Internet Landlord

I (Evan Czaplicki) have this personal theory I don't know if it's true but I was like okay what if they're like a Landlord instead of an advertiser?

so in a traditional landlord you have all these locations and if you're in the shopping area maybe you get some kind of Rent and if you're in the residential area and it's like a wealthy residential area but maybe you're in like you know it's Copenhagen so it's like less wealthy residential area um and part of what influences what rent you can get at all these locations is the transportation right so if you're near a subway station that's probably a better spot than if you're just out in like this spot over here where there there is a really nice swimming pool but you you got to take the bus

and so when I think of an Internet Landlord the transportation is different it's the search box right you don't go on the bus and you're not in a specific location you just get in the search bar and you go to the place and the place isn't like the website you go to the locations are shoes Street um and you see all the storefronts on shoes street that you can go to and it's tours of Rome Street and you can see oh here's all the shops that I can go to and when I made these searches a few days ago I noticed that every single link that is visible to me is a sponsored link um on both of them and so I think of it as like okay these people are like paying their Rent to be right outside the train station right in that first spot where they're going to get the most foot traffic

If you haven't thought about what your opinions are on landlords I can recommend this book Progress and Poverty. It's written by this guy who moved to San Francisco in 1860 and then he wrote the book in 1881 and he had this question is like I'm seeing this incredible uh accumulation of wealth but at the same time I'm seeing this incredible poverty that is happening at the same time why is that happening?

You don't have to listen to everything he says but on landlords he he's very interesting and so one idea that kind of comes out of that is like what if you put a tax on rent only um and he has a bunch of ideas and like could you control um uh regulate proper prices without price controls through these other mechanisms it's all very interesting um and you know he also he's not a fan of landlords but um but yeah so why so much revenue this is like my theory that I'm going to go with for the purpose of this talk it's my opinion I don't know.

⇐ Economics of Programming Languages ⇒ Rent-Seeking

⇒ Rente [⇐ Economics] ⇒ Landlord Instead of an Advertiser ⇒ Internet Landlord ⇒ Invest in Infrastructure