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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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Or take the stock market. Nvidia has a net profit of 76G$/year and a market cap of 4T$, so it is worth about 50 years of profit. If there was less capital around to be invested, it might only be worth 2T$ instead, but I fail to see what would be so bad about that.

Tiny probabilities of huge profits are what drive Venture Capital to take risks. If a Venture Capitalist sees a chance to spend $10 billion for 10% chance of $90 billion, they don't take that risk. If they see a 10% chance of $180 billion they probably do.

Nvidia is currently planning to invest $500 billion in new infrastructure over the next few years. If hypothetical Mvidia startup entrepreneur sees that and thinks they have a 20% chance of rising up to compete with them to also be worth $4T (average output $800b), investors will throw those dice and happily pay $500b. We end up with more competition and diversity, lowering prices for consumers. If taxes go up and Nvidia and hypothetical peers are worth $2T, the dice odds don't look so good and there's more of a monopoly (unless someone is so confident that they can compete with 40% odds.

For any marginal tax increase, the cost/benefit ratio for new competitors shifts and it requires greater odds and more monopolistic profits before you get more entrepreneurial competitors. This leads to more monopolies, higher consumer prices, and people working for megacorps instead of starting their own small businesses.