Human beings rely entirely on the natural order of the Earth to survive. Our technology is nowhere near a state where we can live without nature. Plus it could be argued that we have a moral obligation as the Earth's most advanced species to act as its steward and protector. However that doesn't mean we have to lie to populations to achieve this. It doesn't mean we have to feel guilty for driving cars, throwing out recyclables, and enjoying the benefits of industrialization. Industrialization gave us technology, which gives us the power to be responsible. We can live in harmony with nature without treating environmentalism like a religion.
You like to dismiss criticism of your username as meaningless, but it's not. It suggests you, like so many others, treat this company and its philosophy like a religion. This suspicion is compounded by the evidence of your post history, which shows a clear agenda: trolling this website to back up Apple wherever possible. It's literally all you do. So forgive me if I find it futile to argue with the Apple priesthood.
There's a lot wrong with your argument and I was about to write up something, until I saw who was posting it. Everyone above and below me just stop. This man/woman/shill can not be reasoned with. His username says it all.
Well they were protecting themselves. Specifically they were protecting the notion (that they've spent a lot of time and money crafting) that iPhones are the most secure mobile platform. It turns out that Apple encryption is breakable by Apple, at their leisure, in no small part due to the complexity of their system lulling people into using weak pincodes. They don't want people knowing this, or having this discussion. It's better to pretend it's about privacy, and put themselves in the position of David.
Positioning their refusal to cooperate as having anything to do with privacy interests is a corporate PR stunt and ignores the Fourth Amendment protections afforded by our Constitution.
This man put into perspective pretty much exactly what is happening. It's always the punch you don't see coming that gets you. Apple has been very successful marketing the "good guy" image, but the truth is obviously far from that. Anyone in the tech industry worth their salary could have told you this decades ago. It's nice to see other professionals coming to the light.
Why would Apple ever care about your privacy more than their profits? They probably just don't think it's going to be that big of a thing. I tend to agree. All this stuff kinda reminds me of VR 30 years ago. It's neat, but kinda gimmicky. It's all supposed to be in the 5-10 year future? Try 30-50, and even then, as the article points out, it's a big maybe.
Completely agree. Open platforms are important. Open protocols are important. Open standards are important. Open source end user applications are much less so, and insisting they have to be has traditionally caused major problems for GNU/Linux. Think of a computer like a city. In a city you want critical infrastructure like the roads, electricity, and water to be publicly controlled. You want to make sure companies don't try to patent the shape of buildings, or the name Bob. But after that you want the free market to run most of what people use day-to-day. An open source operating system, with standardized core level apis, protocols, and methodology works like this. There's no benefit to insisting all end user applications also be developed by the community. It just amounts to religious fundamentalism when you take it this far.
The same system existed, it would have just been on a smaller level: the city, town, or state level. Maine couldn't have 30% tax if New York had 10. Maine had to figure out how to run its programs as efficiently. This is a good thing. Federal borders have historically been defined by geology, differences in religion, race, etc. Technology and social progress is removing these barriers. It is imperative that countries today operate with global competition in mind, just like it used to be within states, counties and cities. Any country that tries to operate autonomously in a global market will invariably be left behind. Even a super power like the USA... it's just a matter of time.
I said a highly regulated industry. Aircraft safety and maintenance is not an industry. Every time you read the word regulation, replace it with "prohibitive law", because that's what it is. There's no argument that prohibitive laws are sometimes required. Not being allowed to sell poison as food, or murder people for profit, or fly thousands of people 20,000 feet off the ground with no regards for safety, are good prohibitive laws. Why? Because there's no natural incentive based system in competition. Prohibitive laws should be used as the last possible solution to a problem - today they are so often used as the first.
Norway is not a highly regulated industry either, it's a country. Norway is used a lot as a shining example of socialism in action, but I don't think many people even know a thing about Norway. I've met people there who are extremely worried. The government increasingly owns everything. You're a Norwegian citizen and want to start an oil company? You literally can't. We saw a political mass shooting in Norway recently because of the real outrage in what's happening there. Not racial, not religious, but political. An industry in Norway that is highly regulated is the oil industry. That is an example of a highly regulated industry that has done quite well. The problem is it's unsustainable. Norway will be a very very different place when the oil dries up. Their welfare based economy can't function without it, and has nothing to fall back on. If they had exposed this system to the free market it's very probable the increased free market activity could have produced other competitive industries too back it up. Look at the United States for proof. They were the major oil producers before the 1970s, now they lead the tech industry. Had the U.S. followed the Norway model in the early 20th century, it might be a very different place today.
You're right about the fraudulent activities of these corporations, what you're wrong about is the solution. Your solution to fix the complex tax code, is to complicate it further with new regulations, and presumably new agencies to enforce them? A much simpler approach is to remove the incentive these companies have to do that. Simplify the tax code? I completely agree. While you're at it, make its rates competitive with the rest of the free world. Norway, for example, is 25%. A full 10% cheaper than the US.
If you're right, then every corporation will just keep their money where it is. So what's the bother? If the policy does nothing because no company wants to spend more money where they headquarter(a ridiculous notion), then why are you against the policy? The world operates like a market now. For a better or worse, this is the reality. All members of a market need to compete with each other. The simple fact is, the US isn't a very competitive place to store your money in the west, so no one does it.
That's not quite how it works. Forgetting for a moment that Ireland has its own budgets to worry about, no U.S.company can just find the lowest rate and decide they want to pay that. You first have to already be doing a significant amount of business in that country, then you have to set up shell companies, find clever ways to move profits, and ultimately employ high priced accounting teams to do all this. When your country pays higher corporate tax than virtually every country you do business in, then it becomes a no brainer to find ways to move profits to those other countries. If the US rate was even closer to something like England (20%) there'd be a lot less incentive to do this. Is England going to drop their rates after? Well they're going to have to adjust their budgets, analyse how it will affect their local markets, figure out if they'll cut social programs or raise taxes elsewhere - all difficult decisions. Welcome to capitalism. Competitive corporate tax rates incentivise governments to run efficiently. Setting your rates to something higher than everyone else around you (by a lot) and then imposing prohibitive laws to enforce them sounds pretty despotic to me. This is what you would expect from a monarchy or a dictatorship.
Trumps plan is actually better if you think about it deeper. While Hillary, Bernie, and Obama constantly scream out the taking point of getting corporations to play fair, have you ever heard a plan? Obama had 8 years. Was he just too busy having Steph Curry over for BBQ? He didn't do anything, and neither will Hillary or Bernie, because they can't. You can't force a company or individual into anything. And any new laws you create are only as good as their enforcement, which means new agencies and red tape. And finally, you can be damn sure that no matter what law you create, they'll just find a "loophole" in that too.
So trump wants to let them bring that money back with a one time no penalty, then lower tax rates to something competitive with neighbor countries to encourage companies to actually pay tax. That could mean, over night, billions of dollars into the U.S. economy and a massive new source of government revenue. The first rule of any economic theory: incentives work far better than prohibition.
How about simply lowering rates? Why pay 35% in the U.S. when you can pay 12.5% in Ireland, or 15% in Canada? Because some law tells you to? Who enforces it? And how expensive is that going to be to constantly maintain? Right now you're getting 0% from these companies. While 15 is lower than 35 it's certainly better than 0.
We always just need the right laws don't we? There's always some idea man suggesting he's got it all figured out: if we just add these couple laws, impose these few regulations, then everything will be fine. But it never is. Invariably regulations either don't completely address the problem, or they create new unanticipated problems. This results in the next generation of idea men dreaming up more regulations, rinse and repeat. Eventually you end up with a bureaucratic nightmare where the only people that can do business are large corporations that can afford to hire the lawyers that understand all the requirements. My favorite summation of the fallacy in this philosophy was by the late Milton Friedman: "name me one highly regulated industry you feel is running well". Go ahead, I'll wait. What we need in this case, and many others, is a return to relying on market mechanics. Corporate tax policy in the U.S. isnt working simply because the rate isn't competitive. Even Canada's rate is 20% lower.
The U.S. Corporate tax rate is something ridiculous like 35%. They can claim profits are in a country as close as Canada and it would only cost them 15%. You can't be this wildly out of balance in a global market and expect to function well. This is a fundamental aspect of free market capitalism. Actually, if the U.S. lowered the rate to even something like 17% I'm sure they'd generate more revenue, instead of less. A company the size of Google likely spends a great deal of money on clever accounting to avoid taxes. They wouldn't need to do it if there was little or no benefit.
It's the punch you don't see coming that gets you. If you're worried about the government, you'd be prudent to apply that double to private enterprise. They have their own unique incentives.
It's funny to me how selective people are with their privacy. Allow the government to have a physical spy network? Bad! Allow Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter to control, monitor, and exploit every respect of their lives?.... I hear the new iPhone comes out in September! I bet it's shiny!
*Plays the world's smallest violin* now get off your computer and do something. Quit waiting for the government to do it for you. If you really want it, you'll find no insurmountable obstacle in your way.
Most people aren't willing to trade a time piece that lasts several months for one that lasts a mere day simply because it can bluetooth to their phone. You are the exception sir.
Yes it's poor conclusions based on general data. Men are also much more likely to be forced into watching "chick flicks" to satisfy quality time quotas. This is extremely common and has to have some effect on this data. Women just aren't watching shows directed at men as much.
Welcome to the 1960s. The imbalances, as defined by changes in culture, have been identified and largely corrected. I wouldn't claim were at a perfect state of equality, but special treatment for groups of disadvantaged people is surely no longer required. At some point, everyone needs to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make their own destiny.
Slashdot Mirror
Human beings rely entirely on the natural order of the Earth to survive. Our technology is nowhere near a state where we can live without nature. Plus it could be argued that we have a moral obligation as the Earth's most advanced species to act as its steward and protector. However that doesn't mean we have to lie to populations to achieve this. It doesn't mean we have to feel guilty for driving cars, throwing out recyclables, and enjoying the benefits of industrialization. Industrialization gave us technology, which gives us the power to be responsible. We can live in harmony with nature without treating environmentalism like a religion.
You like to dismiss criticism of your username as meaningless, but it's not. It suggests you, like so many others, treat this company and its philosophy like a religion. This suspicion is compounded by the evidence of your post history, which shows a clear agenda: trolling this website to back up Apple wherever possible. It's literally all you do. So forgive me if I find it futile to argue with the Apple priesthood.
There's a lot wrong with your argument and I was about to write up something, until I saw who was posting it. Everyone above and below me just stop. This man/woman/shill can not be reasoned with. His username says it all.
Well they were protecting themselves. Specifically they were protecting the notion (that they've spent a lot of time and money crafting) that iPhones are the most secure mobile platform. It turns out that Apple encryption is breakable by Apple, at their leisure, in no small part due to the complexity of their system lulling people into using weak pincodes. They don't want people knowing this, or having this discussion. It's better to pretend it's about privacy, and put themselves in the position of David.
Positioning their refusal to cooperate as having anything to do with privacy interests is a corporate PR stunt and ignores the Fourth Amendment protections afforded by our Constitution.
This man put into perspective pretty much exactly what is happening. It's always the punch you don't see coming that gets you. Apple has been very successful marketing the "good guy" image, but the truth is obviously far from that. Anyone in the tech industry worth their salary could have told you this decades ago. It's nice to see other professionals coming to the light.
Why would Apple ever care about your privacy more than their profits? They probably just don't think it's going to be that big of a thing. I tend to agree. All this stuff kinda reminds me of VR 30 years ago. It's neat, but kinda gimmicky. It's all supposed to be in the 5-10 year future? Try 30-50, and even then, as the article points out, it's a big maybe.
I'm not familiar with the economic policies of Japan. Care to provide any examples?
Completely agree. Open platforms are important. Open protocols are important. Open standards are important. Open source end user applications are much less so, and insisting they have to be has traditionally caused major problems for GNU/Linux. Think of a computer like a city. In a city you want critical infrastructure like the roads, electricity, and water to be publicly controlled. You want to make sure companies don't try to patent the shape of buildings, or the name Bob. But after that you want the free market to run most of what people use day-to-day. An open source operating system, with standardized core level apis, protocols, and methodology works like this. There's no benefit to insisting all end user applications also be developed by the community. It just amounts to religious fundamentalism when you take it this far.
If your argument is to have the West work more like China, I think we can just agree to disagree right now.
The same system existed, it would have just been on a smaller level: the city, town, or state level. Maine couldn't have 30% tax if New York had 10. Maine had to figure out how to run its programs as efficiently. This is a good thing. Federal borders have historically been defined by geology, differences in religion, race, etc. Technology and social progress is removing these barriers. It is imperative that countries today operate with global competition in mind, just like it used to be within states, counties and cities. Any country that tries to operate autonomously in a global market will invariably be left behind. Even a super power like the USA... it's just a matter of time.
I said a highly regulated industry. Aircraft safety and maintenance is not an industry. Every time you read the word regulation, replace it with "prohibitive law", because that's what it is. There's no argument that prohibitive laws are sometimes required. Not being allowed to sell poison as food, or murder people for profit, or fly thousands of people 20,000 feet off the ground with no regards for safety, are good prohibitive laws. Why? Because there's no natural incentive based system in competition. Prohibitive laws should be used as the last possible solution to a problem - today they are so often used as the first.
Norway is not a highly regulated industry either, it's a country. Norway is used a lot as a shining example of socialism in action, but I don't think many people even know a thing about Norway. I've met people there who are extremely worried. The government increasingly owns everything. You're a Norwegian citizen and want to start an oil company? You literally can't. We saw a political mass shooting in Norway recently because of the real outrage in what's happening there. Not racial, not religious, but political. An industry in Norway that is highly regulated is the oil industry. That is an example of a highly regulated industry that has done quite well. The problem is it's unsustainable. Norway will be a very very different place when the oil dries up. Their welfare based economy can't function without it, and has nothing to fall back on. If they had exposed this system to the free market it's very probable the increased free market activity could have produced other competitive industries too back it up. Look at the United States for proof. They were the major oil producers before the 1970s, now they lead the tech industry. Had the U.S. followed the Norway model in the early 20th century, it might be a very different place today.
You're right about the fraudulent activities of these corporations, what you're wrong about is the solution. Your solution to fix the complex tax code, is to complicate it further with new regulations, and presumably new agencies to enforce them? A much simpler approach is to remove the incentive these companies have to do that. Simplify the tax code? I completely agree. While you're at it, make its rates competitive with the rest of the free world. Norway, for example, is 25%. A full 10% cheaper than the US.
If you're right, then every corporation will just keep their money where it is. So what's the bother? If the policy does nothing because no company wants to spend more money where they headquarter(a ridiculous notion), then why are you against the policy? The world operates like a market now. For a better or worse, this is the reality. All members of a market need to compete with each other. The simple fact is, the US isn't a very competitive place to store your money in the west, so no one does it.
That's not quite how it works. Forgetting for a moment that Ireland has its own budgets to worry about, no U.S.company can just find the lowest rate and decide they want to pay that. You first have to already be doing a significant amount of business in that country, then you have to set up shell companies, find clever ways to move profits, and ultimately employ high priced accounting teams to do all this. When your country pays higher corporate tax than virtually every country you do business in, then it becomes a no brainer to find ways to move profits to those other countries. If the US rate was even closer to something like England (20%) there'd be a lot less incentive to do this. Is England going to drop their rates after? Well they're going to have to adjust their budgets, analyse how it will affect their local markets, figure out if they'll cut social programs or raise taxes elsewhere - all difficult decisions. Welcome to capitalism. Competitive corporate tax rates incentivise governments to run efficiently. Setting your rates to something higher than everyone else around you (by a lot) and then imposing prohibitive laws to enforce them sounds pretty despotic to me. This is what you would expect from a monarchy or a dictatorship.
Trumps plan is actually better if you think about it deeper. While Hillary, Bernie, and Obama constantly scream out the taking point of getting corporations to play fair, have you ever heard a plan? Obama had 8 years. Was he just too busy having Steph Curry over for BBQ? He didn't do anything, and neither will Hillary or Bernie, because they can't. You can't force a company or individual into anything. And any new laws you create are only as good as their enforcement, which means new agencies and red tape. And finally, you can be damn sure that no matter what law you create, they'll just find a "loophole" in that too.
So trump wants to let them bring that money back with a one time no penalty, then lower tax rates to something competitive with neighbor countries to encourage companies to actually pay tax. That could mean, over night, billions of dollars into the U.S. economy and a massive new source of government revenue. The first rule of any economic theory: incentives work far better than prohibition.
How about simply lowering rates? Why pay 35% in the U.S. when you can pay 12.5% in Ireland, or 15% in Canada? Because some law tells you to? Who enforces it? And how expensive is that going to be to constantly maintain? Right now you're getting 0% from these companies. While 15 is lower than 35 it's certainly better than 0.
We always just need the right laws don't we? There's always some idea man suggesting he's got it all figured out: if we just add these couple laws, impose these few regulations, then everything will be fine. But it never is. Invariably regulations either don't completely address the problem, or they create new unanticipated problems. This results in the next generation of idea men dreaming up more regulations, rinse and repeat. Eventually you end up with a bureaucratic nightmare where the only people that can do business are large corporations that can afford to hire the lawyers that understand all the requirements. My favorite summation of the fallacy in this philosophy was by the late Milton Friedman: "name me one highly regulated industry you feel is running well". Go ahead, I'll wait. What we need in this case, and many others, is a return to relying on market mechanics. Corporate tax policy in the U.S. isnt working simply because the rate isn't competitive. Even Canada's rate is 20% lower.
The U.S. Corporate tax rate is something ridiculous like 35%. They can claim profits are in a country as close as Canada and it would only cost them 15%. You can't be this wildly out of balance in a global market and expect to function well. This is a fundamental aspect of free market capitalism. Actually, if the U.S. lowered the rate to even something like 17% I'm sure they'd generate more revenue, instead of less. A company the size of Google likely spends a great deal of money on clever accounting to avoid taxes. They wouldn't need to do it if there was little or no benefit.
It's the punch you don't see coming that gets you. If you're worried about the government, you'd be prudent to apply that double to private enterprise. They have their own unique incentives.
It's funny to me how selective people are with their privacy. Allow the government to have a physical spy network? Bad! Allow Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter to control, monitor, and exploit every respect of their lives?.... I hear the new iPhone comes out in September! I bet it's shiny!
You're not sure? Use your imagination.
So true.
*Plays the world's smallest violin* now get off your computer and do something. Quit waiting for the government to do it for you. If you really want it, you'll find no insurmountable obstacle in your way.
Most people aren't willing to trade a time piece that lasts several months for one that lasts a mere day simply because it can bluetooth to their phone. You are the exception sir.
Yes it's poor conclusions based on general data. Men are also much more likely to be forced into watching "chick flicks" to satisfy quality time quotas. This is extremely common and has to have some effect on this data. Women just aren't watching shows directed at men as much.
Welcome to the 1960s. The imbalances, as defined by changes in culture, have been identified and largely corrected. I wouldn't claim were at a perfect state of equality, but special treatment for groups of disadvantaged people is surely no longer required. At some point, everyone needs to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make their own destiny.