Doesn't that all depend upon how broadly or vaguely the law is worded? The laws against government-community networks can be worded to also illegalize individual-community networks. I think we've seen government test the waters on this already, with various state attempts to tax private networks. The threat is always out there... since governments and corporations partnered together find individual freedom to be completely incompatible with their plans for total economic domination.
What really gets me is how they think they can really stop us.
Yes, they can. Why does the state think they can stop you from shooting up some heroin (or stop you from looking at kiddie porn (or stop you from copying music)), in the privacy of your own home?
What are they going to do?
Detect wireless networks and prosecute. They can simply issue fines on the basis of a triangulated detection on your residence. They can then advance this concept by issuing blanket search warrants, which leads to police knocking on your door and confiscating equipment.
Bust down my door and take my WIFI router away?
That's unlikely to occur. It's overall better to simply fine you. They may also knock, and demonstrate that their detection equipment shows that your home is the problem, hence they have probable cause, so please open the door, Sir, or we'll have to force entry. Chances are, the scared little White boy (the probable target population for wireless crime) is going to open the door, and he's going to get fined, lose his equipment, and maybe be arrested.
Throw me in prison for building a network?
Yes. It's more likely, however, that they'll fine you. Fines are nonviolent, bring in revenue, and avoid all that nasty uncertainty of actual court action (in which a jury might actually decide you are not morally guilty of committing a crime).
The government just loves to illegalize the things that people tend to do for themselves to bring pleasure and capability. In America, this is trending sharply upward, so we must now as a class consider our positions as constant criminals. I look forward to the magic day when cops will just say "ah, screw it" and routinely ignore things... making it completely obvious that certain laws are illegitimate if they constantly make most of us criminals.
If a person can be jailed, then we can clearly see that their freedoms can be taken away. Hence, to "jail" a corporation, we should similarly take away their freedoms. After all, we have long had the precedents of "receivership" and other forms of managed bankruptcies; therefore, some variant could be used for the jailed corporation.
In other words, the corporation that breaks the law to the degree where jail seems necessary, should effectively be nationalized for a period. That should be a sufficient scare tactic to convince them to obey the law; after all, that's the philosophy of individual legal punishments, right?
So... are you really so lacking in enough imagination that you can't come up with these kinds of solution? If anything, you appear to be under the impression that We The People simply cannot apply controls to corporations. We can. And unless we want to continue sinkling into economic slavery, we should.
Funny, I recall Clancy's movie plot involving some species of generic European Nazi (a swastika symbol was used to introduce the main character) who managed to obtain an Isreali nuke via a forgotten broken-arrow incident. This shadowy group of seeming Nazis arranged to have this nuke go KAAA-booom in Baltimore to play on tensions between the USA and the CIS, which I assume would have led to the an outright nuclear exchange between the 2 nuclear superpowers (if it were not for the efforts of Ben Affleck, ta da!). The only Islamic link I saw in the movie was that the nuke was dug up by some Egyptian (?) commoners, which was soon bought off their hands by an agent of these seeming Nazis. Even the nuclear technicians and scientists in the CIS (who apparently received the old bomb and refurbished it for use in nuking Baltimore) weren't Islamic.
Really, if the movie's plot was about Islamic terrorists, please refresh my memory.
Such musings cross my cerebrum often enough. There is no larger force behind a criminal population than the legislature that illegalizes the things people do anyway (and often, have done traditionally).
If we pass enough laws, we make everyone into criminals.
I think that your proposal is the most rational approach (given the assumption that legislatures are unlikely to repeal a vector for taxation). I maintained in another posting in this topic, that if it makes sense to force a local retail outlet to collect sales tax, surely it makes sense for a business the size of Amazon to collect state taxes similarly and remit them to the proper states. An exemption or qualifying amount seems in order for the costs of compliance; for example, Amazon may not be required to remit a state's sales taxes if the yearly amount is $X or below. The same class of exemption could apply to entire businesses, to let small entrepreneurs flourish in the Internet sales environment without incurring the significant costs of collecting and remitting taxes for all 50 states (less those who have no sales tax).
As a matter of fact, I do think we need to withdraw from the pervasive technophilic (and corresponding energy-intensiveness) tendencies of our society, hence leading somewhat to a lower level of living. So, big clubs (if not bows and arrows) sound good to me at some functionality.
My ignorance about Europe's exact tax structures aside, surely there must be some way for corporations there to be taxed. For instance, here in America, a lot of companies have restructured so that the company taxes fall instead upon individuals as "pass through" income upon the company. Europe probably does something like that. I can hardly believe that the businesses in Europe somehow escape the level of taxation that America has experienced, given Europe's socialistic tendencies.
Considering that if YOU personally are accountable for something like this, and find that not only will you lose your job, lose your nuclear-security clearance forever, and then find yourself under some sort of heavy indictment for the loss... even for the loss of a couple of grams... well, let's just say you may have the urge to cover up the loss instead of reporting it.
If Billy Boy really found such things offensive, he wouldn't be doing the Chinese wong as much as he has. It's all about mo' money for Billy Boy, and the "Communist" label only matters when he doesn't get his way.
Communist Chinese = capitalist innovators
Communist Europeans = regressive throwbacks
Strangely enough, I don't believe you. If a corporation has the same rights, it should have the same responsibilities. That's so obviously not true that I leave it to you to demonstrate to your own curiosity.
Furthermore, if a corporation kills, it should be jailed for it. When's the last time that happened? Right, it never has.
Until the Corporate Death Penalty is explicitly enacted de facto or de jure, then I'll start believing in a corporation's "personhood".
It seems fair to judge that Amazon owes sales taxes on the basis of its size (i.e. it has at least a national presence) and that it also knows which state it's shipping to. I say this since we already demand that retail outlets collect and remit sales taxes where they operate. There's simply no sensible reason that mail- and Internet-ordering outlets have been, or are being, excluded from this requirement. As it is, the onus of the collection of such sales taxes has been put upon the consumer, with the predictable result that compliance has been pathetic at best. This taxing structure should never have been implemented; it is foolish.
Saying "should" is a large qualification. A guy who buys his cigs over a state line to get them cheaper is of NO concern to me. Sure, he's avoiding taxes. But I don't care. Good for him. We have much bigger fish to fry with stopping America slipping even deeper into outright Fascism... which chasing a private "cigarette tax cheat" will only hasten.
Get some perspective, Roscoe. Increasing enforcement from (say) 50% to 80% will require the imposition of actual martial law. And then you'll find enforcement will slip back to 50% as the black market will the TRUE reality behind your absurdly authoritarian enforcement mechanisms. Pervasive law enforcement is simply slavery. Pervasive law enforcement is a perversion of the Human condition. We should stop caring so much about law enforcement and start living instead.
As a short rebuttal, legislatures should not pass laws they are hardly able to enforce. The "use tax" is so little enforced (from being inherently unenforceable) that it simply creates criminals, and from that, it also develops in the population a widespread disrespect or contempt for the law.
Such taxes should be repealed, yes. But civil disobedience is a force to be reckoned with.
The exact time prediction is irrelevant, humor aside. The point is that the states WILL do it eventually since they are being squeezed by the federal government. As the fedgov turns into a military/crony zone, the flow of federal funds to the states will dry up (or have all manner of conditions attached). We are seeing this sort of reaction now. The states are turning around on their own taxpayers in order to make up for their mind-bogglingly overreaching spending. The 1990s never were an era of prosperity, but that didn't stop the states from becoming entrenched into a spending mindset. So, once any 1 flow of funds dried up, they were in trouble -- much like the average American worker with his enormous debts... if his income is ever threatened for even 1 week, he's in serious trouble.
Local taxes can only be raised so far. You should expect that the states will do everything else to compensate for the decline in federal funds and overall taxes from falling incomes (and let's not forget the still-rising indulgence in tax abatements for corporations). So, we will eventually see the states going absolutely wild with plans on going to the bottom of the barrel and beyond, in order to find all the tax and fee money that they are owed (and to create more tax and fee liabilities for us).
Choice vs. Consensus? If that's truly the design of the system -- and your analysis seems cogent -- then it's dueced odd that today, the divide between voting blocs is so deep. Choice is not being supported. Consensus is not being supported. Fraud and deceit seem to be favored items of support.
Of course, this matches my expectation that minorities within both major parties are actually in control of their vectors. Torn between Neo-Conservatives and Neo-Liberals, many citizens (including many of those who allege to be part of the voluntary voting blocs) are being assaulted with a decline in socio-ecnomic liberty.
Chinese investment in America is a percarious perch, upon which we should not be. America is wealthy enough to invest in itself and to not be "propped up" by investment by foreign powers that are allegedly at great odds with American culture. Right?
Across America, it is commmon to have local laws that similarly restrict the placement of sexual businesses like porn shops, dancing clubs and massage parlors.
Vote them out? Yes, I had a really impressive list of choices in the last Presidential election:
Pro-corporation, Anti-Labor, Pro-War Elitist #1
Pro-corporation, Anti-Labor, Pro-War Elitist #2
Various 3rd parties who had ZERO chance of winning even 1 electoral vote.
The list of choices reminds me of the "choices" that come up in EVERY American election, for EVERY office. Essentially every electoral region is under the firm control of the left-wing and right-wing forms of the American Corporate War Party.
It appears that like magic, Americans who want to vote out their elitist, warlike government tend to have only 1 other choice: a slightly different aspect of the SAME GOVERNMENT.
It is true that dissent in China will get you jailed, whereas in America it is actually hard to get jailed for dissent. But the reason for this aren't warm-and-fuzzy feelings of liberty... it's because in America, if voting could really change anything, we wouldn't have the vote in the first place.
China is simply making her authoritarianism obvious. America has had a long practice in hiding it, and smothering it under layers of ritual that serve only to lull people like you into (I assume) supporting it. While you chant slogans and mouth doctrine, your American government is busily planning on sending your son to die on some plateau in the Middle East... is also planning on sending your job to some Third World country... and is also planning on applying more protections for large pockets of wealth.
Once Americans can actually select a government other than the ones pre-selected for them by the wealthy, then I'll agree with your sentiment.
China is merely encouraging widespread contempt for her law amongst her citizens. And we're doing much the same thing here in America with other foci: intellectual property, labor practices, drug usage, etc.
China, like America, is blind to the wisdom of LEGALIZE AND TAX.
Reward by raising the H1B quota? That's a drop in the bucket. We reward China every second during the business day by buying all the stuff marked "Made in China". Long ago, we setup ourselves to constantly reward China by making sure many things we buy are marked "Made in China".
If you really, really want to stop rewarding China, stop buying Chinese goods, tell others to do the same, and start demanding (from retailers and representatives) that Chinese goods disappear from American store shelves. This is a hard road to travel, but our own mindless greed brought us here in the first place.
Why hard? We license plenty of stuff now. License and tax... and anyone else who crosses the line gets slapped down hard.
Imagine an America where to use encryption legally, you'll have to apply for an encryption license... along with a $2000 application fee, of course. Any bank will come up with that easily (and will probably make it a tax deduction, passing the real costs onto everyone else). Any company of 15 or more employees can come up with that fee with nearly equal ease.
Of course, I roundly predict that if we DO illegalize encryption, and then license that right back to the public, the damned government will not refrain from setting standards for the encryption... including the specification of registering all crypto keys with a government agency like the NSA. That's there the real fight over the issue will be.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't that all depend upon how broadly or vaguely the law is worded? The laws against government-community networks can be worded to also illegalize individual-community networks. I think we've seen government test the waters on this already, with various state attempts to tax private networks. The threat is always out there ... since governments and corporations partnered together find individual freedom to be completely incompatible with their plans for total economic domination.
What really gets me is how they think they can really stop us.
... making it completely obvious that certain laws are illegitimate if they constantly make most of us criminals.
Yes, they can. Why does the state think they can stop you from shooting up some heroin (or stop you from looking at kiddie porn (or stop you from copying music)), in the privacy of your own home?
What are they going to do?
Detect wireless networks and prosecute. They can simply issue fines on the basis of a triangulated detection on your residence. They can then advance this concept by issuing blanket search warrants, which leads to police knocking on your door and confiscating equipment.
Bust down my door and take my WIFI router away?
That's unlikely to occur. It's overall better to simply fine you. They may also knock, and demonstrate that their detection equipment shows that your home is the problem, hence they have probable cause, so please open the door, Sir, or we'll have to force entry. Chances are, the scared little White boy (the probable target population for wireless crime) is going to open the door, and he's going to get fined, lose his equipment, and maybe be arrested.
Throw me in prison for building a network?
Yes. It's more likely, however, that they'll fine you. Fines are nonviolent, bring in revenue, and avoid all that nasty uncertainty of actual court action (in which a jury might actually decide you are not morally guilty of committing a crime).
The government just loves to illegalize the things that people tend to do for themselves to bring pleasure and capability. In America, this is trending sharply upward, so we must now as a class consider our positions as constant criminals. I look forward to the magic day when cops will just say "ah, screw it" and routinely ignore things
If a person can be jailed, then we can clearly see that their freedoms can be taken away. Hence, to "jail" a corporation, we should similarly take away their freedoms. After all, we have long had the precedents of "receivership" and other forms of managed bankruptcies; therefore, some variant could be used for the jailed corporation.
... are you really so lacking in enough imagination that you can't come up with these kinds of solution? If anything, you appear to be under the impression that We The People simply cannot apply controls to corporations. We can. And unless we want to continue sinkling into economic slavery, we should.
In other words, the corporation that breaks the law to the degree where jail seems necessary, should effectively be nationalized for a period. That should be a sufficient scare tactic to convince them to obey the law; after all, that's the philosophy of individual legal punishments, right?
So
Funny, I recall Clancy's movie plot involving some species of generic European Nazi (a swastika symbol was used to introduce the main character) who managed to obtain an Isreali nuke via a forgotten broken-arrow incident. This shadowy group of seeming Nazis arranged to have this nuke go KAAA-booom in Baltimore to play on tensions between the USA and the CIS, which I assume would have led to the an outright nuclear exchange between the 2 nuclear superpowers (if it were not for the efforts of Ben Affleck, ta da!). The only Islamic link I saw in the movie was that the nuke was dug up by some Egyptian (?) commoners, which was soon bought off their hands by an agent of these seeming Nazis. Even the nuclear technicians and scientists in the CIS (who apparently received the old bomb and refurbished it for use in nuking Baltimore) weren't Islamic.
Really, if the movie's plot was about Islamic terrorists, please refresh my memory.
The evils of the West are no worse or better then the evils of the Rest.
GREAT. SIG. MATERIAL.
Such musings cross my cerebrum often enough. There is no larger force behind a criminal population than the legislature that illegalizes the things people do anyway (and often, have done traditionally).
If we pass enough laws, we make everyone into criminals.
The more law you have, the less justice.
I think that your proposal is the most rational approach (given the assumption that legislatures are unlikely to repeal a vector for taxation). I maintained in another posting in this topic, that if it makes sense to force a local retail outlet to collect sales tax, surely it makes sense for a business the size of Amazon to collect state taxes similarly and remit them to the proper states. An exemption or qualifying amount seems in order for the costs of compliance; for example, Amazon may not be required to remit a state's sales taxes if the yearly amount is $X or below. The same class of exemption could apply to entire businesses, to let small entrepreneurs flourish in the Internet sales environment without incurring the significant costs of collecting and remitting taxes for all 50 states (less those who have no sales tax).
As a matter of fact, I do think we need to withdraw from the pervasive technophilic (and corresponding energy-intensiveness) tendencies of our society, hence leading somewhat to a lower level of living. So, big clubs (if not bows and arrows) sound good to me at some functionality.
My ignorance about Europe's exact tax structures aside, surely there must be some way for corporations there to be taxed. For instance, here in America, a lot of companies have restructured so that the company taxes fall instead upon individuals as "pass through" income upon the company. Europe probably does something like that. I can hardly believe that the businesses in Europe somehow escape the level of taxation that America has experienced, given Europe's socialistic tendencies.
Considering that if YOU personally are accountable for something like this, and find that not only will you lose your job, lose your nuclear-security clearance forever, and then find yourself under some sort of heavy indictment for the loss ... even for the loss of a couple of grams ... well, let's just say you may have the urge to cover up the loss instead of reporting it.
If Billy Boy really found such things offensive, he wouldn't be doing the Chinese wong as much as he has. It's all about mo' money for Billy Boy, and the "Communist" label only matters when he doesn't get his way.
Communist Chinese = capitalist innovators
Communist Europeans = regressive throwbacks
Strangely enough, I don't believe you. If a corporation has the same rights, it should have the same responsibilities. That's so obviously not true that I leave it to you to demonstrate to your own curiosity.
Furthermore, if a corporation kills, it should be jailed for it. When's the last time that happened? Right, it never has.
Until the Corporate Death Penalty is explicitly enacted de facto or de jure, then I'll start believing in a corporation's "personhood".
It seems fair to judge that Amazon owes sales taxes on the basis of its size (i.e. it has at least a national presence) and that it also knows which state it's shipping to. I say this since we already demand that retail outlets collect and remit sales taxes where they operate. There's simply no sensible reason that mail- and Internet-ordering outlets have been, or are being, excluded from this requirement. As it is, the onus of the collection of such sales taxes has been put upon the consumer, with the predictable result that compliance has been pathetic at best. This taxing structure should never have been implemented; it is foolish.
Saying "should" is a large qualification. A guy who buys his cigs over a state line to get them cheaper is of NO concern to me. Sure, he's avoiding taxes. But I don't care. Good for him. We have much bigger fish to fry with stopping America slipping even deeper into outright Fascism ... which chasing a private "cigarette tax cheat" will only hasten.
Get some perspective, Roscoe. Increasing enforcement from (say) 50% to 80% will require the imposition of actual martial law. And then you'll find enforcement will slip back to 50% as the black market will the TRUE reality behind your absurdly authoritarian enforcement mechanisms. Pervasive law enforcement is simply slavery. Pervasive law enforcement is a perversion of the Human condition. We should stop caring so much about law enforcement and start living instead.
As a short rebuttal, legislatures should not pass laws they are hardly able to enforce. The "use tax" is so little enforced (from being inherently unenforceable) that it simply creates criminals, and from that, it also develops in the population a widespread disrespect or contempt for the law.
Such taxes should be repealed, yes. But civil disobedience is a force to be reckoned with.
The exact time prediction is irrelevant, humor aside. The point is that the states WILL do it eventually since they are being squeezed by the federal government. As the fedgov turns into a military/crony zone, the flow of federal funds to the states will dry up (or have all manner of conditions attached). We are seeing this sort of reaction now. The states are turning around on their own taxpayers in order to make up for their mind-bogglingly overreaching spending. The 1990s never were an era of prosperity, but that didn't stop the states from becoming entrenched into a spending mindset. So, once any 1 flow of funds dried up, they were in trouble -- much like the average American worker with his enormous debts ... if his income is ever threatened for even 1 week, he's in serious trouble.
Local taxes can only be raised so far. You should expect that the states will do everything else to compensate for the decline in federal funds and overall taxes from falling incomes (and let's not forget the still-rising indulgence in tax abatements for corporations). So, we will eventually see the states going absolutely wild with plans on going to the bottom of the barrel and beyond, in order to find all the tax and fee money that they are owed (and to create more tax and fee liabilities for us).
Choice vs. Consensus? If that's truly the design of the system -- and your analysis seems cogent -- then it's dueced odd that today, the divide between voting blocs is so deep. Choice is not being supported. Consensus is not being supported. Fraud and deceit seem to be favored items of support.
Of course, this matches my expectation that minorities within both major parties are actually in control of their vectors. Torn between Neo-Conservatives and Neo-Liberals, many citizens (including many of those who allege to be part of the voluntary voting blocs) are being assaulted with a decline in socio-ecnomic liberty.
Chinese investment in America is a percarious perch, upon which we should not be. America is wealthy enough to invest in itself and to not be "propped up" by investment by foreign powers that are allegedly at great odds with American culture. Right?
SHHHH!!
For crissakes, man, it's a secret!
Across America, it is commmon to have local laws that similarly restrict the placement of sexual businesses like porn shops, dancing clubs and massage parlors.
- Pro-corporation, Anti-Labor, Pro-War Elitist #1
- Pro-corporation, Anti-Labor, Pro-War Elitist #2
- Various 3rd parties who had ZERO chance of winning even 1 electoral vote.
The list of choices reminds me of the "choices" that come up in EVERY American election, for EVERY office. Essentially every electoral region is under the firm control of the left-wing and right-wing forms of the American Corporate War Party.It appears that like magic, Americans who want to vote out their elitist, warlike government tend to have only 1 other choice: a slightly different aspect of the SAME GOVERNMENT.
It is true that dissent in China will get you jailed, whereas in America it is actually hard to get jailed for dissent. But the reason for this aren't warm-and-fuzzy feelings of liberty
China is simply making her authoritarianism obvious. America has had a long practice in hiding it, and smothering it under layers of ritual that serve only to lull people like you into (I assume) supporting it. While you chant slogans and mouth doctrine, your American government is busily planning on sending your son to die on some plateau in the Middle East
Once Americans can actually select a government other than the ones pre-selected for them by the wealthy, then I'll agree with your sentiment.
China is merely encouraging widespread contempt for her law amongst her citizens. And we're doing much the same thing here in America with other foci: intellectual property, labor practices, drug usage, etc.
China, like America, is blind to the wisdom of LEGALIZE AND TAX.
Reward by raising the H1B quota? That's a drop in the bucket. We reward China every second during the business day by buying all the stuff marked "Made in China". Long ago, we setup ourselves to constantly reward China by making sure many things we buy are marked "Made in China".
If you really, really want to stop rewarding China, stop buying Chinese goods, tell others to do the same, and start demanding (from retailers and representatives) that Chinese goods disappear from American store shelves. This is a hard road to travel, but our own mindless greed brought us here in the first place.
Why hard? We license plenty of stuff now. License and tax ... and anyone else who crosses the line gets slapped down hard.
... along with a $2000 application fee, of course. Any bank will come up with that easily (and will probably make it a tax deduction, passing the real costs onto everyone else). Any company of 15 or more employees can come up with that fee with nearly equal ease.
... including the specification of registering all crypto keys with a government agency like the NSA. That's there the real fight over the issue will be.
Imagine an America where to use encryption legally, you'll have to apply for an encryption license
Of course, I roundly predict that if we DO illegalize encryption, and then license that right back to the public, the damned government will not refrain from setting standards for the encryption
If a corporation attempts to patent much the same thing, it will be granted.