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Nov 22, 2020Liked by Nicolas Colin

Last week I made a comfort surgery (refractive surgery to correct myopia) on a Google France C-level patient.

He said to me that the all bill was paid by the company without any out of pocket and added ” you know We do not pay taxes here, but we can take care of our workers by our own.”

Even if it’s clear that he is not a fan of Universality in a Beveridge way, I thought that maybe default global companies could become hubs for new social safety net tests for western countries. Something like a ”Silicon Bismark model”?

What are your thoughts on this?

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Actually I 100% agree with you. One of the conclusions of my book "Hedge" was that as governments were lagging behind in designing and building the new social safety net, one option was that big tech companies/platforms would take over and move forward. There's a strong corporatist play at work here, but I'm a realist: Beveridge's universality was always a myth—it's always been factory workers moving forward and the rest of us following. So in that case, why not tech companies' employees moving forward? (See my recent essays on SaaS as the new manufacturing!).

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Nov 23, 2020Liked by Nicolas Colin

Yes! For sure. And talking about big tech opportunities, I think creating a new "IN-OFFICE" social contract could be for them a rocket launch pad for disrupting healthcare. ie HAVEN: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase.

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