It's odd to say it, but I don't think this ruling is "right". Particularly not the precedent that it sets. The judge expressed concern for MySpace's business future and for the other users of the service. Seriously, this is not "common sense", this is "big business rules".
I *do* think that the outcome is correct - but the wrong reasons were given. The correct reason would have been more directly related to the notion of personal responsibility. Not this "MySpace can't be responsible, because, oh gosh, they'd lose money if they were" crap.
Common sense my arse. The outcome matches common sense, but not the rationale. I just hope it's not used as a precedent.
I agree there won't be a large drop in storage space, but...
I would expect there's a large number of people who don't have the option of using gmail. Remember, everyone you know, probably knows you; if they wanted GMail access they would ask you for an invite. What of those slowly-entering-the-technology-age households who don't have anyone they can easily ask? You know, the kind of people you *don't* hang out with? There's got to be a decent number.
Well, the bank needs *some* way to authenticate you. The bank cannot trust any device on the ATM network to say: "Hello, this is stonertom. Really really really."
I agree fully with this, and you also see this happen in smaller open source projects. The maintainer is the guy who ensures that everyone commits correctly, uses standard code formatting, has sufficient documentation, etc. One of the biggest eye-openers for me was when I submitted a huge amount of code, he reformatted it, restructured it for reusability, and sent it back to me. It just looked so much cleaner.
One thing I would also suggest is that, whoever becomes the maintainer for your team gets to set the code formatting and version control requirements. The maintainer is the one who has to enforce them, and by enforce I mean "sit down with the other developer and fix things for them". It naturally stops the maintainer from holding people to ridiculous demands, as they would only increase his own workload.
Woah, how is this insightful? Debian discussed renaming Firefox and thought up a suitable name name, GNU made the fork using the name Debian thought up, and now Debian has decided to go ahead with their plan.
"So they forked a project, then decided they didn't want to use the fork" is absolute rubbish. Try reading the article.
At my current workplace everyone who is involved in teamwork sits on an 'island'. An island is a simple arrangement of 4-6 desks facing inwards, so most people can see everyone on the same island. There are no cubicle walls or similar. You just run power/network across the ceiling and to the centre of each island. People who work on the same projects tend to sit on the one island or on a nearby island (almost pit style). People who work on similar tasks in your company should be put on an island together as that minimises the amount of desk-hopping that needs to be done.
This layout has at least one huge benefit - windows are common space. Sure, some people sit closer to the windows, but everyone has access to them. I often get up and just stroll over to a window and look out.
Some people might criticise this layout for privacy reasons. Frankly, what you gain is much better. Our developers work better together because it's a very grassroots team-oriented environment. We also don't have any employees whose concentration is so fragile that it is broken by a phone call being taken by a neighbour. The only people who don't sit on islands are senior management (CEO, the lone marketing guy, the secretary, etc). They sit on individual desks near each other. This helps to break up the whole "it's just a bunch of islands" that would give it a "forced team-building" feel.
Finally, we have 3 separate meeting areas. A long table near a corner used for whole-company meetings, smaller quiet meetings, or lunch. A separate room with teleconferencing for serious, noisy or brain-storming meetings. And a couple of couches near the entrance used for casual meetings where you want people to be relaxed and candid; most often used for people management or task assignments. It doubles as a place for visitors to sit if they need to wait.
PS. One of the reasons I really wanted to work at this place was the open office, huge windows and overall team/family feeling. You might find the same applies to your developers.
Um, try re-reading that article. If I recall correctly, it wasn't CmdrTaco whinging. It was CmdrTaco surprised at himself about how attached he was to his name. It was introspection. It probably sounds like he's whinging because he's describing how much it bothered him, but I don't recall him saying "I'm right and they're wrong". I do recall him saying "I'm surprised at how attached I am to that name".
Then perhaps you'll like the Epiphany approach to generating hierarchies for tag-based bookmarks. We've been working on it for a while now, and it allows arbitrary depth, but is smarter about it. We'll integrate deli.cio.us stuff soon I believe.
I wish I didn't have to reply to this, but since noone else is...
Down the bottom is Chinese text that says, in effect, that these results have been censored according to local law. You asked for them to write when they're censoring. They do.
You might reply with "but they still return some results! that's misinformation". Please don't. If it returned 0 results all it would indicate to the user is that their censoring was very crude. It wouldn't indicate anything about the seriousness of what happened.
Re:Tempting....
on
Why Use GTK+?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Though when things get really tough and I absolutely have to know the little details, I like to hit the source http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/gtk/ instead.
I'm an Aussie and I'd be *hoping* our Prime Minister spends most of his time underground, seeing as our parliament building is. I've even thrown a frisbee around on top. To quote from Wikipedia:
From above, the design of the site is in the shape of two boomerangs enclosed within a circle. Much of the building is buried beneath Capital Hill, but the meeting chambers and accommodation for parliamentarians are free-standing within the boomerang-shaped arms.
For now, try NetMeeting/GnomeMeeting. They actually work quite well though are both a little buggy. Gaim should have video/voice support in the near future anyway.
First I think he was pointing out that "the same culture that permeates the US also colonised India". He was referring to a mindset, not a label of Britain or America. But anyway...
It's odd for you to argue "Microsoft doesn't pay taxes in America, so how can they expect decent programmers in America if they don't fund schools?" By some miracle Microsoft doesn't pay much to schools in India, yet they find decent programmers there. Perhaps it's not Microsoft's tax avoidance that's the problem?
Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.
Your post seems to be hinting that the UN wants control/power. I call bullshit. The UN wants to set things up so that Governments have control/power.
It's easy to assume that Google can determine your medical history from your searches. But unless you put in " has " they can't tell. Are you searching because you have that medical problem? Or a friend you know has? Or your son or daughter? They can't tell. Even if you search with your name, you're only checking "how many people believe I have ".
They can work out that you're *interested* in a topic. And they can perhaps guess that you *might* suffer some medical problem. But considering the number of time I've researched diseases that *I don't have* I doubt they could use search history as reliable indicators of health.
If I suffer from migraines I search for "migraines medicine herbal". If a friend suffers from migraines I search for "migraines medicine herbal". If I saw some crazy man on TV hawking herbal medicines for migraines and I want to check his claims I search for "migraines medicine herbal".
Thanks for the discussion. Will admit that it has been informative. However, I still stand by my point (socialist or not, though I am) that I haven't seen a UN tax yet. I have seen the UN try to establish formal mechanisms to help countries move money around based on various metrics. But that's all.
To show the difference, consider a Federal Government. It takes from the states, and *then* decides what to do with the money. It can allocate it to any number of projects or programmes depending on the political interests of whoever is in charge at the time. They can use the money to make themselves look good.
Then consider the UN's ITO idea. It doesn't take from the constituent nations to give to the UN for their programmes. It's more like the banker which helps the transactions take place. That's why I say "the UN doesn't have taxes".
And my point about "selling people" is a capitalistic notion. Everything should have a market value and be sold, not given freely. Any education should therefore follow the same concept right, and induce either a debt or be prepaid? Unless you want to be socialist in that aspect of course, and allow the wider community to pay. The problem is that socialism requires a unified group of people to share the burden. Separate nations aren't unified, so when people leave a country taking their education with them it's a drain on the socialist concept. It's generally OK in developed nations, but would even a basic education system reap any rewards in those poorest nations?
The problem I have with your argument is the view that the UN will come in heavy-handed and begin taxing people. That's not the UN's role. The UN is a facilitator. Individual nations may use the mechanisms of the UN to be heavy-handed and tax their citizens but *that's not the UN*. Do you see my point? Hell, that's my *whole* point. There cannot be UN taxes (without a *huge* amount of international agreement, which just isn't going to happen). There *can* be mechanisms setup within the UN to help organise taxation, but those are different things.
We only discussed the emigration concept because you claimed it was a UN tax. It still isn't, and nothing you've said has shown otherwise (and nothing I've said has really shown it's a good idea). If the Federal government set up an office to allow States of the US to manage their individual taxation regimes in a more consistent way, is that a Federal tax? No, they're still state taxes, just assisted by a federal body. Same for the UN.
For what it's worth I do see myself as a critical thinker. But the main thing isn't "to criticise", but to draw fine lines. (I misstepped with expat/emigrant, though I would argue that the underlying concept is the same, otherwise why would the US tax people who're living out of the US?). There is a fine line between "levying a tax" and "facilitating a tax". And you haven't given me evidence of the UN levying a tax, just facilitating. So, based on that history, I have no fear of a UN body setting up a tax on the internet. They *might* setup mechanisms for national governments to tax the internet, but that's not the UN taxing.
Um, when it comes to 3rd world countries, I'm sure basic highschool education is a sufficient burden that we don't need to even discuss university education. And we're not just talking about emigrants to the US. We could be talking about moving from one poor country to a neighbouring not-quite-so-poor country. Sorry but not everything the world does is about you and yours.
Just try to remember that poor countries get quite a raw deal in a free world market when it applies to movement of people. If all the people they spend time educating just get up and leave the country they have a problem. If you wanted a proper free world market then people should be "sold" between countries based on the costs involved in training them. The idea of taxing emigrants is just a way to formalise that.
And thankyou for the reminder *again* of the difference between expat and emigrant. But it's not necessary. It's not a question of "which country is that person's future". It's a question of "which country funded that person's development". Whether you're an expat or an emigrant is irrelevant. A country which is only just barely keeping it's head afloat needs to reap rewards from every action they do as a country (like setting up basic education).
And to clarify, HECS = Higher Education Contribution Scheme. It's not a loan, it's a mechanism to encourage (or in some instances force) students to *contribute* back to the higher education system. New concept for you? Something midway between a loan and a grant.
OK, fair enough, I should've used emigrants instead of expats in my argument. Unfortunately my argument still stands. If I as an Australian citizen work as a resident of the US in the US I will pay US taxes and not Australian ones. Can you clarify for me the situation for US citizens working in Australia? The article you quoted said "the United States... requires its nationals to pay United States taxes on their worldwide income regardless of where they reside". I'd be interested to know just what level of paper work is required for the US government to enforce this.
To give an example, my university education is funded by the government in a system called HECS. Under that system, once I begin earning more than $35k per year I must pay money back to the Australian government until my debt is gone. If I go overseas to work the Australian government has no access to my income (separate tax systems) and so cannot reclaim that money. Do you think they should be able to, considering the fact that they trained me? While Australia isn't a 3rd world country, you can imagine how the "brain drain" is a problem. How are 3rd world countries meant to access the US taxation system to tax their citizens, trying to reclaim some of the cost of educating them?
The UN's role is to help manage international difficulties and cooperation. Anything they do will be to that aim. They will never make a pure money grab. There are too many people who need convincing of the practicality for that to be even conceived of.
Not scared in the slightest. Read those items closely.
According to your quotes, the idea of "taxing people even when they're away from home" is an idea implemented BY THE UNITED STATES ALREADY. The UN, thought the ITO, thinks it would be a good idea to establish a consistent taxing regime where such differences in taxation aren't used as a means for creating "brain drains" from poorer countries which are trying to establish themselves. The idea of taxing expats is an idea the US ALREADY USES.
Also note the keywords "technical assitance" and "ITO to help with enforcement". The ITO would be a means for helping navigate the mess of taxation rules that exist globally. Developing countries just don't have the resources to sort out the tax system of every bloody country their citizens may choose to go, and setup schemes to continue taxing their expats.
Anyway, your concern was about "the UN raising revenue for itself", whereas that item refers to "helping countries raise revenue from their expats, who took their skills (learned at home) out of the country". Oh, and the other taxes you mentioned were those that impact everyone in the world negatively. Pollution, etc. The concept that the UN would say "hey we need more money, where's something we can tax" is stupid, and harks back to the middle ages.
Not to mention that the UN has *no* enforcement powers (and with good bloody reason!). Implementation needs voluntary participation of nations. The UN is a body to *assist* *cooperation* between people. One way to view the UN building in NY is "a set of meeting rooms rented out foreign diplomats". Why is the concept of cooperation so foreign to you?
OK, we'll skip the idea of "dues" as a "tax". I don't think they are, but I don't want to argue about it either.
The document that you linked to had a few interesting points. Mainly, the role of the ITO would be to assist the creation of uniform and consistent taxation regimes across countries. This is to *help* countries avoid being exploited via tax loopholes in other countries. It is noted in the document that the ITO *could* be used *if* a global carbon tax or currency transaction tax was desirable.
Your statement that the document is "a proposal to create an ITO that will impose global taxes" is fundamentally wrong. It is instead "a report on the advantages of an ITO that will help coordinate national taxes, with the observation that *in the unlikely event of agreement to a global tax* the ITO would be able to facilitate it".
To be clear: any ITO would *never* be able to "impose" global taxes itself. Individual governments would have to agree to it, and as noted in the document, this would be extremely difficult from a political standpoint. However, an ITO would be able to generate reports and advice to all governments on how to avoid accidental loopholes exploited by multi-nationals.
So, again, where is the first evidence of a UN tax? Hell, point to some part of the UN which isn't about simple bloody "global coordination"?
Sorry, I think you missed my point. I wasn't equating education to wisdom or anything like it. I was saying that a global perspective is required to manage an economy, and education should be defined by that global perspective. Local decision makers are likely to choose to teach topics that *they* think are relevant for their local economy. When their local economy dies, what happens to their students?
Basically I was objecting to "If the local students are to be taught lies, it should be because the local citizens have decided that that's what they want their children taught. (They will suffer the appropriate consequences...but their folly should not be forced on everyone else.)" by pointing out that poor decisions made on the local level will cause pain for everyone.
At least with a uniform system it is "up for criticism/review" every day by lots of people. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a carefully constructed uniformly implemented system of education. You just have to avoid knee-jerk reactions and pay close attention to teaching outcomes for fine tuning.
The biggest problem with your idea will become evident when there are a large number of idiots running around because they weren't taught the appropriate lessons to function in modern society. When mathematics is replaced with religion, and science with superstition, what have you achieved?
It can be cynically said that "the government educates you because they want to tax you", and it's at least partially true. If people who've lived in a certain locale only teach subjects related to that locale (eg. farmers teach farming, no calculus, no languages), you lose a degree of economic mobility that's important nowadays. If the economy suffers, all people suffer. Or will you only provide welfare on an education-merit basis?
A standard education across all students is a much better option. One thing that should be open to academic debate (and careful experimentation) are the different potential curriculums. And so we have government-specified curriculums.
Probably just reading it wrong. I would assume they mean "does not require a registration or subscription fee" which is equivalent to "does not require a registration fee or subscription fee". Welcome to the wonderful world of English.
FWIW, MapleStory has the same model. Registration is free, playing is free, client is free. They are in an extended beta phase at the moment though. No cash shop yet. Find info about it on Google.
Slashdot Mirror
It's odd to say it, but I don't think this ruling is "right". Particularly not the precedent that it sets. The judge expressed concern for MySpace's business future and for the other users of the service. Seriously, this is not "common sense", this is "big business rules".
I *do* think that the outcome is correct - but the wrong reasons were given. The correct reason would have been more directly related to the notion of personal responsibility. Not this "MySpace can't be responsible, because, oh gosh, they'd lose money if they were" crap.
Common sense my arse. The outcome matches common sense, but not the rationale. I just hope it's not used as a precedent.
I agree there won't be a large drop in storage space, but...
I would expect there's a large number of people who don't have the option of using gmail. Remember, everyone you know, probably knows you; if they wanted GMail access they would ask you for an invite. What of those slowly-entering-the-technology-age households who don't have anyone they can easily ask? You know, the kind of people you *don't* hang out with? There's got to be a decent number.
Well, the bank needs *some* way to authenticate you. The bank cannot trust any device on the ATM network to say: "Hello, this is stonertom. Really really really."
I agree fully with this, and you also see this happen in smaller open source projects. The maintainer is the guy who ensures that everyone commits correctly, uses standard code formatting, has sufficient documentation, etc. One of the biggest eye-openers for me was when I submitted a huge amount of code, he reformatted it, restructured it for reusability, and sent it back to me. It just looked so much cleaner.
One thing I would also suggest is that, whoever becomes the maintainer for your team gets to set the code formatting and version control requirements. The maintainer is the one who has to enforce them, and by enforce I mean "sit down with the other developer and fix things for them". It naturally stops the maintainer from holding people to ridiculous demands, as they would only increase his own workload.
Woah, how is this insightful? Debian discussed renaming Firefox and thought up a suitable name name, GNU made the fork using the name Debian thought up, and now Debian has decided to go ahead with their plan.
"So they forked a project, then decided they didn't want to use the fork" is absolute rubbish. Try reading the article.
At my current workplace everyone who is involved in teamwork sits on an 'island'. An island is a simple arrangement of 4-6 desks facing inwards, so most people can see everyone on the same island. There are no cubicle walls or similar. You just run power/network across the ceiling and to the centre of each island. People who work on the same projects tend to sit on the one island or on a nearby island (almost pit style). People who work on similar tasks in your company should be put on an island together as that minimises the amount of desk-hopping that needs to be done.
This layout has at least one huge benefit - windows are common space. Sure, some people sit closer to the windows, but everyone has access to them. I often get up and just stroll over to a window and look out.
Some people might criticise this layout for privacy reasons. Frankly, what you gain is much better. Our developers work better together because it's a very grassroots team-oriented environment. We also don't have any employees whose concentration is so fragile that it is broken by a phone call being taken by a neighbour. The only people who don't sit on islands are senior management (CEO, the lone marketing guy, the secretary, etc). They sit on individual desks near each other. This helps to break up the whole "it's just a bunch of islands" that would give it a "forced team-building" feel.
Finally, we have 3 separate meeting areas. A long table near a corner used for whole-company meetings, smaller quiet meetings, or lunch. A separate room with teleconferencing for serious, noisy or brain-storming meetings. And a couple of couches near the entrance used for casual meetings where you want people to be relaxed and candid; most often used for people management or task assignments. It doubles as a place for visitors to sit if they need to wait.
PS. One of the reasons I really wanted to work at this place was the open office, huge windows and overall team/family feeling. You might find the same applies to your developers.
Um, try re-reading that article. If I recall correctly, it wasn't CmdrTaco whinging. It was CmdrTaco surprised at himself about how attached he was to his name. It was introspection. It probably sounds like he's whinging because he's describing how much it bothered him, but I don't recall him saying "I'm right and they're wrong". I do recall him saying "I'm surprised at how attached I am to that name".
Feel free to flame me if I'm wrong about that.
Then perhaps you'll like the Epiphany approach to generating hierarchies for tag-based bookmarks. We've been working on it for a while now, and it allows arbitrary depth, but is smarter about it. We'll integrate deli.cio.us stuff soon I believe.
http://peter.a.harvey.googlepages.com/epiphany
I'm curious. How does the "use tag combinations to create hierarchies" system work? Do you select the combinations, or does it generate all, or... ?
I wish I didn't have to reply to this, but since noone else is...
Down the bottom is Chinese text that says, in effect, that these results have been censored according to local law. You asked for them to write when they're censoring. They do.
You might reply with "but they still return some results! that's misinformation". Please don't. If it returned 0 results all it would indicate to the user is that their censoring was very crude. It wouldn't indicate anything about the seriousness of what happened.
Sorry, but what's wrong with http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/, with every supporting library also document at http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/?
Though when things get really tough and I absolutely have to know the little details, I like to hit the source http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/gtk/ instead.
I'm an Aussie and I'd be *hoping* our Prime Minister spends most of his time underground, seeing as our parliament building is. I've even thrown a frisbee around on top. To quote from Wikipedia:
C anberra
From above, the design of the site is in the shape of two boomerangs enclosed within a circle. Much of the building is buried beneath Capital Hill, but the meeting chambers and accommodation for parliamentarians are free-standing within the boomerang-shaped arms.
http://www.peo.gov.au/images/build_aerial.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_House%2C_
For now, try NetMeeting/GnomeMeeting. They actually work quite well though are both a little buggy. Gaim should have video/voice support in the near future anyway.
First I think he was pointing out that "the same culture that permeates the US also colonised India". He was referring to a mindset, not a label of Britain or America. But anyway...
It's odd for you to argue "Microsoft doesn't pay taxes in America, so how can they expect decent programmers in America if they don't fund schools?" By some miracle Microsoft doesn't pay much to schools in India, yet they find decent programmers there. Perhaps it's not Microsoft's tax avoidance that's the problem?
Definition from WGIG report:
Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.
Your post seems to be hinting that the UN wants control/power. I call bullshit. The UN wants to set things up so that Governments have control/power.
It's easy to assume that Google can determine your medical history from your searches. But unless you put in " has " they can't tell. Are you searching because you have that medical problem? Or a friend you know has? Or your son or daughter? They can't tell. Even if you search with your name, you're only checking "how many people believe I have ".
They can work out that you're *interested* in a topic. And they can perhaps guess that you *might* suffer some medical problem. But considering the number of time I've researched diseases that *I don't have* I doubt they could use search history as reliable indicators of health.
If I suffer from migraines I search for "migraines medicine herbal". If a friend suffers from migraines I search for "migraines medicine herbal". If I saw some crazy man on TV hawking herbal medicines for migraines and I want to check his claims I search for "migraines medicine herbal".
Thanks for the discussion. Will admit that it has been informative. However, I still stand by my point (socialist or not, though I am) that I haven't seen a UN tax yet. I have seen the UN try to establish formal mechanisms to help countries move money around based on various metrics. But that's all.
To show the difference, consider a Federal Government. It takes from the states, and *then* decides what to do with the money. It can allocate it to any number of projects or programmes depending on the political interests of whoever is in charge at the time. They can use the money to make themselves look good.
Then consider the UN's ITO idea. It doesn't take from the constituent nations to give to the UN for their programmes. It's more like the banker which helps the transactions take place. That's why I say "the UN doesn't have taxes".
And my point about "selling people" is a capitalistic notion. Everything should have a market value and be sold, not given freely. Any education should therefore follow the same concept right, and induce either a debt or be prepaid? Unless you want to be socialist in that aspect of course, and allow the wider community to pay. The problem is that socialism requires a unified group of people to share the burden. Separate nations aren't unified, so when people leave a country taking their education with them it's a drain on the socialist concept. It's generally OK in developed nations, but would even a basic education system reap any rewards in those poorest nations?
The problem I have with your argument is the view that the UN will come in heavy-handed and begin taxing people. That's not the UN's role. The UN is a facilitator. Individual nations may use the mechanisms of the UN to be heavy-handed and tax their citizens but *that's not the UN*. Do you see my point? Hell, that's my *whole* point. There cannot be UN taxes (without a *huge* amount of international agreement, which just isn't going to happen). There *can* be mechanisms setup within the UN to help organise taxation, but those are different things.
We only discussed the emigration concept because you claimed it was a UN tax. It still isn't, and nothing you've said has shown otherwise (and nothing I've said has really shown it's a good idea). If the Federal government set up an office to allow States of the US to manage their individual taxation regimes in a more consistent way, is that a Federal tax? No, they're still state taxes, just assisted by a federal body. Same for the UN.
For what it's worth I do see myself as a critical thinker. But the main thing isn't "to criticise", but to draw fine lines. (I misstepped with expat/emigrant, though I would argue that the underlying concept is the same, otherwise why would the US tax people who're living out of the US?). There is a fine line between "levying a tax" and "facilitating a tax". And you haven't given me evidence of the UN levying a tax, just facilitating. So, based on that history, I have no fear of a UN body setting up a tax on the internet. They *might* setup mechanisms for national governments to tax the internet, but that's not the UN taxing.
Um, when it comes to 3rd world countries, I'm sure basic highschool education is a sufficient burden that we don't need to even discuss university education. And we're not just talking about emigrants to the US. We could be talking about moving from one poor country to a neighbouring not-quite-so-poor country. Sorry but not everything the world does is about you and yours.
Just try to remember that poor countries get quite a raw deal in a free world market when it applies to movement of people. If all the people they spend time educating just get up and leave the country they have a problem. If you wanted a proper free world market then people should be "sold" between countries based on the costs involved in training them. The idea of taxing emigrants is just a way to formalise that.
And thankyou for the reminder *again* of the difference between expat and emigrant. But it's not necessary. It's not a question of "which country is that person's future". It's a question of "which country funded that person's development". Whether you're an expat or an emigrant is irrelevant. A country which is only just barely keeping it's head afloat needs to reap rewards from every action they do as a country (like setting up basic education).
And to clarify, HECS = Higher Education Contribution Scheme. It's not a loan, it's a mechanism to encourage (or in some instances force) students to *contribute* back to the higher education system. New concept for you? Something midway between a loan and a grant.
OK, fair enough, I should've used emigrants instead of expats in my argument. Unfortunately my argument still stands. If I as an Australian citizen work as a resident of the US in the US I will pay US taxes and not Australian ones. Can you clarify for me the situation for US citizens working in Australia? The article you quoted said "the United States ... requires its nationals to pay United States taxes on their worldwide income regardless of where they reside". I'd be interested to know just what level of paper work is required for the US government to enforce this.
To give an example, my university education is funded by the government in a system called HECS. Under that system, once I begin earning more than $35k per year I must pay money back to the Australian government until my debt is gone. If I go overseas to work the Australian government has no access to my income (separate tax systems) and so cannot reclaim that money. Do you think they should be able to, considering the fact that they trained me? While Australia isn't a 3rd world country, you can imagine how the "brain drain" is a problem. How are 3rd world countries meant to access the US taxation system to tax their citizens, trying to reclaim some of the cost of educating them?
The UN's role is to help manage international difficulties and cooperation. Anything they do will be to that aim. They will never make a pure money grab. There are too many people who need convincing of the practicality for that to be even conceived of.
Not scared in the slightest. Read those items closely.
According to your quotes, the idea of "taxing people even when they're away from home" is an idea implemented BY THE UNITED STATES ALREADY. The UN, thought the ITO, thinks it would be a good idea to establish a consistent taxing regime where such differences in taxation aren't used as a means for creating "brain drains" from poorer countries which are trying to establish themselves. The idea of taxing expats is an idea the US ALREADY USES.
Also note the keywords "technical assitance" and "ITO to help with enforcement". The ITO would be a means for helping navigate the mess of taxation rules that exist globally. Developing countries just don't have the resources to sort out the tax system of every bloody country their citizens may choose to go, and setup schemes to continue taxing their expats.
Anyway, your concern was about "the UN raising revenue for itself", whereas that item refers to "helping countries raise revenue from their expats, who took their skills (learned at home) out of the country". Oh, and the other taxes you mentioned were those that impact everyone in the world negatively. Pollution, etc. The concept that the UN would say "hey we need more money, where's something we can tax" is stupid, and harks back to the middle ages.
Not to mention that the UN has *no* enforcement powers (and with good bloody reason!). Implementation needs voluntary participation of nations. The UN is a body to *assist* *cooperation* between people. One way to view the UN building in NY is "a set of meeting rooms rented out foreign diplomats". Why is the concept of cooperation so foreign to you?
OK, we'll skip the idea of "dues" as a "tax". I don't think they are, but I don't want to argue about it either.
The document that you linked to had a few interesting points. Mainly, the role of the ITO would be to assist the creation of uniform and consistent taxation regimes across countries. This is to *help* countries avoid being exploited via tax loopholes in other countries. It is noted in the document that the ITO *could* be used *if* a global carbon tax or currency transaction tax was desirable.
Your statement that the document is "a proposal to create an ITO that will impose global taxes" is fundamentally wrong. It is instead "a report on the advantages of an ITO that will help coordinate national taxes, with the observation that *in the unlikely event of agreement to a global tax* the ITO would be able to facilitate it".
To be clear: any ITO would *never* be able to "impose" global taxes itself. Individual governments would have to agree to it, and as noted in the document, this would be extremely difficult from a political standpoint. However, an ITO would be able to generate reports and advice to all governments on how to avoid accidental loopholes exploited by multi-nationals.
So, again, where is the first evidence of a UN tax? Hell, point to some part of the UN which isn't about simple bloody "global coordination"?
Woah, slow down mate. Name one UN tax first. Seriously.
Sorry, I think you missed my point. I wasn't equating education to wisdom or anything like it. I was saying that a global perspective is required to manage an economy, and education should be defined by that global perspective. Local decision makers are likely to choose to teach topics that *they* think are relevant for their local economy. When their local economy dies, what happens to their students?
Basically I was objecting to "If the local students are to be taught lies, it should be because the local citizens have decided that that's what they want their children taught. (They will suffer the appropriate consequences...but their folly should not be forced on everyone else.)" by pointing out that poor decisions made on the local level will cause pain for everyone.
At least with a uniform system it is "up for criticism/review" every day by lots of people. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a carefully constructed uniformly implemented system of education. You just have to avoid knee-jerk reactions and pay close attention to teaching outcomes for fine tuning.
The biggest problem with your idea will become evident when there are a large number of idiots running around because they weren't taught the appropriate lessons to function in modern society. When mathematics is replaced with religion, and science with superstition, what have you achieved?
It can be cynically said that "the government educates you because they want to tax you", and it's at least partially true. If people who've lived in a certain locale only teach subjects related to that locale (eg. farmers teach farming, no calculus, no languages), you lose a degree of economic mobility that's important nowadays. If the economy suffers, all people suffer. Or will you only provide welfare on an education-merit basis?
A standard education across all students is a much better option. One thing that should be open to academic debate (and careful experimentation) are the different potential curriculums. And so we have government-specified curriculums.
Probably just reading it wrong. I would assume they mean "does not require a registration or subscription fee" which is equivalent to "does not require a registration fee or subscription fee". Welcome to the wonderful world of English.
FWIW, MapleStory has the same model. Registration is free, playing is free, client is free. They are in an extended beta phase at the moment though. No cash shop yet. Find info about it on Google.