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Panama Papers Affair Widens As Database Goes Online (bbc.com)
In late April, it was reported there would be a huge new 'Panama Papers' data dump on May 9th. The report did not disappoint as today the Panama Papers affair has widened, with a huge database of documents relating to more than 200,000 offshore accounts posted online. The database can be accessed at offshoreleaks.icij.org. The papers were leaked by a source known as "Jony Doe," and the papers belonged to the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) decided to make the database public despite a "cease and desist" order issued by the law firm.
to an INSHORE account or two?
Not much.
I haven't followed this leak closely, so it's very possible I've missed something, but as I understand it, the vast majority of the offshore accounts being publicized are completely legal. Embarrassing to their owners, perhaps, but not illegal in themselves.
Rather, the release of such private details is likely illegal, so any prosecution or criticism has to admit that it also benefited from illegal activities, effectively shooting itself in the foot.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I had heard a panel of "journalists" was selectively editing out elements of the database to remove some records.
With the presidential race chock full of candidates who ALL may well be present in the data and thus possibly scrubbed by zealots, do we know if this is all of the data obtained?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's nice to know when, say, a CEO lets his/her employees go because there's not enough money (and yet there's many millions in offshore accounts).
If I am not mistaken, the fact that these accounts are legal is a significant contributor to the public outrage (fabricated or otherwise) concerning this media event.
EG, if there were no laws against poisoning pigeons in the park, then a group of kids showing up with cans of bugspray and hosing down birds to watch them flop around until dead would not be illegal. That does not mean that the behavior is socially acceptable-- just not illegal in this contrived example. (Yes, I am well aware that it is indeed illegal to poison pigeons in most western countries. This is just an analogy; tortured and not ideal perhaps, but just an analogy.)
The real world example of the panama papers reveals a substantive effort by many power elite to obfuscate holdings, financial connections with industries they may be regulating as elite power brokers, and dealings with agencies or groups of less reputable character, as well as run of the mill tax avoidance, and sheltering of assets from unsteady local economies.
The practices are not "illegal", but they are socially unacceptable, which is why there is a scandal. The fact that "such things are actually legal" throws gasoline on the fire, not water.
Another tortured analogy might go something like this:
In many European countries, prostitution is perfectly legal. A conservative political figure publicly decries the practice of prostitution, but uses obfuscated holdings such as these to pay for such services on a very regular basis. No laws are violated-- the money was his to spend, and the service he obtained with it is legal. That does not make the circumstances stop being scandalous-- That of his blatant hipocracy, and abuse of client privilege to hide it to continue to snooker his electorate.
So, the fact that these accounts are not illegal does not remove the controversy, it is what causes it.
Can we move past that line of reasoning now?
There is no such thing as a cease and desist order, except when it comes from a competent court of appropriate jurisdiction. A C&D letter from a law firm is nothing more than a formal request to stop doing something -- granted, a sharply worded, hostile, threatening request, but a request nonetheless.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Y'all are goin' down!
Only a few Americans (apparently 211, none particularly newsworthy).
Don't forget as an American, if you are trying to hide your money from the tax man, you have to be much better at it because of the FATCA rules... Probably all the people caught so far have been lulled into complacency by the ineptness (or corruptness) of their own governments to track and tax the wealth of their native illuminati...
As I understand it, Mossack Fonseca is a Panamanian law firm (why it was called the Panama Papers) and Americans generally don't create Panamanian shell companies because you can mostly create such shell companies right here in the good ole' U S of A. AFAIK, Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming don't require beneficial ownership declarations for LLCs and there may be others. Also given the current information sharing arrangement between the USA and Panama govt, it would be better to set up your shell company in some other country (like Belize or Isle of Man) and use a local law firm.
In theory, evidence collected through illegal means cannot be submitted in court. "fruit of the poisoned tree" and all that.
In practice, in the US at least, there is this insideous thing called "parallel construction" where the prosecution pretends that they have a magic crystal ball, and knew all along about the nefarious dealings of Pamela, and just so happens to be putting forth a case against her at this time as a pure coincidence. ;)
Doesn't that usually apply when the state is the one using illegally obtaining the information (i.e. without a warrant or with an overbroad warrant, etc.)
What exactly is the status of illegal conduct revealed by a third party? I'm sure the IRS, and really tax authorities the world over, must be able to investigate potential evasion if a third party releases the data.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
In the US, this only applies to evidence illegally obtained by law enforcement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Relevant quote: "Evidence unlawfully obtained from the defendant by a private person is admissible. The exclusionary rule is designed to protect privacy rights, with the Fourth Amendment applying specifically to government officials"
It's nice to know when, say, a CEO lets his/her employees go because there's not enough money (and yet there's many millions in offshore accounts).
Companies employ people when the employees add value and contribute to profit. They don't employ people because they can afford the spend the money.
The practices are not "illegal", but they are socially unacceptable, which is why there is a scandal.
That's ridiculous. These practices are quite openly available and documented. I personally used to work for a company that advertised where we could help set up foreign accounts.
Another tortured analogy might go something like this... his blatant hipocracy, and abuse of client privilege to hide it to continue to snooker his electorate.
And that's fine for a scandal, but it's still not illegal. At that point, people are outraged that a politician might have lied! Of all the unspeakable horrors, that one should certainly go without saying.
That's pretty much exactly what happened in Iceland. A politician promised to fix up banks, and was found to have held a large interest in the very banks he was using government power to save. That's a conflict of interest, and a good reason to be upset, but he apparently made all of the required disclosures at the time. He might not be the person you want to have in charge, but whether that's enough reason to kick him out of office is a matter for local laws.
So, the fact that these accounts are not illegal does not remove the controversy, it is what causes it.
Can we move past that line of reasoning now?
Well, frankly, no. Moving "past this line of reasoning" is to beg the question of whether the outrage is justified. In effect, you're asking that we suspend rule of law, and vilify people for daring to disregard the morality of this particular angry mob.
I'm all in favor of bringing justice to those who have actually done something illegal, but we must be careful that we aren't just aiming our anger at a convenient scapegoat.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
In theory, evidence collected through illegal means cannot be submitted in court.
The leak violated Panamanian law. It is not clear if any American laws were broken.
"fruit of the poisoned tree" and all that.
"Fruit of the poisoned tree" usually only applies if the government broke the law to obtain the evidence. It does not necessarily apply if the law breaking was done by a third party.
But very few of the people on the list were Americans. We have plenty of perfectly legal domestic tax shelters.
The practices are not "illegal", but they are socially unacceptable
Don't be so quick to judge. Many people on the list are from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and other Latin American countries where extortion and kidnapping for ransom are common. Some of them are hiding their wealth to protect their families.
If they are not breaking any laws, then why do you care where they park their money? Why is it any of your concern?
Companies employ people when the employees add value and contribute to profit. They don't employ people because they can afford the spend the money.
True, but it is also becoming more and more popular for companies in the US to tell their employees that the company simply cannot afford to give them a cost-of-living raise, even though the company is raking in record profits. Especially if those profits are hidden in "secret" off-shore tax dodge accounts. This is one reason why the gap between the highest and lowest paid people in a corporation is widening every year. Company boards of directors routinely vote themselves big fat pay raises for themselves and the shareholders, but won't pay their workers much of anything. You know, those same workers that are doing the work producing all those corporate profits.
So, what you are saying is:
It is perfectly legal for a wealthy person (Let's say a Greek politician) from Cyprus to have heard, through whatever means, that the banks were going to seize private deposits, and to have taken extraordinary measures to create offshore shell accounts and transfer their fortune there to protect it while everyone else that lacked the connections to create this labyrinth of obfuscation had their accounts siezed in the forced austerity plan.
Because it was perfectly legal, there is no controversy?
I fully expect that very situation to be there at least one time in this data dump.
That's the problem with conflict of interest-- you cannot prove that they did the transfer with knowledge of the impending crash that the public did not have, and further, there might not have even been laws like the US's insider trading rules concerning such action to begin with. That does not change the percieved injustice of a wealthy politicians continuing to be wealthy, after crashing the bank and loan infrastructure, and financially emperiling everyone else around them-- which is exactly what these kinds of services are essentially for.
There is a reason I used the poisoned pigeons analogy earlier. Something can be perfectly legal, and yet be very repugnant at the same time. Claiming "But it is not a crime to poison pigeons!" does not in any way reduce the repugnance of poisoning the pigeons for sadistic pleasure.
Privatizing gains and socializing losses is repugnant. Obfuscated foriegn accounts exist for this very purpose.
There is no conspiracy. US tax law enforcement just require them to be behind another proxy.
There are no doubt US assets in the pile, but they will never know because the US tax dodger has a corporation in Monaco that owns the corporation in Panama.
The people with money directly in this pile are from nations that aren't really trying to catch tax cheats or honest people (maybe one in the lot, maybe). Take that for what it's worth if many people from your nation are on the list.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
True, but it is also becoming more and more popular for companies in the US to tell their employees that the company simply cannot afford to give them a cost-of-living raise, even though the company is raking in record profits.
Companies give raises, or not, based on what they think they need to pay to retain employees, and attract new employees. They don't give raises "because they can afford it". Employees chose to stay, or not, based on what they think they are worth, and what they can earn elsewhere.
Whether there is "hidden money" or not, is irrelevant. Plenty of highly profitable companies layoff workers that they consider unproductive, as they should. No "affordability" justification is needed.
That kind of reasoning could be applied to literally any questionable behavior, including literally illegal ones.
But as to "why I care:"
Let us consider a moment, a wealthy politician who is involved in policy decisions that would affect the nation's credit rating with the IMF, and thus the comparative value of the native currency against that of other nations. In the US, this is literally every congressman and senator-- They are all involved in the anual fiscal budget process, and thus contribute to these decisions.
The very existence of a foriegn money shelter is a conflict of interest in this case-- Given sufficient holdings of exchanged currency, a devaluation of the domestic currency would result in a marked increase in capital power of the investment.
EG, let's say that when the exchange is first made, the currencies are at parity 1:1 exchange. The money is now no longer in dollars-- it is now in some foriegn currency. The US's credit rating is degraded, say because of insanity on capitol hill involving the budget deadline, and now the exchange is .75usd:1whatever. The effective fortune of the politician just increased by 25%, especially if they believe the US Dollar will rebound. After the devaluation, they exchange back to US dollars, wait for the recovery, then buy foriegn notes again. Possibly even repeat.
You cannot prove that they did this intentionally.
What they did is "perfectly legal."
Does that make it socially acceptable though? I say "No." The potential for rampant, flagrant abuse is astounding, and the people who can afford these shelters are the very people in positions capable of enacting these kinds of events.
At sone point in the future, you may not need employees to run companies. Why do people exist and why do companies exist? Are countries platform for corporate overlords to profit from people's resources and land? At some point the discussion is gonna be this:
Employees are not needed and workers can't survive without jobs. Do We do? If you consider humanity as a group, then work should not determine your social welfare. If humanity does not exist, only "land/capital" owners, then the conclusion is the goal is to fire everyone at some point, and whoever isn't well capitalized should migrate earth.
This is why offshore is important. Today, companies and wealthy individuals pay profits. When they hide their wealth through proxies and rely on Bermudas, Switzerland, etc. they are just leaching everyone in the world.
Why should they enjoy the safety the USA brings them if they won't even contribute with taxes? Work has a lot of taxes because companies and the wealthy evade a lot. It's very patriotic to see Warrent Buffet take the stance that income tax should raise for wealthy. Until we find a way to "replace work with something better", not paying important taxes just places all the burden on work, making it more expensive, and accelerating the process to replace work with lower paid work or just "automation".
Offshore hiders are a net negative for humanity.
High frequency trading is also legal.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Why do people exist
Good luck with that one.
why do companies exist
To make profit for interested shareholders. And nothing aside.
I'll respond to your Cease and Desist Order with a Fuck Off and Die Order.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
As per usual, the AC is the only one too utterly retarded to use Google for four seconds.
Not sure what good the link will do you since you probably aren't capable of digesting full paragraphs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
there might not have even been laws like the US's insider trading rules concerning such action to begin with.
Then you should be angry at lawmakers, not somebody who happens to have better circumstances than someone else.
That does not change the percieved injustice of a wealthy politicians continuing to be wealthy,
"Perceived injustice" is not the same thing as an actual injustice. A "perceived injustice" is when someone beats you in an automobile race fifteen consecutive times because their car goes faster. An actual injustice is when he does so by breaking an established rule like a power limit.
There is a reason I used the poisoned pigeons analogy earlier. Something can be perfectly legal, and yet be very repugnant at the same time. Claiming "But it is not a crime to poison pigeons!" does not in any way reduce the repugnance of poisoning the pigeons for sadistic pleasure.
It does, however, drastically alter the morality of the situation. The responsibility for the objectionable act shifts from the perpetrator to the lawmakers. If this is such a widely repugnant act, then lawmakers would be negligent to allow it to remain legal. On the other hand, perhaps it's not pigeons, but rats. They may be a disease-spreading menace, and harboring them may actually be detrimental to society. In this case, the lawmakers would be fully justified to allow the killing of such plague-bearing pests, regardless of how much you might love the little furballs.
Ultimately, the purpose of a lawful government is to codify the rules that provide for the betterment of society. If you disagree with the laws, that's a matter for you to take up through the proper channels of your government, but you do not automatically get the right to harass and defame law-abiding citizens just because they have resources that you don't.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
New AC here:
"Companies"? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
It's "officers" in the company who make such decisions, not some non-corporeal legal entity.
Those same officers give themselves ridiculously exorbitant pay rises and benefits, all while telling the staff that the organization is going broke. (Sometimes, they give themselves such benefits WHILE the organization is going broke.)
I'm not saying companies should hire people just for the heck of it ... I'm drawing attention to the contradictions / blatant lies.
(shakes head)
The controversy *IS* "Why is this legal?!"
That is what people are outraged about-- that these kinds of things happen all the time, and are considered "normal" in the world of international high finance.
I thought I pointed that out? The people of the western world are collectively asking that question because of the disparity in how the system operates in this regard.
That is why the argument "But it is perfectly legal!!" is assinine. The fact that it is legal is what is being taken exception to. People want it to not be legal!
I can fully understand why they would want to make it illegal--
Not only does it allow the wealthy to shift the burden of maintaining an orderly society onto the more scrupulous (because, pshaw, they could set up offshore accounts too, if they werent so dumb and poor minded!-- or whatever) by allowing them to "avoid" taxes on their wealth, It allows their financial fortunes to rise with the tide of everyone else during the good times, but fail to sink like the others when that tide goes out.
Simply because you CAN do something, does not mean you should.
By your reasoning, if an online game has a technical issue that can be exploited to your advantage, it is "Totally not cheating" to use that exploit, because the game lets you do it--even if that exploit basically makes it so you cannot lose.
And further, "If you have an issue with it, you should take it up with the game's developers."
Newsflash-- it is still cheating.
In this case, the cheaters have a hand in developing the game, and have a vested interest in keeping the exploits-- and other people dont really have a choice to not play against them.
The ethics of the action are indepedent of the legality of the action. A cheater seeks an unfair means of getting ahead of the competition. Most offshore account providers have prohibitive minimum deposit values to make use of them, making them effectively unusuable by nearly everyone but the already wealthy. This makes them unfair, even though, should some outrageous circumstance drop shitloads of cash on a random joe, he is technically "able" to open one himself, if he knows about them.
A technical exploit in an online game is likewise available to anyone who knows about it and has the tenacity to exploit it-- everyone has the same binary user application after all, and play on the same servers. the rules apply to everyone. Theoretically, anyone can do it!
But doing such an exploit will get you just as banned. :)
Why? because it is cheating.
Thinking that everyone should cheat, and that by not cheating you are just dumb or something, is so unethically minded I dont even know where to begin.
The same applies to global finance. The system lets you do it. That does not make it stop being an unfair and abusive practice against less powerful market actors, and thus unethical to even consider.
Do you really not see the ethical problem?
When everyone evades taxes, no taxes are collected. When no taxes are collected, no vital services that maintain the society can be provided. The society ceases to function, and everyone suffers.
When some evade taxes, (to maintain their wealth, naturally!), but others do not, the ones evading the taxes privatize their gain (an orderly society with working essential services), while socializing the loss (All those other people have to pay for it.)
Sickeningly, those best able to shift that burden onto others, ar the least liklely to have serious, like changing consequences of having to pay, and the ones forced into the situation, are the ones most harmed by being forced into it.
Sheltering your wealth is NOT victimless, because no action is without consequence, and the ideal you have stated (everyone evades paying) harms everyone the most.
That's just taxes. There are numerous other ethical problems with simply sheltering fortunes against sagging economies through exploiting the world monetary system.
Really, you cannot see these?
Romney (last election cycle) pretty much admitted to using tax havens. I'd be surprised if Clinton wasn't using offshore accounts, or a very similar tax dodge. Trump - hell yes!
Once again behaviour that is outrageous and totally unacceptable in most of the world is just expected "business-as-usual" in the US
Isn't that a little discriminatory? The tldr of your post is basically if you are not a good salesman of yourself you deserve your lower pay. This implying every human is supposed to be good at making contracts? I am not sure life is "the wolf of wall street "...
What you do not seem to understand is that system (like human society) will converge to Nash equilibrium and not Pareto optimum. You are trying to argue for utopia. Which might work a bit if there would be significant percentage of human population who would share your views and care enough to act.
Nonsense, the voting record of people indicates that they do not give a damn.
I disagree. One can only vote for alternatives when alternatives are available. When all parties stand on the smae side on this topic, then there are no alterantives to vote for.
Nice world you live in, no messy shades of grey.
Some people might know their self worth, but
due to financial commitments (like mortgages in places where house prices and rent are ludicrous) cannot afford to say goodbye to an employer and potentially need to tread water for a few months until something else comes along. ...
due to family commitments may need to work in a particular suburb to be close to a particular hospital (condolences if that is anyone here) / school / retirement home /
or many other reasons.
When everyone evades taxes, no taxes are collected.
Evasion is a crime where you do not pay taxes lawfully owed. What most of these people are doing is 'avoidance' where you take steps within the rules to minimize the taxes owed. Frankly anyone who does not engage in tax avoidance is a fool. If you have money you want to give away pick a good charity many of them will do more good for society per dollar than government will! Letting government collect even one penny more than they are due is irresponsible.
What liberals don't understand (or maybe they do) is that a complex tax code is inherently unfair. The more wealthy you are the greater the influence you can probably get in terms of rule writing, the more resources you can expend on avoidance and the bigger the pay off. Basically the more funny little rules you right to try and use tax policy as a social engineering tool and make it less 'regressive' the more the super wealthy will find ways to game the system. Right down to the form of paying people wages they could not possibly live on without the earned income credit.
Income and wealth taxes are fundamentally a bad idea. After a 100 years of trying its time to admit that. We should institute a national sales that applies to all transactions, include financial instruments, and currency exchanges. Next define a VERY SMALL range of goods an services lower economic classes disproportionately spend on. Make filing entirely optional, set single inflation adjusted gross income hurdle, people below that amount can file a statement saying they earned less than a the hurdle amount and request an sales tax rebate for what they spent on the defined goods.
A system with so few rules will be essential impossible to game. The only people who will have any wiggle room are the folks who don't make much in the first place so the degree to which they can evade will be small.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
a reasonable portion of the accounts are being investigated by various countries for tax fraud and other money laundering violations. I would expect over the coming couple of years there will be some significant prosecutions from it as while hiding money in an offshore account is not strictly illegal. misreporting income on tax is as is not declaring assets during various court cases.
You do realize that making tax avoidance illegal is really quite simple.
Tax avoidance tautologically can't be made illegal because tax avoidance simply means "using legal means to minimize a tax bill." Once you start concealing assets (or lying about their nature to get them taxed at a lower rate), you're committing tax fraud, which is already illegal.
It does, however, drastically alter the morality of the situation. The responsibility for the objectionable act shifts from the perpetrator to the lawmakers.
No, no it does not. "They didn't stop me" is not a defense for shit behavior.
If this is such a widely repugnant act, then lawmakers would be negligent to allow it to remain legal.
Very good. The lawmakers are negligent. You don't get a cookie, but you do get to wake up.
On the other hand, perhaps it's not pigeons, but rats.
Poisoning rats kills birds, cats, dogs. Are you new? That's why you trap them.
In this case, the lawmakers would be fully justified to allow the killing of such plague-bearing pests, regardless of how much you might love the little furballs.
Wrong. Poison is stupid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
New AC here
Not sure exactly why, but this was hilarious to me.
Dark Reflection
Actually no - they are all criminals - even if they are unlikely to be prosecuted. Failure to report a crime is itself a crime.
It's already been revealed that this is the same organisation which handled the funding for Noriega, funneled the money for the Iran/Contra scandal, hides money for drug cartels and warlords around the world - it's a massive money laundry.
If we assume a best-case scenario - that the politicians and bankers and investors whose names are in there were not themselves profiting from it, they were nevertheless mixing their money into the laundromat for the most evil scum of earth. They knew where the dirty money was being laundered -and instead of reporting it and letting the authorities use that to shut down some of those evil bastards, they used the evil bastard's laundromat to avoid paying taxes.
Not only did they fail to report a crime (money-laundering is a crime) which they had intimate knowledge of, they made use of the same service used for this criminal enterprise which for any non-elite would be considered a severely aggravating circumstance. It's one thing to tell a judge "I didn't report the crime because I feared for my life" and quite another to tell him "I didn't report the crime because I thought I could make money by staying quiet".
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>We have plenty of perfectly legal domestic tax shelters.
It's more than that - what the Panama company mainly provided was truly anonymous shell corporations. Generally the ownership of a company is a matter of public record so hiding funds in one is difficult. Creating a shell company is also nothing bad in and off itself. When however that shell company's ownership is secret - that's a problem. You can't know whose money it's handling, who to tax - or how that money was made (lots of these leaked names belong to nefarious gun runners and drug cartels and the like - even politicians hiding bribe money).
The main reason there are so few American names on the list is because unlike most countries America lacks decent regulation to prevent forming shell companies anonymously - in general it's laws here are as lax as Panama's. It's criminals and elites from countries where such laws DO exist that used this company to cash in on Panama's lax regulation but US regulations are generally no better. Why would an American criminal who wants to launder his money go and pay a Panama legal firm to create his shell company when he can get one from Delaware or Las Vegas (the worst of a bad bunch) for a 25 dollar registration fee without submitting a single document ? No identification, not so much as a false social security number...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Not so long ago it was legal in America to force black people to go to the back of the bus -that doesn't mean it was not repugnant to do so.
Not so long ago in my home country of South Africa it was legal to throw somebody in jail for having sex with somebody of a different race. That doesn't mean it wasn't repugnant every time it was done.
When the government does something evil - even though it may be legal (and likely is - since they make the laws) it's still evil, and this is no less true of private citizens.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The trouble is- most people can't - we get taxed BEFORE we earn. These avenues are available ONLY to those who have the kind of incomes that you earn BEFORE you are taxed - like corporations or stock investors and the like.
In other words - it's impossible to benefit from this unless you are *already* rich - if you earn a salary, your taxes are deducted before you get your paycheck.
The biggest regressive factor in modern taxation is this:
Poor people pay tax, get the leftovers and have to pay their expenses out of that.
Rich people get money, pay their expenses and only get taxes on the leftovers.
To then allow them to avoid even the little they are due in a way that is not POSSSIBLE unless you happen to be in the second category is flagrantly corrupt and should be illegal.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>Some of them are hiding their wealth to protect their families.
Nobody minds that... the thing is though, that problem only exists because the kidnappers and extortionist are able to hide THEIR money... through the exact same services actually.
Bloody hell Noriega himself got funded through these lawyers - as did the contras during the Iran/Contra scandal...
Let me put it this way: if this leak had happened before Reagan died, he would have been on trial for high treason (as he should have been in the first place) and with aggravating circumstances for getting Oliver North to take the fall for him.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Those rules only apply to workers though. Board members and executives get ludicrously hyper-rewarded with all the money that was saved from so carefully paying workers only exactly what they must be paid to not quit. Why don't the rules apply uniformly to all employees? Board members and executives aren't that productive or hard to replace.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's basically what he's saying and he may be right. Capitalism only rewards one broad skillset when you think about it - business skill. You can be a genius at anything you like, even if it's in demand, but without the ability to "be a good salesman of yourself" to summarize the GP's post, you'll never make good money doing it.
I like to think about what the world would be like if success were based on some other random skill that has little in itself to do with being productive. Doing yo-yo tricks, maybe. The best yo-yo-ers would be billionaires and those who are hopeless at it would be poor, and we'd all just accept it I guess.
I think I could make six figures in such a world, when I was a teenager I could do loop-de-loops, the sleeper, walk the dog, rock the cradle and probably some others I can't remember.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"There is absolutely nothing out there that says that if an employer wants to keep more money for himself and believes that he can continue operating his company and holding onto his employees without giving raises"
But.. They are NOT a 'employer'!
That is the problem.
They are employees of publicly traded companies. CEO's VP's and the BOD are all just employees. Just like the janitor, the front desk lady, and all the legions of worker bees that actually create value.
It is not their job to take as much money as they possibly can from the company they are employed by.
It is their job to increase shareholder value.
Taking more money out of the company to line their own pockets while simultaneously under-investing in their workforce does nothing but reduce shareholder value.
The fact that it is legal is what is being taken exception to. People want it to not be legal!
That's all well and good, but that should be done through a petition to the government or changes in voting practices, not defamation and harassment of law-abiding citizens.
By your reasoning, if an online game has a technical issue that can be exploited to your advantage, it is "Totally not cheating" to use that exploit, because the game lets you do it--even if that exploit basically makes it so you cannot lose.
That depends on the rules. If the rules say that you cannot do something (like, for instance, hacking the game's server), then it's cheating. If instead the rules permit such behavior (like, for instance, using a particular item in particular circumstances to greatly amplified effect), then it's not cheating. You may not like another player for doing something you couldn't, but your anger has no moral basis.
There are actually games that have put this philosophy into practice. One example that comes to mind is Kingdom Of Loathing. There is a perfectly-valid technique in the game that allows one to amass lots of currency quickly, and it's a valid and encouraged part of the game. There have been bugs in the game in the past that allowed players to instantly get the maximum amount of currency, and that was allowed as well, though there were subsequent changes to mitigate the economic damage. On the other hand, there have been players who actually hacked the game's database, and those accounts were suspended.
Most offshore account providers have prohibitive minimum deposit values to make use of them, making them effectively unusuable by nearly everyone but the already wealthy. This makes them unfair...
It's very clear that you don't know what you're talking about. "Offshore accounts" usually cost under $1000 to set up, plus ongoing maintenance costs. They're usually just corporations founded in a foreign country with a foreign bank account, doing foreign business. However, if you need your money to be accessible domestically, you'll be paying income tax to bring the money into the country, which probably will outweigh the benefit for a small scale.
I've known several folks near the Canadian border who maintained separate bank accounts, just to avoid dealing with any exchanges.
Thinking that everyone should cheat, and that by not cheating you are just dumb or something, is so unethically minded I dont even know where to begin.
You could begin by explaining why everyone must share your particular sense of morality.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Then you should be angry at lawmakers, not somebody who happens to have better circumstances than someone else.
Less eloquently written as "Don't hate the player, hate the game," the criminal's creed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's nice to know when, say, a CEO lets his/her employees go because there's not enough money (and yet there's many millions in offshore accounts).
As if any employee ever believed the crap they were told when they were let go.
I heard some good bull myself, but I just knew I did not want to be where I was not wanted... and that was enough to accept it.