So the issue isn't the company acting completely legally and even ethically (given the intent of corporations to maximize profits for their owners). It's countries offering taxation terms and rates that other countries (typically larger, more powerful countries at that) cannot or do not want to match. So rather than adapt to their more nimble competitors, the big countries will penalize the corporations.
Yes and no. First up, using a low rate to get business you wouldn't otherwise have isn't "nimble", it's opportunistic, and pretty short-sighted. Look at how the banks messed themselves up by constantly competing on interest rates until they reached the point where practically none of them could sustain their business without massive cash injections. When people talk about a "race to the bottom", that's exactly what the banks did, and if there had been no bail out, 90% of the world's banks would no longer exist. Now imagine 90% of the world's countries going bust. Not pretty.
Now, back to that word "nimble". Some countries are so small (eg Luxembourg) or so isolated in terms of transport (eg Switzerland) that they actually have no horse in the race when it comes to large-scale goods businesses -- people will not move to a tiny landmass or the middle of Europe's most mountainous region to store and transport metric gigatons of consumer tat or branded coffee beans -- so they have nothing to lose from kicking the bottom out of the market. Luxembourg and Switzerland don't actually do most of the work for Amazon or Starbucks. How does "not actually doing the work" equate to being "nimble"?
You mean apart from the fact that they're independently governed?
If they're independent, why are they a "dependency"? I am against this halfway-house status.
They get protected from an aggressive neighbour
The Argentinian case for ownership is a very weak one, and all its credibility derives from the idea that crown dependencies are little more than colonies, and that decolonisation is a justifiable goal. An independent Falkland Islands state would completely torpedo that claim. Also, calling Argentina an "aggressive neighbour" is unfair. Yes, it was an Argentinian government that started the war, but it was a military dictatorship at the time. It was a brutal dictatorship that "disappeared" a lot of its own citizens to inspire terror in its own populace. More Argentinian citizens were killed by the junta than died in total on both sides of the war. You are placing the blame for atrocities on the victims, rather than the perpetrators.
a useful refuelling point on the way to our Antarctic research areas
I'm pretty certain an independent F.I. would be perfectly happy to service visiting ships from the UK, among other countries, as part of the market economy. If they cannot compete with ports on the South American mainland, then this would imply that they are uneconomic, and that we're overpaying, thus the arrangement cannot be mutually beneficial.
Perhaps what I'm really proposing is the privatisation of the Falklands.
My point isn't about the technical semantics of the term, but about the psychological side-effects of it. "Wealth creation" can and does serve as a way of justifying being rich as a virtue.
As for the rest of your post, it was just a mess of confusion of various completely irrelevant issues so I'm not even going to waste my time other than to point out that you too are demonstrating blatant hypocrisy by supporting the Palestinian cause whilst suggesting Falkland islanders should face summary eviction, removal, and destruction of their homes. What the fuck do you think that sounds an awful lot like exactly? You don't think there's hypocrisy in the view, because you also apparently share and argue the exact same hypocritical view, so no shit, well done, you've shown that like most hypocrites you don't recognise your own hypocrisy either.
No, I didn't say that they should be evicted, just that they wouldn't be the only ones in British territory that had been evicted. British citizens are forcibly evicted all the time for public infrastructure and private development, so there's no reason that this particular group of people should be exempt.
Now, if you look at my final paragraph, you'll see that I am not in favour of just kicking them out. I am perfectly happy for them to be a truly independent country. That is the choice I would give them -- UK or independence.
They're all copying "meat-space" firms. Just the difference is that there's no physical product so they can export an even bigger share of their profits.
Unfortunately, they also have a nutcase terrorist militant wing - this gets them listed as a terrorist organisation and no amount of humanitarian work by the majority non-terrorist parts of Hamas will ever get them off that list.
Yeah isn't it so unfair that if you go round murdering people, then everyone will forget all the good you do too.
I think you've managed to flip his argument right upside down. His point wasn't that we should turn a blind eye to Hamas's militant activities due to their humanitarian ones -- it was that we (quite rightly) don't, and that we should apply the same standard to organisations that support financial crime and stop using their legitimate activities as an excuse to turn a blind eye. If a foreign company actively advises its clients on how to break laws (the allegations against Mossack Fonseca are not just about technically-legal tax avoidance, but also about conspiring to engage in illegal tax evasion) then people shouldn't be allowed to do business with them -- funding international organised crime, and all that.
Whereas proper economic theory all revolves around creators of value. It's a far more interesting term, because you can be a value creator without making a penny in profit. "Wealth creation" is only apparent when someone can point to a stupidly high number somewhere -- how can there be "wealth" if no-one is rich? Thus being rich is painted as a virtue in and of itself.
Punish the wealth creators, and they'll stop creating wealth.
--
roman_mir
Oh yes, I can just picture it now. "What?!? I'm only going to get 3 gazillion megabucks? But I wanted 5 gazillion megabucks. Sod it all. I'm declaring insolvency!"
The fact they're crown dependencies should be neither here nor there, we should treat them and their people with the respect that we treat any independent nation.
They're either British or they're not. If they're British, we're responsible for them, and should intervene (as happened for the abolition of the death penalty). If they're not British, we should can the whole Crown Dependency malarky and let them be truly independent nations.
As for Les Îles Falkland (in the original French), I don't see Corbyn's statement as hypocritical really. It is one of self-determination. The Falkland islanders have chosen by referendum to subject themselves to British rule -- self-determination. The British authorities have always held the right to remove people from their homes via compulsory purchase orders. The Heygate flats in Elephant and Castle, for example, were subject to compulsory purchase for commercial land development, displacing 1000 people in a single move -- that's a third of the population of the Falkland Islands. Figures are very difficult to come by, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if UK councils moved the equivalent of more than the entire Falkland population every year under CPOs.
The Falkland Islands are a massive sinkhole for public money, and if we applied the same standards to Falkland Islanders as we did to people on housing benefit, we'd cry "austerity" and send an aircraft carrier to transport them to new homes in the UK with no spare bedrooms.
The case for retaining the Falklands, on the other hand, is little more than a matter of pride and posturing. We do not, and never will, get any material gain from retaining control over them. So I say we cut them loose. Give the islanders the choice between forming an independent nation or relocating to the UK. Self-determination, and certainly not incompatible with the view that the people of Palestine have a right to self-determination in their own land.
Casino and hookers? Still better than nothing (providing they are legal in that country)
It's even better when they're illegal. Vice scandals sell newspapers. People tend to buy sweets and fizzy drinks when they're in the newsagent. Thus casinos and hookers stimulate a vibrant local economy.:-)
Corporations earning money and paying other countries for the services and infrastructure that THOSE countries provide at lower prices - that is, like, SO unfair! You may say that "taxes are theft" as a general attitude is extreme, but this particular tax initiative is most definitely theft and nothing more.
May I direct your attention to Starbucks? Starbucks have traditionally paid practically nothing in taxes in any country in the EU. They achieved this by putting all the profit onto their beans -- all Starbucks Whatevercountryorother LLC/Ltd/GmBH subsidiaries have to buy official Starbucks coffee, which is a 100% closed market. Starbucks coffee for Europe is sold via Switzerland, but the coffee never even enters the country. Starbucks' operation in Switzerland is just an office that subcontracts most of the work out. The actual operations of the company are not built on Swiss services or infrastructure.
Or how about Amazon? For most of Europe, we buy our goods from Amazon's Luxembourg operation, and they subcontract "fulfilment" to a local Amazon subsidiary who then ship it out. The goods are never in the physical possession of the Luxembourg company, and never ever visit Luxembourg. I could order a product that was designed and made entirely in Scotland from Amazon, have it delivered to me here in Scotland from an Amazon UK site in Scotland; the item would never have left Scotland at all, and yet I've allegedly bought it from a Luxembourg-based company. Again, the services and infrastructure that the business relies on are not merely based in Luxembourg -- the majority of it is not. And yet the UK tax evaporates.
Part of the point of laws like this is to level the playing field -- small specialist webshops are constantly being crushed by the likes of Amazon. Not only because of Amazon's natural economies of scale, but because of the manufactured economy of profit exporting.
Lack of taxes is lack of theft, but the converse is not true.
Theft is a crime. Crime can only exist if there is a legal system. There cannot be a legal system without a public body. There cannot be a public body without public infrastructure. There cannot be a public infrastructure without public money. There cannot be public money without public income. The catchall term for public income is "tax". Therefore there can be no theft without tax.
(Strictly speaking, what I have said is not true. Fines and penalty charges are not considered "tax", but a society which generates any large portion of its public income from fines is not one I would like to be part of. That very quickly leads to an explosion in "crimes" -- see civil forfeiture in the US for example.)
Random projectors purchased in recent years typically have HDMI as well as VGA. The long lifespan of pre-HDMI projectors is all about the cost of replacement. An RJ45 to whatever adaptor will cost pennies in bulk.
At some point the standard-issue laptop will change, and then you've got a broken hotdesk environment. Lots of companies will invest in a complete tech refresh in order to implement hotdesking, but won't follow it up with regular complete refreshes over the whole estate.
The cheap-ass breaking tabs is from cheap ass "unbranded" RJ45 ends. Branded RJ45 connectors never have these issue. And if the tab doesnt have a boot on it the only way to break the tab (on branded connectors ) is to strain it by bending it all the way to the back several times.
Was it goblins who bent my retainers back several times when I wasn't looking? And sorry if my employer chose to skimp on what are considered consumables.
What's all this "you" stuff? Most of us don't get a say in how our employers implement policy. And when that policy means moving all the AD domain controllers offsite, desktop hotdesking is impossible (imagine 50 to 100 people downloading their roaming profiles afresh over a shared link every morning). There are good reasons for making the ethernet port more swap-friendly, and if the only justification you have against it is that people who set up their IT estates differently from You are just plain wrong, well....
If the standard is widely adopted, you would expect most workplaces and high-end hotels to have cables and/or adaptors available. A change like this could become ubiquitous in 2-3 years.
Business class, dedicated ports. All is fine until either A) the manufacturer obsoletes the current range or B) accounting realises that they can get another brand for a shade cheaper, and suddenly you find yourself turning up at desks with the wrong type of dock. The outcome tends to be horrible breaches of ergonomics policy, with everyone hunching over laptops full-time (technically illegal in the UK).
I can't imagine trying to run a full office of hotdeskers on wifi, particularly in the IT space where you've got people pulling GIT repositories while others stream conference talks and yet others are syncing the asset database to work offline.
Please, for Pete's sake, please dont muck with ethernet or do it exactly one more time at most. Its sickening to think of the billions of miles of CAT5e and CAT6, even some CAT3, that would be obsoleted if the 8P8C plug was EVER changed.
No-one's talking about mucking about with "ethernet", just replacing the RJ45 connector with something specifically targeted at the portable device market. RJ45 connectors are fragile, and we all have several "spares" buried away somewhere because the retainer tab has snapped off at one end or the other.
Nobody's talking about changing the wiring or the standard, as far as I can see. What people are discussing is a new standard for connectors at the end of the cable. This would not obsolete any existing equipment, as the RJ45 connector is perfect in data centre installations etc. The new standard would be targeted at portable end-user devices, things that the RJ45 connector was never designed to cope with anyway.
But pretty crappy when you're running an office of hotdeskers, and it's also a potentially major security hole. RJ45 was designed with fixed installations in mind -- it wasn't intended for repeated unpluggings. There has been a pretty solid need for an alternative ethernet connector for a decade or so.
Docking stations become impractical when you're hotdesking as a rule, which brings us back to fragile RJ45 connectors and laptop ethernet ports, hence the need for a connector that is designed for repeated plugging and unplugging, rather than sitting in a fixed unit.
Slashdot Mirror
So the issue isn't the company acting completely legally and even ethically (given the intent of corporations to maximize profits for their owners). It's countries offering taxation terms and rates that other countries (typically larger, more powerful countries at that) cannot or do not want to match. So rather than adapt to their more nimble competitors, the big countries will penalize the corporations.
Yes and no. First up, using a low rate to get business you wouldn't otherwise have isn't "nimble", it's opportunistic, and pretty short-sighted. Look at how the banks messed themselves up by constantly competing on interest rates until they reached the point where practically none of them could sustain their business without massive cash injections. When people talk about a "race to the bottom", that's exactly what the banks did, and if there had been no bail out, 90% of the world's banks would no longer exist. Now imagine 90% of the world's countries going bust. Not pretty.
Now, back to that word "nimble". Some countries are so small (eg Luxembourg) or so isolated in terms of transport (eg Switzerland) that they actually have no horse in the race when it comes to large-scale goods businesses -- people will not move to a tiny landmass or the middle of Europe's most mountainous region to store and transport metric gigatons of consumer tat or branded coffee beans -- so they have nothing to lose from kicking the bottom out of the market. Luxembourg and Switzerland don't actually do most of the work for Amazon or Starbucks. How does "not actually doing the work" equate to being "nimble"?
In fact, the Falklands War was one of the main triggers for the Argentinian people to finally kick out the junta and restore democracy.
You mean apart from the fact that they're independently governed?
If they're independent, why are they a "dependency"? I am against this halfway-house status.
They get protected from an aggressive neighbour
The Argentinian case for ownership is a very weak one, and all its credibility derives from the idea that crown dependencies are little more than colonies, and that decolonisation is a justifiable goal. An independent Falkland Islands state would completely torpedo that claim. Also, calling Argentina an "aggressive neighbour" is unfair. Yes, it was an Argentinian government that started the war, but it was a military dictatorship at the time. It was a brutal dictatorship that "disappeared" a lot of its own citizens to inspire terror in its own populace. More Argentinian citizens were killed by the junta than died in total on both sides of the war. You are placing the blame for atrocities on the victims, rather than the perpetrators.
a useful refuelling point on the way to our Antarctic research areas
I'm pretty certain an independent F.I. would be perfectly happy to service visiting ships from the UK, among other countries, as part of the market economy. If they cannot compete with ports on the South American mainland, then this would imply that they are uneconomic, and that we're overpaying, thus the arrangement cannot be mutually beneficial.
Perhaps what I'm really proposing is the privatisation of the Falklands.
My point isn't about the technical semantics of the term, but about the psychological side-effects of it. "Wealth creation" can and does serve as a way of justifying being rich as a virtue.
As for the rest of your post, it was just a mess of confusion of various completely irrelevant issues so I'm not even going to waste my time other than to point out that you too are demonstrating blatant hypocrisy by supporting the Palestinian cause whilst suggesting Falkland islanders should face summary eviction, removal, and destruction of their homes. What the fuck do you think that sounds an awful lot like exactly? You don't think there's hypocrisy in the view, because you also apparently share and argue the exact same hypocritical view, so no shit, well done, you've shown that like most hypocrites you don't recognise your own hypocrisy either.
No, I didn't say that they should be evicted, just that they wouldn't be the only ones in British territory that had been evicted. British citizens are forcibly evicted all the time for public infrastructure and private development, so there's no reason that this particular group of people should be exempt.
Now, if you look at my final paragraph, you'll see that I am not in favour of just kicking them out. I am perfectly happy for them to be a truly independent country. That is the choice I would give them -- UK or independence.
They're all copying "meat-space" firms. Just the difference is that there's no physical product so they can export an even bigger share of their profits.
Unfortunately, they also have a nutcase terrorist militant wing - this gets them listed as a terrorist organisation and no amount of humanitarian work by the majority non-terrorist parts of Hamas will ever get them off that list.
Yeah isn't it so unfair that if you go round murdering people, then everyone will forget all the good you do too.
I think you've managed to flip his argument right upside down. His point wasn't that we should turn a blind eye to Hamas's militant activities due to their humanitarian ones -- it was that we (quite rightly) don't, and that we should apply the same standard to organisations that support financial crime and stop using their legitimate activities as an excuse to turn a blind eye. If a foreign company actively advises its clients on how to break laws (the allegations against Mossack Fonseca are not just about technically-legal tax avoidance, but also about conspiring to engage in illegal tax evasion) then people shouldn't be allowed to do business with them -- funding international organised crime, and all that.
Whereas proper economic theory all revolves around creators of value. It's a far more interesting term, because you can be a value creator without making a penny in profit. "Wealth creation" is only apparent when someone can point to a stupidly high number somewhere -- how can there be "wealth" if no-one is rich? Thus being rich is painted as a virtue in and of itself.
Punish the wealth creators, and they'll stop creating wealth. -- roman_mir
Oh yes, I can just picture it now. "What?!? I'm only going to get 3 gazillion megabucks? But I wanted 5 gazillion megabucks. Sod it all. I'm declaring insolvency!"
The fact they're crown dependencies should be neither here nor there, we should treat them and their people with the respect that we treat any independent nation.
They're either British or they're not. If they're British, we're responsible for them, and should intervene (as happened for the abolition of the death penalty). If they're not British, we should can the whole Crown Dependency malarky and let them be truly independent nations.
As for Les Îles Falkland (in the original French), I don't see Corbyn's statement as hypocritical really. It is one of self-determination. The Falkland islanders have chosen by referendum to subject themselves to British rule -- self-determination. The British authorities have always held the right to remove people from their homes via compulsory purchase orders. The Heygate flats in Elephant and Castle, for example, were subject to compulsory purchase for commercial land development, displacing 1000 people in a single move -- that's a third of the population of the Falkland Islands. Figures are very difficult to come by, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if UK councils moved the equivalent of more than the entire Falkland population every year under CPOs.
The Falkland Islands are a massive sinkhole for public money, and if we applied the same standards to Falkland Islanders as we did to people on housing benefit, we'd cry "austerity" and send an aircraft carrier to transport them to new homes in the UK with no spare bedrooms.
The case for retaining the Falklands, on the other hand, is little more than a matter of pride and posturing. We do not, and never will, get any material gain from retaining control over them. So I say we cut them loose. Give the islanders the choice between forming an independent nation or relocating to the UK. Self-determination, and certainly not incompatible with the view that the people of Palestine have a right to self-determination in their own land.
Casino and hookers? Still better than nothing (providing they are legal in that country)
It's even better when they're illegal. Vice scandals sell newspapers. People tend to buy sweets and fizzy drinks when they're in the newsagent. Thus casinos and hookers stimulate a vibrant local economy. :-)
Corporations earning money and paying other countries for the services and infrastructure that THOSE countries provide at lower prices - that is, like, SO unfair! You may say that "taxes are theft" as a general attitude is extreme, but this particular tax initiative is most definitely theft and nothing more.
May I direct your attention to Starbucks? Starbucks have traditionally paid practically nothing in taxes in any country in the EU. They achieved this by putting all the profit onto their beans -- all Starbucks Whatevercountryorother LLC/Ltd/GmBH subsidiaries have to buy official Starbucks coffee, which is a 100% closed market. Starbucks coffee for Europe is sold via Switzerland, but the coffee never even enters the country. Starbucks' operation in Switzerland is just an office that subcontracts most of the work out. The actual operations of the company are not built on Swiss services or infrastructure.
Or how about Amazon? For most of Europe, we buy our goods from Amazon's Luxembourg operation, and they subcontract "fulfilment" to a local Amazon subsidiary who then ship it out. The goods are never in the physical possession of the Luxembourg company, and never ever visit Luxembourg. I could order a product that was designed and made entirely in Scotland from Amazon, have it delivered to me here in Scotland from an Amazon UK site in Scotland; the item would never have left Scotland at all, and yet I've allegedly bought it from a Luxembourg-based company. Again, the services and infrastructure that the business relies on are not merely based in Luxembourg -- the majority of it is not. And yet the UK tax evaporates.
Part of the point of laws like this is to level the playing field -- small specialist webshops are constantly being crushed by the likes of Amazon. Not only because of Amazon's natural economies of scale, but because of the manufactured economy of profit exporting.
Taxes are theft.
Lack of taxes is lack of theft, but the converse is not true.
Theft is a crime. Crime can only exist if there is a legal system. There cannot be a legal system without a public body. There cannot be a public body without public infrastructure. There cannot be a public infrastructure without public money. There cannot be public money without public income. The catchall term for public income is "tax". Therefore there can be no theft without tax.
(Strictly speaking, what I have said is not true. Fines and penalty charges are not considered "tax", but a society which generates any large portion of its public income from fines is not one I would like to be part of. That very quickly leads to an explosion in "crimes" -- see civil forfeiture in the US for example.)
Random projectors purchased in recent years typically have HDMI as well as VGA. The long lifespan of pre-HDMI projectors is all about the cost of replacement. An RJ45 to whatever adaptor will cost pennies in bulk.
At some point the standard-issue laptop will change, and then you've got a broken hotdesk environment. Lots of companies will invest in a complete tech refresh in order to implement hotdesking, but won't follow it up with regular complete refreshes over the whole estate.
The cheap-ass breaking tabs is from cheap ass "unbranded" RJ45 ends. Branded RJ45 connectors never have these issue. And if the tab doesnt have a boot on it the only way to break the tab (on branded connectors ) is to strain it by bending it all the way to the back several times.
Was it goblins who bent my retainers back several times when I wasn't looking? And sorry if my employer chose to skimp on what are considered consumables.
What's all this "you" stuff? Most of us don't get a say in how our employers implement policy. And when that policy means moving all the AD domain controllers offsite, desktop hotdesking is impossible (imagine 50 to 100 people downloading their roaming profiles afresh over a shared link every morning). There are good reasons for making the ethernet port more swap-friendly, and if the only justification you have against it is that people who set up their IT estates differently from You are just plain wrong, well....
If the standard is widely adopted, you would expect most workplaces and high-end hotels to have cables and/or adaptors available. A change like this could become ubiquitous in 2-3 years.
Business class, dedicated ports. All is fine until either A) the manufacturer obsoletes the current range or B) accounting realises that they can get another brand for a shade cheaper, and suddenly you find yourself turning up at desks with the wrong type of dock. The outcome tends to be horrible breaches of ergonomics policy, with everyone hunching over laptops full-time (technically illegal in the UK).
I can't imagine trying to run a full office of hotdeskers on wifi, particularly in the IT space where you've got people pulling GIT repositories while others stream conference talks and yet others are syncing the asset database to work offline.
Please, for Pete's sake, please dont muck with ethernet or do it exactly one more time at most. Its sickening to think of the billions of miles of CAT5e and CAT6, even some CAT3, that would be obsoleted if the 8P8C plug was EVER changed.
No-one's talking about mucking about with "ethernet", just replacing the RJ45 connector with something specifically targeted at the portable device market. RJ45 connectors are fragile, and we all have several "spares" buried away somewhere because the retainer tab has snapped off at one end or the other.
Nobody's talking about changing the wiring or the standard, as far as I can see. What people are discussing is a new standard for connectors at the end of the cable. This would not obsolete any existing equipment, as the RJ45 connector is perfect in data centre installations etc. The new standard would be targeted at portable end-user devices, things that the RJ45 connector was never designed to cope with anyway.
The stuff that's good enough for most consumers.
But pretty crappy when you're running an office of hotdeskers, and it's also a potentially major security hole. RJ45 was designed with fixed installations in mind -- it wasn't intended for repeated unpluggings. There has been a pretty solid need for an alternative ethernet connector for a decade or so.
Docking stations become impractical when you're hotdesking as a rule, which brings us back to fragile RJ45 connectors and laptop ethernet ports, hence the need for a connector that is designed for repeated plugging and unplugging, rather than sitting in a fixed unit.
In other words, the glass ceiling doesn't only affect women, and abolition of the glass ceiling would actually help male wages too.