., all rose in this way.

In the past, the Eagle Country knew that there were rules for cutting leeks. Although cutting too little would result in losses, cutting too much would ruin one’s reputation. And reputation is the guarantee of long-term profit.

However, the deindustrialization of the Eagle Country began to show terrible effects at this moment. At first, everyone thought that only the old production capacity was removed, and then everyone thought that it would be okay to have fewer ordinary engineers, but in the end everyone had to admit the fact: competition in the 21st century is a systematic competition.

No matter how great the pioneering spirit of 0~1 is, it will not be able to gain commercial value without the expansion of 1~100.

The Russian bear was strong and powerful, but it was defeated in the end because its civilian industry was so weak that it could not support the lives of its people. Daily life is what people can feel most deeply and is the important basis for judging happiness.

The Eagle Country defeated the Bear with secularism, and now the Eagle Country itself has been defeated by secularism. Because it cannot realize the process of 1 to 100 cheaply, the Eagle Country's deindustrialization has caused it to have no advantage in the process of technological realization.

This disadvantage extends to all walks of life, which means that its people need to bear a higher cost of living. This is very similar to the dilemma of the Russian bear back then - although the military strength is strong, the people's lives are not happy.

It’s just that the sources of this situation are different. The cause of this situation in Russia is due to its deformed industrial structure, while the cause of this situation in the United States is due to the inevitable deindustrialization after embracing financialization.

To some extent, they have reached the same destination through different paths.

Precisely because it has no advantage in the process from 1 to 100, and it has absolutely no advantage, the Eagle Country cannot find a way to compete with the Dragon Country's complete, powerful and efficient industrial chain even if it searches the whole world.

Therefore, the Eagle Country has only one solution left - to block the front-end process from 0 to 1.

So how do they get stuck? If it is the Eagle Country in its golden age, the Eagle Country in the city on the hill where Musk and others are everywhere, their strategy must be to attack with a high-handed approach - standing on the moral high ground of mankind and crushing their competitors with overt strategies.

Specifically, it means openness. Crush competitors through openness and one's own competitive advantages.

for example.

You want to develop chips? Okay, if you sell a newly released chip for 100, I'll sell it for 99.

No matter how you price it, I will always price it one dollar lower than yours.

Newly launched chips lack an ecological chain, and their stability and adaptability are far inferior to mature products on the market. Under this blatant price war, any latecomer will be exhausted.

After that, through continuous R&D investment, the company can continuously improve its competitive advantage. If competitors want to catch up, they have to follow up with investment. However, the pioneers can obtain R&D funds through the monetization of mature products, but what about the latecomers? They can only obtain it through administrative funding.

Anyone with a bit of common sense knows that a project that relies on grants cannot last long. If you cannot gain revenue by creating value in the market, then the business model will not work. Failure is a matter of time.

This was originally an unsolvable conspiracy.

Take chips for example. This is a field that requires a lot of R&D investment, but the actual production process is highly automated. To put it in an exaggerated way, after the initial R&D is completed, all you need to do is wait to start the machine and sell sand to make money. (The main component of sand is silicon dioxide)
This is even more true in other industries. A copy of the Windows operating system can even be a CD worth a few dollars. Selling a CD worth a few dollars for hundreds or thousands of dollars would make those who sell cocaine cry.

But the desire for capital appreciation will not stop, and gradually, this terrible profit rate can no longer satisfy them. Inexplicably, the costs are getting higher and higher, and no one knows where the profits have gone, but they are gone anyway.

As a result, the prices of chips and software products have risen accordingly. Anyway, the companies that can sell these things are controlled by the old money of the Eagle Country all over the world. It can even be said that the entire information technology industry chain is in their hands.

They are intoxicated by the power of pricing and cannot extricate themselves. So their logic becomes: rely on the power of coinage to collect taxes on the surface, rely on the power of technological pricing to collect taxes on the invisible. Then, part of the taxes collected are invested in armaments to maintain their power.

If the desire for capital appreciation could be restrained, then this approach might not be perfect, but it ultimately failed.

How to challenge the authority of this set of gameplay? The worst strategy is to compete head-on with the strength of armaments. As long as the armament power in this set of gameplay is broken, this chain can be broken.

For a simple-minded creature like the wooly bear, it can only understand this way of playing.

The middle strategy is to join this set of play, and then stay alive to develop and occupy the magpie's nest. Many of the younger brothers in that set of play do have this idea. What is the best strategy?

The best strategy is to defeat your opponent's open strategy with a more bright open strategy.

The right to coin is difficult to challenge, but fortunately, it is only a result, not a cause. Even the might of the military is a result, not a cause. So we just need to be ruthless with the cause.

Where is the cause? It’s the technology tax.

The technology tax is an open conspiracy within an open conspiracy.

When only your company has a certain technology that others do not, this kind of tax will make the taxed people willing to pay the money. Don’t you see that even a small company like a rough house with no leading technology can still sell emotional value so openly?

If Texila is still far ahead in technology and no other car company can match its technology in the field of electric vehicles, then you can imagine how much Texila dares to sell.

And in that case, people who buy Texiaola will not feel that they are being ripped off, because no one is forcing them to buy it.

Paying taxes in exchange for a sense of superiority is the ultimate conspiracy.

If you stand up and criticize this rogue tax collection logic, you will soon be drowned in the saliva of the just world.

So how do we resist?

Roll technology.

The easiest way to break the technology tax is to use cheaper methods to make better technology products than the other party. Then you don't need to say anything more, the market will show its power, because not all people are born weak-kneed.

At that time, there will always be people who stand up and question: Why is that thing so expensive? I have torn it apart and still can't figure out why it is so expensive.

When everyone takes apart the technology products thoroughly, they will eventually discover that this is actually the technology tax.

The price trend of the Texia car in the past few years is the best proof. From luxury cars to national models that the middle class can afford, this just proves this point.

When this approach is expanded to other technological products, the United States will find that it is gradually losing ground.

This phenomenon is still slow in the field of civilian consumer goods, because civilian consumer goods can be mixed with emotional value, and some consumers' minds are destined to pay technology tax.

But it is different in the field of industrial products. Those who do cost estimation in this field are a group of professionals.

Do you dare to use a product just because of a certain brand name, even if it costs a lot? Sometimes it happens, but it is definitely not a common phenomenon. Because in the industrial field, from bosses to employees, everyone is almost a social bank without any emotions, and everyone makes money in any way they can.

If the cost-effectiveness of domestic substitutes far exceeds that of imported products, then why should we use imports?

This is the logic behind the rise of the Chrysanthemum Factory.

Especially after the national self-confidence was strengthened, the long-suppressed bellicosity was completely aroused. My ancestors were already ten thousand times more awesome than yours, and now I can make something more awesome than you, you are a piece of shit.

Therefore, in the field of industrial products, which the public was slow to realize, the vigorous replacement has already begun.

Those newly emerging technology-based companies are like steel knives stabbing into the heart of the Eagle Country.

No matter how stupid the people of the world are, they are not so stupid that everyone likes to spend money and enjoy high prices, nor are they so stupid that everyone is trapped in the technology tax.

As a result, in the field of industrial products, the Eagle Country has become increasingly weak.

If the process of 1 to 100 is controlled by the younger brothers, then the old money in the Eagle Country can collect taxes at any time through various means. In other words, although they do not participate in the process of 1 to 100, since they have troops stationed in other countries, they can forcibly collect taxes through various means even if they do not participate in the process. When necessary, they can also forcibly turn the younger brother's company into their own.

However, the Eagle Kingdom did not dare to act recklessly on the Dragon Kingdom's side, mainly because it could not defeat the Dragon Kingdom.

It's not like they didn't fight a long time ago, but they really couldn't win. The people from Dragon Country really don't care about their lives when they fight. And Eagle Country is a businessman, and businessmen have to pay attention to the cost of everything they do.

When it finds that fighting is not profitable, it will dare not fight anymore.

You can't win by fighting, and you can't compete in the production process of 1 to 100. Even if you bring a group of younger brothers together, you still can't win, not to mention that the younger brothers also have their own ulterior motives.

What should I do then?

I can't defeat him by any means, whether civil or military. It's obviously not the case that I will just wait to die.

If Musk were to make the decision, he would definitely reform immediately to regain the technological advantage. By taking advantage of the Eagle Country's openness and low human rights, it would attract global talents to develop the technology tree.

By cultivating a group of new technology elites, the old money can be swept into the garbage dump of history. The Silicon Valley miracle can be reproduced again, and the weeds and stones that are blocking the wheels of the empire can be cleared away.

As long as we keep an open attitude and run all the way from 0 to 1, we can firmly control the development direction of human science and technology.

As long as the guiding light of civilization is in our hands, all evils will be resolved by great scholars.

But the old money in the Eagle Country is deeply rooted. There is no way to deprive them of the right to share the money!

These old money people in the empire don't consider the earth as their home anyway. To them, the whole world is just a place for them to make money. What if they mess up? The worst that can happen is that they can return to conservatism.

"Conservatism" is their trump card.

The ancestors of these imperial rich people conquered this territory, so it is not easy to remove them from this territory.

This group of old money came up with the so-called "opening up" for the sake of development, and it is precisely because of this that Musk and his group rose to prominence. This group of old money is not the native inhabitants of this land, and they will not be so easily cleared out. They firmly occupy farms and mines one by one. Strictly speaking, Musk and his group of new rich are just temporarily living here, and there is no land that truly belongs to them.

So, Musk's plan failed.

For the old money of the empire, the vision outlined by the globalists is too far-flung, and even if they succeed, they will not get much, so they are more concerned about immediate interests.

Even if the coinage and technology tax system is ruined, it doesn't matter. At worst, I can just go back to America and live my life behind closed doors. I'll make as much money as I can right now.

But Lin Yuan caused them to lose hundreds of billions of dollars in profit, so naturally the old money people wanted to kill Lin Yuan.

A bigger impact is that there are rumors that the algorithm for Tesla's food delivery was not developed by OpenAI, but was tinkered with by the Eagle Country. This is what triggered the second plunge in Eagle Country's technology stocks.

Therefore, Lin Yuan’s security was upgraded.

(End of this chapter)