First of all, there is no such thing as "good and righteous" murder of civilians. And with nukes, you are ALWAYS murdering civilians. Along with everything else down the wind.
I think its quite plausible that someone could use nukes today and not be nuked in to the stone age in turn or end in eternal damnation.
Sorry, but you are wrong there.
There are quite a few countries and individuals out there who are not under direct control of one nuclear superpower but are an ally of another nuclear superpower. Use of nuclear weapons today would end in retaliation. If not against the primary aggressor, then against his allies. It would probably not lead to an all out nuclear war, but the first nuke WOULD be retaliated against, with equal or harsher response. And you don't need nukes to commit genocide. Poisons and diseases would do just fine.
Are you saying someone would have incinerated Israel if they had nuked Egypt or Syria, or would Israel using nukes be another one of your righteous and justified cases?
HAD Israel used the nukes, that would have meant that the USA had used them. Against the USSR. Yom Kippur War was just another tiny war where USA and USSR used other nations to fight for them.
Following that, the USSR would be handing nukes out like candies to every single enemy of the Israel who would come knocking. Draw your own conclusions from there.
If you quit giving them medical care, checks for their children, welfare, food stamps we would be better off. I am not saying that we make them starve. But how about we go back to big colorful fake money looking food stamps. That way there would be a bit of stigma attached. More incentive to get a fucking job.
YOU may imagine that making poor even poorer, less healthy and more stigmatized is a good thing. Which doesn't only make you A PRICK - it makes you an ignorant prick.
Look at Africa and their numbers. Poverty and harsh living environments mean MORE children per woman - not less. And since you think that those poorer than you are parasites, think for a while how much you've payed your computer, your mobile phone, your flat screen TV, your car, your house... Think for a moment how much are they worth "on the street", when desperate people start coming to your neighborhood.
Poverty breeds crime. It also breeds diseases. And when an epidemic of some "easily vaccinated for, but too expensive to waste on the poor" disease hits - your ass will feel it too, one way or the other. By "giving" to those who have less you're not buying yourself some cushy cloud up in heaven. You're saving your own ass down here in the mud.
Oh and BTW... "Colorful fake money looking"? If you can buy stuff with it, you can trade it for money. And when you and your kids are facing a choice of starving or taking the "colorful fake money", you don't really give a fuck about what some candy ass prick thinks about the stigma attached to its color.
I don't recall there being any backlash when the U.S. used nukes on Japan...
Are you really, REALLY comparing the USA's and Japan's positions in the WWII and the state of the world back in 1945 with anything current? Besides Japan being an island country and an aggressor in the region (meaning that most their neighbors were at best not celebrating in the streets when they got nuked), and a huge military machine, and allies with fucking Nazi Germany in their world conquest... There's this tiny little thing about there being a single-digit number of atomic bombs back then - all of them belonging to the U.S. of A.
So not only was the USA "the victorious good guys who've just defeated not one but TWO evil empires" - they also had the nukes. ALL of them. And I'm not even going to go into Marshal plan and all the other aid programs USA did back then. Seriously, what kind of global or local "backlash" would you expect in such a case?
No country in the world today is in either USA's or Japan's position from back then, nor is the world of today ANYTHING like the world of 1945. There are thousands of nukes laying around, and there are almost 3 times more people now, making the world a much smaller place.
First, because you can't store electricity in warehouses or tanks, not delivering at optimal capacity means losing money for the countries which would produce electricity. Producers economically depend on the consumers consuming, not the other way around.
Second, future consumers don't wait for the future producers to start building their production capacity - they go there and build them by themselves. Which means that the consumers are also the owners of the means of production - i.e. the producers. So, barring war or natural disasters completely wiping the production capacities - electricity will keep on flowing.
And should such production-incapacitating calamities occur, you can be pretty sure that those who are footing the bill for the creation of the means of production will also provide the necessary aid needed to keep the electricity flowing.
Beginning in February 2010, John started a new venture in the field of bacterial quorum sensing. His new company QuorumEx is headquartered in Belize and is working towards producing commercial all natural antibiotics based on anti-quorum sensing technology.[6]
Analysts at the Forensic Laboratory, and personnel from the Ministry of Health were taken to inspect the facility and samples of an alleged antibiotic apparently being manufactured at the Laboratory were also taken for analysis. The Ministry of Health has already confirmed that no licence has been granted to McAfee or any of his agents to manufacture antibiotics in Belize. Doing so without a licence is an offence under the Antibiotics Act.
Then, there are bits that seem a tad... not directly related to the alleged main issue of the police action:
Present on the premises at the time were John McAfee, his girlfriend who is a seventeen year old Belizean minor, five security guards. ...
Further investigation led into a query regarding the employment of the security guards. This revealed that only two of the four guards on the premises were licensed to act as security guards.
...
At the end of the search, three of the security guards were arrested and charged for "Providing Security Services without a License".
Also, the dog was not shot dead. It was "fatally wounded".
...the GSU says that three of the eleven dogs on the premises attacked and bit one of the officers on his right thigh. The same dog then attacked a B.D.F. soldier who responded by fatally wounded the dog.
The article is a followup to a recent article about Apple avoiding taxes. Microsoft being the topic of this one is just a case of "Well them there do it too!"
Regarding the flavor of taxes... If you are to browse through the comments on this story and the Apple story you will notice that it is not about the brand of taxes at all. The topic is polarized, as it is often case here at Slashdot, around two options - taxes evil and taxes good.
As for "a good accountant"... Sorry, but that (and similar) comments remind me of those times when I get dragged into religious arguments, and the other guy starts quoting dogma as proof. My point is that such actions (tax evasion) are immoral, be they legal or not. Look up my earlier post on that in Apple tax evasion thread (the long one) if you are interested in my further explanation why I find it to be so.
A Nevada C corporation costs about $475 a year including renewal fee, resident agent, PO box, and business license.
So, everyone everywhere in the USA should incorporate themselves and their family, register themselves as a business in Nevada and the playing field is level again?
I'm not sure that it would work QUITE like that, nor that the IRS would simply shrug their shoulders "We are powerless, alas!" and just let it slide. I mean... with all due respect, somehow I doubt that you're the first person who came up with that idea and yet it does not seem as if everyone is using it.
I'm guessing that it's cause they are all dirty commie pinko socialist tax-paying bastards.
College is for the unmotivated or those who have to be spoonfed their information.
Yeah, you're right.
Let's all hope all the medical staff you ever meet isn't self-taught. Or that building you live in isn't designed and made by a self-taught architects and builders. Or that your car, computer, mobile phone, blender, pace-maker etc. are not products someone who's self-taught banged together in their garage out of bubblegum and lint.
Payment for the use of local public resources - through taxation.
Corporations operating at high tax location A, having 99% of their workforce and assets at location A, using resources of the location A, but avoid paying dues and taxes at location A, paying them instead at low tax location B - that's borderline illegal AND morally corrupt.
The only reason it is not outright illegal is the fact that corporations can afford a different kind of "justice" than the ordinary, flesh and blood persons. Particularly those flesh and blood persons who have to work for a living.
And that is the source and reason for immorality of such an act. Assuring themselves preferential treatment based on possession of monetary and other resources, in an environment (legal) which exists solely for the reason of assuring equal treatment of all parties regarding their rights, obligations and grievances.
In short, they are exploiting the rules in a way which allows them to play a game within a game, unavailable to "ordinary" players - but whose score carries into the original game. And they are cheating while playing the game within the game.
No, the moral issue is the taxation. Your diatribe above presumes that a company's revenues belong to the state.
No, THAT is not the moral issue. Nor does my "diatribe" presume that the entire company's revenue belongs to the state - what you seem to be implying there. Also, sorry for the typos in the original post. It was almost 4 AM here, so my "immoral" came out as "amoral". Thrust naught the spell checkered at fore 'ey am.
Company (just like the state) exists first and foremost in order to provide a service. That is their REASON for existence. While the state exists solely for the reason of providing services to its CITIZENS, as it is an extension of those citizens who all have a right (and a duty) to take part in its work and in benefiting from that work and the said services - a company, be it a two-men operation or a corporation, has a different GOAL.
Note the difference there. State's reason for existence AND its goal are service to its citizens. Company's reason for existence is the ability to provide a service to its consumers, but its goal is making a profit.
Now, for a "human machine" like a state or a company to function it needs resources. Raw goods, money, time, people. All of that belongs to only one species on this planet - humans.
In case of the state, those humans are called citizens. They voluntarily join together, equally investing their trust (through voting) and their time/money through taxes in order for the state to exist so that it could provide services TO EVERYONE, far beyond the means and ability of every single one of those humans.
Paying taxes, just like voting, is not a burden or immoral. It is a duty and a privilege of functioning members of the society willing to contribute their part for the good of ALL. Now... If the state becomes immoral, contributing to such a state would by extension be immoral. BUT... citizens still have that other tool for taking a part in the workings of the state - voting. So, if you find the state going immoral on you - vote for it to change. Or roll up your sleeves and join public service. Or even break your contract with it, but then you're on your own and it still posses the mandate given to it by everyone else.
In case of a company, there is no such thing as citizens. Companies deal with CONSUMERS. People buying company's products and services. And no, shareholders are not "citizens" either. They are also consumers - only they are buying profit instead of products. And they don't have an equal share in the dealings of the company. They don't get to vote the way citizens do with the state. More shares, more influence/votes. Nor can they "join the service" of the company and be "elected" in order to change the course the company is taking if they find it amoral. Their only way of influence on a company is through money - that is the language the companies speak. Which is by definition amoral. Money has no morals. It's neutral.
But, as companies still exist in the real world, they are forced to use the resources of the state, which is to say resources of the PEOPLE making the state. Be it simply roads, protection by the army and police, legal framework, education etc. or more direct resources which belong to everyone - raw materials like ore, water, air etc. The only way for companies to pay for the use of those resources is through taxes.
And no, they can't build their own road and hire their own police/army. The land the road is built on belongs to ALL those future generations - i.e. the people. And private police/army is illegal and immoral in so many ways I don't know even where to start.
When a company chooses to break the contract it has with the society, by avoiding payment for the resources it uses - that's immoral. No question about it. It can't be on moral grounds - companies don't have morals. They run on money. Amoral. Company breaks a contract - it's because of greed. Which is immoral.
States, being extension of their citizens, can be both moral and immoral. Citizen breaking a contract with the state can have both moral and immoral reasons for doing so. Perks of being a human.
It used to be perfectly legal to buy and sell other human beings, yet we gave up that highly profitable practice on account of it being amoral.
Corporations operating at high tax location A, having 99% of their workforce and assets at location A, using resources of the location A, but avoid paying dues and taxes at location A, paying them instead at low tax location B - that's borderline illegal AND morally corrupt.
The only reason it is not outright illegal is the fact that corporations can afford a different kind of "justice" than the ordinary, flesh and blood persons. Particularly those flesh and blood persons who have to work for a living.
And that is the source and reason for amorality of such an act. Assuring themselves preferential treatment based on possession of monetary and other resources, in an environment (legal) which exists solely for the reason of assuring equal treatment of all parties regarding their rights, obligations and grievances.
In short, they are exploiting the rules in a way which allows them to play a game within a game, unavailable to "ordinary" players - but whose score carries into the original game. And they are cheating while playing the game within the game.
And all fiat currencies are, like Bitcoin, backed by nothing.
If the issuing country means nothing to you... I.e. United States of America. But if USA and its laws actually mean something to you - then it's backed up by Section 5103 of Title 31 of the United States Code.
Other countries have similar laws and acts by which they back the values of their currencies.
It's not the price of the platinum on current (or even future) market that is at issue here. It's the price of mining that same amount of platinum, strapping it onto a rocket and shooting it up into space at escape velocity. Getting stuff up there is what is expensive (ergo, profitable) at the moment.
Heck, they could be turning a hefty profit just by getting the step 2 working. A water/oxygen/nitrogen supply depot means that every single spaceflight capable nation could simply refuel its satellites whenever it needs to. Spy satellites which you can move around for cheap.
And that's just the orbital stuff. Those depots would come in really handy for anyone building a base on the Moon or manning a mission to Mars and back. No need to haul propellent - most of it is already up there. Get the rest from Mars.
Places that have water supply issues tend to have scheduled (or unscheduled) water supply interruptions. I.e. When the water in the reservoirs runs out, they shut off the water completely until the reservoirs refill. Maybe for couple of hours a day. Maybe longer.
So, as the pipes across the system/town are drained of water, water draining away leaves vacuum behind which then sucks the water from the tub back into the pipes. If you leave the hose in the tub and the faucet opened or leaky.
Where I live we have a similar problem with rural homes which used to have (or still do) their own wells providing water before the local infrastructure expanded to cover such locations. As the water shortages were quite common until recently (new water treatment plant, pumping in water from the local lake) people would connect their wells as backup.
So... Water shortage drains water from the aqueduct, vacuum sucks the untreated well water from the wells, bacteria starts growing in the pipes. Reservoirs are refilled, aqueduct water runs through the pipes, soon everyone's tap water smells "fishy". Add to that decades of patching up the aqueduct, with pipes in some places being almost a century old, and you end up with tap water being literally white with chlorine.
That is until you supply enough water for the system to be full at all times by the said water treatment plant, preventing pressure issues. Well... except at places where there are leaks. And back-flows due to "historical plumbing" somewhere in the pipes. As a bonus, now that half the city is getting its water from a modern water treatment facility and the other half from another clean natural source - there is no need to dump that much chlorine down the pipes anymore. After all, it was the complete shutdown of water supply that caused the sucking of the waters from the wells, right?
Except there are still underground leaks, pipes are still old, wells are still connected and the condition of filters in the water treatment plant is not exactly public knowledge. So, half the city still keeps buying bottled water for drinking and cooking while those in charge of the aqueduct keep claiming that the water is fine.
People only value infrastructure if they had to bleed themselves to build it.
Or bleeding. People can only fix things for which they have resources needed for fixing.
Like knowledge how to fix the things, tools needed to fix the things, materials needed to fix the things and the access to whole supply chains which will bring all those things needed TO the place where things that need fixing ARE.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, there is no such thing as "good and righteous" murder of civilians.
And with nukes, you are ALWAYS murdering civilians. Along with everything else down the wind.
I think its quite plausible that someone could use nukes today and not be nuked in to the stone age in turn or end in eternal damnation.
Sorry, but you are wrong there.
There are quite a few countries and individuals out there who are not under direct control of one nuclear superpower but are an ally of another nuclear superpower.
Use of nuclear weapons today would end in retaliation. If not against the primary aggressor, then against his allies.
It would probably not lead to an all out nuclear war, but the first nuke WOULD be retaliated against, with equal or harsher response.
And you don't need nukes to commit genocide. Poisons and diseases would do just fine.
Are you saying someone would have incinerated Israel if they had nuked Egypt or Syria, or would Israel using nukes be another one of your righteous and justified cases?
HAD Israel used the nukes, that would have meant that the USA had used them. Against the USSR.
Yom Kippur War was just another tiny war where USA and USSR used other nations to fight for them.
Following that, the USSR would be handing nukes out like candies to every single enemy of the Israel who would come knocking.
Draw your own conclusions from there.
Seems like we're trying to circumvent natural selection...
That went out the window with the invention of fire and pointy sticks.
Or do wolfs and bears still regularly eat members of your family?
If you quit giving them medical care, checks for their children, welfare, food stamps we would be better off.
I am not saying that we make them starve. But how about we go back to big colorful fake money looking food stamps.
That way there would be a bit of stigma attached. More incentive to get a fucking job.
YOU may imagine that making poor even poorer, less healthy and more stigmatized is a good thing.
Which doesn't only make you A PRICK - it makes you an ignorant prick.
Look at Africa and their numbers. Poverty and harsh living environments mean MORE children per woman - not less.
And since you think that those poorer than you are parasites, think for a while how much you've payed your computer, your mobile phone, your flat screen TV, your car, your house...
Think for a moment how much are they worth "on the street", when desperate people start coming to your neighborhood.
Poverty breeds crime. It also breeds diseases.
And when an epidemic of some "easily vaccinated for, but too expensive to waste on the poor" disease hits - your ass will feel it too, one way or the other.
By "giving" to those who have less you're not buying yourself some cushy cloud up in heaven.
You're saving your own ass down here in the mud.
Oh and BTW... "Colorful fake money looking"?
If you can buy stuff with it, you can trade it for money.
And when you and your kids are facing a choice of starving or taking the "colorful fake money", you don't really give a fuck about what some candy ass prick thinks about the stigma attached to its color.
You fucking asshole.
I don't recall there being any backlash when the U.S. used nukes on Japan...
Are you really, REALLY comparing the USA's and Japan's positions in the WWII and the state of the world back in 1945 with anything current?
Besides Japan being an island country and an aggressor in the region (meaning that most their neighbors were at best not celebrating in the streets when they got nuked), and a huge military machine, and allies with fucking Nazi Germany in their world conquest...
There's this tiny little thing about there being a single-digit number of atomic bombs back then - all of them belonging to the U.S. of A.
So not only was the USA "the victorious good guys who've just defeated not one but TWO evil empires" - they also had the nukes. ALL of them.
And I'm not even going to go into Marshal plan and all the other aid programs USA did back then.
Seriously, what kind of global or local "backlash" would you expect in such a case?
No country in the world today is in either USA's or Japan's position from back then, nor is the world of today ANYTHING like the world of 1945.
There are thousands of nukes laying around, and there are almost 3 times more people now, making the world a much smaller place.
Couple of things...
First, because you can't store electricity in warehouses or tanks, not delivering at optimal capacity means losing money for the countries which would produce electricity.
Producers economically depend on the consumers consuming, not the other way around.
Second, future consumers don't wait for the future producers to start building their production capacity - they go there and build them by themselves.
Which means that the consumers are also the owners of the means of production - i.e. the producers.
So, barring war or natural disasters completely wiping the production capacities - electricity will keep on flowing.
And should such production-incapacitating calamities occur, you can be pretty sure that those who are footing the bill for the creation of the means of production will also provide the necessary aid needed to keep the electricity flowing.
If it was fatally wounded, sounds like it was shot dead to me.
That (exactly) was my point.
From Wikipedia:
Beginning in February 2010, John started a new venture in the field of bacterial quorum sensing.
His new company QuorumEx is headquartered in Belize and is working towards producing commercial all natural antibiotics based on anti-quorum sensing technology.[6]
From the cited article:
http://edition.channel5belize.com/archives/69891
Analysts at the Forensic Laboratory, and personnel from the Ministry of Health were taken to inspect the facility and samples of an alleged antibiotic apparently being manufactured at the Laboratory were also taken for analysis.
The Ministry of Health has already confirmed that no licence has been granted to McAfee or any of his agents to manufacture antibiotics in Belize.
Doing so without a licence is an offence under the Antibiotics Act.
Then, there are bits that seem a tad... not directly related to the alleged main issue of the police action:
Present on the premises at the time were John McAfee, his girlfriend who is a seventeen year old Belizean minor, five security guards.
...
Further investigation led into a query regarding the employment of the security guards. This revealed that only two of the four guards on the premises were licensed to act as security guards.
...
At the end of the search, three of the security guards were arrested and charged for "Providing Security Services without a License".
Also, the dog was not shot dead. It was "fatally wounded".
The same dog then attacked a B.D.F. soldier who responded by fatally wounded the dog.
I suggest the use of silver bullets and burning the remains.
Alternatively, get him into a desert somewhere and then nuke the whole thing from orbit.
... when Daleks invade. Again.
The article is a followup to a recent article about Apple avoiding taxes.
Microsoft being the topic of this one is just a case of "Well them there do it too!"
Regarding the flavor of taxes...
If you are to browse through the comments on this story and the Apple story you will notice that it is not about the brand of taxes at all.
The topic is polarized, as it is often case here at Slashdot, around two options - taxes evil and taxes good.
As for "a good accountant"...
Sorry, but that (and similar) comments remind me of those times when I get dragged into religious arguments, and the other guy starts quoting dogma as proof.
My point is that such actions (tax evasion) are immoral, be they legal or not.
Look up my earlier post on that in Apple tax evasion thread (the long one) if you are interested in my further explanation why I find it to be so.
Oh, he had me at "by my own bootstraps".
A Nevada C corporation costs about $475 a year including renewal fee, resident agent, PO box, and business license.
So, everyone everywhere in the USA should incorporate themselves and their family, register themselves as a business in Nevada and the playing field is level again?
I'm not sure that it would work QUITE like that, nor that the IRS would simply shrug their shoulders "We are powerless, alas!" and just let it slide.
I mean... with all due respect, somehow I doubt that you're the first person who came up with that idea and yet it does not seem as if everyone is using it.
I'm guessing that it's cause they are all dirty commie pinko socialist tax-paying bastards.
...in taxes through its Nevada office too?
Oh my!
College is for the unmotivated or those who have to be spoonfed their information.
Yeah, you're right.
Let's all hope all the medical staff you ever meet isn't self-taught.
Or that building you live in isn't designed and made by a self-taught architects and builders.
Or that your car, computer, mobile phone, blender, pace-maker etc. are not products someone who's self-taught banged together in their garage out of bubblegum and lint.
Payment for the use of local public resources - through taxation.
Corporations operating at high tax location A, having 99% of their workforce and assets at location A, using resources of the location A, but avoid paying dues and taxes at location A, paying them instead at low tax location B - that's borderline illegal AND morally corrupt.
The only reason it is not outright illegal is the fact that corporations can afford a different kind of "justice" than the ordinary, flesh and blood persons.
Particularly those flesh and blood persons who have to work for a living.
And that is the source and reason for immorality of such an act.
Assuring themselves preferential treatment based on possession of monetary and other resources, in an environment (legal) which exists solely for the reason of assuring equal treatment of all parties regarding their rights, obligations and grievances.
In short, they are exploiting the rules in a way which allows them to play a game within a game, unavailable to "ordinary" players - but whose score carries into the original game.
And they are cheating while playing the game within the game.
I know... Sorry about that... It was 4 AM here.
I did catch those "flash and blood" typos I made though.
No, the moral issue is the taxation. Your diatribe above presumes that a company's revenues belong to the state.
No, THAT is not the moral issue.
Nor does my "diatribe" presume that the entire company's revenue belongs to the state - what you seem to be implying there.
Also, sorry for the typos in the original post. It was almost 4 AM here, so my "immoral" came out as "amoral".
Thrust naught the spell checkered at fore 'ey am.
Company (just like the state) exists first and foremost in order to provide a service. That is their REASON for existence.
While the state exists solely for the reason of providing services to its CITIZENS, as it is an extension of those citizens who all have a right (and a duty) to take part in its work and in benefiting from that work and the said services - a company, be it a two-men operation or a corporation, has a different GOAL.
Note the difference there. State's reason for existence AND its goal are service to its citizens.
Company's reason for existence is the ability to provide a service to its consumers, but its goal is making a profit.
Now, for a "human machine" like a state or a company to function it needs resources.
Raw goods, money, time, people. All of that belongs to only one species on this planet - humans.
In case of the state, those humans are called citizens.
They voluntarily join together, equally investing their trust (through voting) and their time/money through taxes in order for the state to exist so that it could provide services TO EVERYONE, far beyond the means and ability of every single one of those humans.
Paying taxes, just like voting, is not a burden or immoral.
It is a duty and a privilege of functioning members of the society willing to contribute their part for the good of ALL.
Now... If the state becomes immoral, contributing to such a state would by extension be immoral.
BUT... citizens still have that other tool for taking a part in the workings of the state - voting.
So, if you find the state going immoral on you - vote for it to change. Or roll up your sleeves and join public service.
Or even break your contract with it, but then you're on your own and it still posses the mandate given to it by everyone else.
In case of a company, there is no such thing as citizens.
Companies deal with CONSUMERS. People buying company's products and services.
And no, shareholders are not "citizens" either. They are also consumers - only they are buying profit instead of products.
And they don't have an equal share in the dealings of the company. They don't get to vote the way citizens do with the state. More shares, more influence/votes.
Nor can they "join the service" of the company and be "elected" in order to change the course the company is taking if they find it amoral.
Their only way of influence on a company is through money - that is the language the companies speak.
Which is by definition amoral. Money has no morals. It's neutral.
But, as companies still exist in the real world, they are forced to use the resources of the state, which is to say resources of the PEOPLE making the state.
Be it simply roads, protection by the army and police, legal framework, education etc. or more direct resources which belong to everyone - raw materials like ore, water, air etc.
The only way for companies to pay for the use of those resources is through taxes.
And no, they can't build their own road and hire their own police/army. The land the road is built on belongs to ALL those future generations - i.e. the people.
And private police/army is illegal and immoral in so many ways I don't know even where to start.
When a company chooses to break the contract it has with the society, by avoiding payment for the resources it uses - that's immoral.
No question about it. It can't be on moral grounds - companies don't have morals. They run on money. Amoral.
Company breaks a contract - it's because of greed. Which is immoral.
States, being extension of their citizens, can be both moral and immoral.
Citizen breaking a contract with the state can have both moral and immoral reasons for doing so.
Perks of being a human.
It used to be perfectly legal to buy and sell other human beings, yet we gave up that highly profitable practice on account of it being amoral.
Corporations operating at high tax location A, having 99% of their workforce and assets at location A, using resources of the location A, but avoid paying dues and taxes at location A, paying them instead at low tax location B - that's borderline illegal AND morally corrupt.
The only reason it is not outright illegal is the fact that corporations can afford a different kind of "justice" than the ordinary, flesh and blood persons.
Particularly those flesh and blood persons who have to work for a living.
And that is the source and reason for amorality of such an act.
Assuring themselves preferential treatment based on possession of monetary and other resources, in an environment (legal) which exists solely for the reason of assuring equal treatment of all parties regarding their rights, obligations and grievances.
In short, they are exploiting the rules in a way which allows them to play a game within a game, unavailable to "ordinary" players - but whose score carries into the original game.
And they are cheating while playing the game within the game.
In what universe could that possibly have a positive result for them?
...or should we form a committee to do it or something?
And all fiat currencies are, like Bitcoin, backed by nothing.
If the issuing country means nothing to you... I.e. United States of America.
But if USA and its laws actually mean something to you - then it's backed up by Section 5103 of Title 31 of the United States Code.
Other countries have similar laws and acts by which they back the values of their currencies.
It's not the price of the platinum on current (or even future) market that is at issue here.
It's the price of mining that same amount of platinum, strapping it onto a rocket and shooting it up into space at escape velocity.
Getting stuff up there is what is expensive (ergo, profitable) at the moment.
Heck, they could be turning a hefty profit just by getting the step 2 working.
A water/oxygen/nitrogen supply depot means that every single spaceflight capable nation could simply refuel its satellites whenever it needs to.
Spy satellites which you can move around for cheap.
And that's just the orbital stuff.
Those depots would come in really handy for anyone building a base on the Moon or manning a mission to Mars and back.
No need to haul propellent - most of it is already up there. Get the rest from Mars.
Oh, and a pony.
That's Africa. They get a monkey.
Places that have water supply issues tend to have scheduled (or unscheduled) water supply interruptions.
I.e. When the water in the reservoirs runs out, they shut off the water completely until the reservoirs refill.
Maybe for couple of hours a day. Maybe longer.
So, as the pipes across the system/town are drained of water, water draining away leaves vacuum behind which then sucks the water from the tub back into the pipes.
If you leave the hose in the tub and the faucet opened or leaky.
Where I live we have a similar problem with rural homes which used to have (or still do) their own wells providing water before the local infrastructure expanded to cover such locations.
As the water shortages were quite common until recently (new water treatment plant, pumping in water from the local lake) people would connect their wells as backup.
So... Water shortage drains water from the aqueduct, vacuum sucks the untreated well water from the wells, bacteria starts growing in the pipes.
Reservoirs are refilled, aqueduct water runs through the pipes, soon everyone's tap water smells "fishy".
Add to that decades of patching up the aqueduct, with pipes in some places being almost a century old, and you end up with tap water being literally white with chlorine.
That is until you supply enough water for the system to be full at all times by the said water treatment plant, preventing pressure issues.
Well... except at places where there are leaks. And back-flows due to "historical plumbing" somewhere in the pipes.
As a bonus, now that half the city is getting its water from a modern water treatment facility and the other half from another clean natural source - there is no need to dump that much chlorine down the pipes anymore.
After all, it was the complete shutdown of water supply that caused the sucking of the waters from the wells, right?
Except there are still underground leaks, pipes are still old, wells are still connected and the condition of filters in the water treatment plant is not exactly public knowledge.
So, half the city still keeps buying bottled water for drinking and cooking while those in charge of the aqueduct keep claiming that the water is fine.
Both of feathers and dots variety.
People only value infrastructure if they had to bleed themselves to build it.
Or bleeding.
People can only fix things for which they have resources needed for fixing.
Like knowledge how to fix the things, tools needed to fix the things, materials needed to fix the things and the access to whole supply chains which will bring all those things needed TO the place where things that need fixing ARE.