Nowhere in the US is a woman allowed to give consent before sex, then revoke consent after, and have the sex then be treated as rape. Go on, name one place where that's the case (in law, not just according to the statements of the defendant).
The US has been using European airspace and airports for illegal kidnapping (rendition) flights. I wouldn't put much past them.
Those aren't high profile people like Assange. The whole point about the illegal rendition flights was that no one was supposed to find out about them.
It would have been a bit obvious if Assange had disappeared one night from a Swedish jail and ended up in front of the cameras in a Washington DC court the next day.
Assange, meanwhile, claimed that that the real reason they were trying to apprehend him was because he had embarrassed the U.S. government, and thus they had ordered their sycophants in the British government to extradite him to Sweden, so that the Swedes could pass him on to the United States, so that the U.S. government could make an example out of him.
The only logical reason to extradite him to Sweden would be to answer the sexual assault allegations. Given the Iraq and Afghanistan episodes does anyone seriously think that Britain would be less likely than Sweden to co-operate with the US in kidnapping him and taking him to the US? So why not just do it straight from the UK?
And that's not even mentioning that Sweden previously has allowed the US to pick up terror suspects to fly them off to Guantanamo bay, in breech of Swedish law. When the US wants somebody, Sweden will happily play along, and then have a government inquiry later, with no consequences for whomever authorized the breech.
But so has the UK government. So if there was this huge conspiracy, why didn't Britain just ship him off to the US while they had him in custody?
I've not seen a convincing explnation as to why Sweden would be seen as more of the US's lapdog than the UK.
Honestly, if any entity literally ran out of money and could no longer afford an enforcement action and simply stopped for budgetary reasons similar to Lucas' first movie THX1138, I would expect it would be the British.
I bet a French person modded this interesting. They still haven't forgiven us for Waterloo.
Employees aren't paid out of taxes, they're paid out of the revenue. Profits are Revenue - Expenses(one of which is payroll). I'm not sure where bonuses figure in, though. As a non-accountant, my gut feeling would be that bonuses necessarily come out of profit, or they're not really bonuses.
If you pay an employee, it makes no difference under UK tax law whether it's salary or a bonus, it's all taxed the same.
No, the point is that they gave their staff massive bonuses and then funnelled the rest of the profit out of the country so that they could avoid paying corporation tax on it.
Yes, the probably "funneled" about 30% of their revenue out of the UK (according to Cederic's analysis, who thinks like you do).
I think that's entirely legitimate; think of it as licensing and franchising fees to Facebook US. Maybe the IRS has some legitimate claim to that money, but not the UK.
If the profits were simply transferred to the US and subject to corporation tax (or whatever the equivalent is) there, it wouldn't be such a massive issue.
Unfortunately, the profits are transferred to places that attract very low tax, and so globally Facebook avoids paying Corporation tax.
And there are many other forms in which corporations can avoid making profits; for example, instead of leasing their new HQ, they could simply buy it.
No, this would increase their operating profit (as they wouldn't be deducting the lease payments). Buying a building is capital expenditure.
To return to the main point , it is a fundamental principle of accounting (and taxation) that transfer prices must be reasonable, based on genuine business activity and consistent from year to year, as otherwise you can simply make your profit figure whatever you feel like (which is as close to zero as possible for tax purposes).
The problem is that Facebook is moving its profits out of the UK via the "Double Irish arrangement" transferring them to somewhere where they will attract less tax.
Consider Burning Man, a large temporary community that functions without money or barter.
Emphasis on the word "temporary". Lots of communes back in the 60's tried to make it work out. Save for those founded by extreme religious principles, they generally did not last long.
Life in a commune would be fine as long as you didn't have to worry about money. That's the whole point of the Star Trek thought experiment, moving beyond the tedious daily grind of having to do shitty work to earn enough to eat.
Ah, you're one of those people who thought Gordon Gekko's "greed is good" was a profound politico-economic truth rather than a self-damning line from a satirical work of art.
Communism is an idealist dream. It works only when everyone co-operates.
But if you have an actual democracy (i.e. with everyone involved in decision making) you can easily control any outbreaks of non-co-operation. And I don't mean shooting them, that is a Russian, rather than a Communist response.
That's an interesting thought experiment but since we do not and never will live in such a post-scarcity society it is ultimately meaningless. Some form of money is going to be a necessity for the foreseeable future. There simply is no scenario whereby we would have access to every possible resource we would need without some for of currency making the economy work.
There is a difference between "need" and "want". It is conceivable that what we need will be available freely - food, lodging, etc. - but if people want more than what they got, the troubles begin (and scarcity will return). For example, imagine one random member of the Star Ship enterprise. He gets a room, food, entertainment, security - all for free. But what if one day he decides he wants his quarters to be twice the size he now has? *that* resource is scarce. What if one day he decides he wants to replicate 10 tons of gold, just because he likes gold, but the replicator capacity is limited? What if one day he wants other Enterprise employees to become his servants - but these people have better things to do? If he wants any of that, he will need money (or some futuristic equivalent). The only solution is for people to stop wanting what they don't have. It seems the Star Trek guys got this solved - I never saw anyone on this series wanting anything...
Presumably you'd have some sort of replicator allowance, and a group (or just the Captain) who vetted particularly extravagant demands. The size of your quarters on a spaceship is always going to be limited, for the same reason that land on Earth is limited. You'd have to accept that, no, you can't have the whole planet as your private playground.
It's amazing how everyone on slashdot is all pro-technology and believes we'll have cold fusion, colonies on Mars and strong AI in twenty years' time, but dismisses the idea of actually doing something useful with future technology to make a genuine political improvement.
It's almost like most people here are financial and political reactionaries.
Of course it can work, it just takes a whole bunch of people really wanting to be red shirts rather than space ship captains.
Why would living in a money-less post-scarcity world mean that everyone was equally good (or bad) at everything?
In a space military you'd presumably choose officers similarly to what you do now, by experience and merit. Although everybody would at least be broadly on the same playing field, so that you wouldn't get into Starfleet academy just because your father knew the director, or had lots of money to pay for a good education.
It's not money stopping me from being a professional footballer or concert pianist at the moment, why would it be any different in the future?
(Items of limited supply aren't really addressed by the show, like how do they decide who gets to live in the prime waterfront apartment in San Francisco?)
If you had genuinely limitless energy, you'd replicate San Francisco and the bay on an asteroid or something and transport there instantaneously whenever the urge came over you.
People here don't seem to be taking in what "post-scarcity" means. It's not just "you have a basic income that stops you starving and puts aroof over your head". It's "you can have a copy of any material thing you desire".
No one is saying that it's immediately plausible, it's a way of starting speculative thought, just like time travel or alien contact or any other science fiction concept.
But what do you do when civilian Fucknut on a planet says "waaaaah, I want 2 acres of land" when most everybody else lives on 1? What about when he wants 5? 10? Where does reasonable stop? In a capitalist society we self-regulate that. You can have more, but it'll cost you more. What do you do when there's no cost?
That's no longer a post-scarcity planet. So presumably you would have to have some sort of government doling the land out equably (or else locally re-instate capitalism).
The point about being post-scarcity is that you don't have those sort of physical limitations: if someone wants a planet to themselves, replicate them one and wait for them to get bored with it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you dress up like a street working whore, then you can't be offended when people mistake you for one.
So it's legal to rape prostitutes where you live?
That is such a stupid argument.
Nowhere in the US is a woman allowed to give consent before sex, then revoke consent after, and have the sex then be treated as rape. Go on, name one place where that's the case (in law, not just according to the statements of the defendant).
Well, there are some cases that come very close. For example, Occidental College: Student Found Guilty of Sexual Assault After Incapacitation Standard Is Misapplied And then there are numerous articles that make it explicit that consent can be withdrawn any time during sex and going a few seconds past that "No" counts too. For example, this story. There should be more than 5-10 second grace period on that, don't you think?
Call me old fashioned or a SJW, but if I'm having sex and the other person says "no, stop" then I'll fucking stop, and stop fucking.
You don't need ten seconds to think about it.
The US has been using European airspace and airports for illegal kidnapping (rendition) flights. I wouldn't put much past them.
Those aren't high profile people like Assange. The whole point about the illegal rendition flights was that no one was supposed to find out about them.
It would have been a bit obvious if Assange had disappeared one night from a Swedish jail and ended up in front of the cameras in a Washington DC court the next day.
Assange, meanwhile, claimed that that the real reason they were trying to apprehend him was because he had embarrassed the U.S. government, and thus they had ordered their sycophants in the British government to extradite him to Sweden, so that the Swedes could pass him on to the United States, so that the U.S. government could make an example out of him.
The only logical reason to extradite him to Sweden would be to answer the sexual assault allegations. Given the Iraq and Afghanistan episodes does anyone seriously think that Britain would be less likely than Sweden to co-operate with the US in kidnapping him and taking him to the US? So why not just do it straight from the UK?
And that's not even mentioning that Sweden previously has allowed the US to pick up terror suspects to fly them off to Guantanamo bay, in breech of Swedish law. When the US wants somebody, Sweden will happily play along, and then have a government inquiry later, with no consequences for whomever authorized the breech.
But so has the UK government. So if there was this huge conspiracy, why didn't Britain just ship him off to the US while they had him in custody?
I've not seen a convincing explnation as to why Sweden would be seen as more of the US's lapdog than the UK.
Honestly, if any entity literally ran out of money and could no longer afford an enforcement action and simply stopped for budgetary reasons similar to Lucas' first movie THX1138, I would expect it would be the British.
I bet a French person modded this interesting. They still haven't forgiven us for Waterloo.
It's another option for people scared of a screw sticking out of their skull.
Which I would have thought was everybody.
Eh, tattoos are no longer taboo, and haven't been for almost a decade at this point. Body modification is also pretty passe at this point as well.
It really depends what sort of tattoo, where it is, and what sort of job you're applying for.
If you have a facial tattoo, or one celebrating your love of weed you're not going to get into the British Army, for instance.
This would raise an interesting problem if they brought back National Service.
Employees aren't paid out of taxes, they're paid out of the revenue. Profits are Revenue - Expenses(one of which is payroll). I'm not sure where bonuses figure in, though. As a non-accountant, my gut feeling would be that bonuses necessarily come out of profit, or they're not really bonuses.
If you pay an employee, it makes no difference under UK tax law whether it's salary or a bonus, it's all taxed the same.
Yes, the probably "funneled" about 30% of their revenue out of the UK (according to Cederic's analysis, who thinks like you do).
I think that's entirely legitimate; think of it as licensing and franchising fees to Facebook US. Maybe the IRS has some legitimate claim to that money, but not the UK.
If the profits were simply transferred to the US and subject to corporation tax (or whatever the equivalent is) there, it wouldn't be such a massive issue.
Unfortunately, the profits are transferred to places that attract very low tax, and so globally Facebook avoids paying Corporation tax.
And there are many other forms in which corporations can avoid making profits; for example, instead of leasing their new HQ, they could simply buy it.
No, this would increase their operating profit (as they wouldn't be deducting the lease payments). Buying a building is capital expenditure.
To return to the main point , it is a fundamental principle of accounting (and taxation) that transfer prices must be reasonable, based on genuine business activity and consistent from year to year, as otherwise you can simply make your profit figure whatever you feel like (which is as close to zero as possible for tax purposes).
The problem is that Facebook is moving its profits out of the UK via the "Double Irish arrangement" transferring them to somewhere where they will attract less tax.
I have no love for foreign companies who avoid tax, but I don't think they do it simply by lying about their revenue.
Generally, multinationals use intra-group payments of "fees" to reduce tax liability in one region, with the credit side being in no/low tax regions.
Consider Burning Man, a large temporary community that functions without money or barter.
Emphasis on the word "temporary". Lots of communes back in the 60's tried to make it work out. Save for those founded by extreme religious principles, they generally did not last long.
Life in a commune would be fine as long as you didn't have to worry about money. That's the whole point of the Star Trek thought experiment, moving beyond the tedious daily grind of having to do shitty work to earn enough to eat.
We're nowhere even CLOSE to this.
Thanks, Star Ship Captain Obvious.
Ah, you're one of those people who thought Gordon Gekko's "greed is good" was a profound politico-economic truth rather than a self-damning line from a satirical work of art.
Communism is an idealist dream. It works only when everyone co-operates.
But if you have an actual democracy (i.e. with everyone involved in decision making) you can easily control any outbreaks of non-co-operation. And I don't mean shooting them, that is a Russian, rather than a Communist response.
It's a lot more likely that everyone has some kind of fixed ration of replicator time/energy
Then you just described their currency.
It's not really a currency if everyone has the same fixed amount only usable by themselves.
That's an interesting thought experiment but since we do not and never will live in such a post-scarcity society it is ultimately meaningless. Some form of money is going to be a necessity for the foreseeable future. There simply is no scenario whereby we would have access to every possible resource we would need without some for of currency making the economy work.
There is a difference between "need" and "want". It is conceivable that what we need will be available freely - food, lodging, etc. - but if people want more than what they got, the troubles begin (and scarcity will return). For example, imagine one random member of the Star Ship enterprise. He gets a room, food, entertainment, security - all for free. But what if one day he decides he wants his quarters to be twice the size he now has? *that* resource is scarce. What if one day he decides he wants to replicate 10 tons of gold, just because he likes gold, but the replicator capacity is limited? What if one day he wants other Enterprise employees to become his servants - but these people have better things to do? If he wants any of that, he will need money (or some futuristic equivalent). The only solution is for people to stop wanting what they don't have. It seems the Star Trek guys got this solved - I never saw anyone on this series wanting anything...
Presumably you'd have some sort of replicator allowance, and a group (or just the Captain) who vetted particularly extravagant demands. The size of your quarters on a spaceship is always going to be limited, for the same reason that land on Earth is limited. You'd have to accept that, no, you can't have the whole planet as your private playground.
It's almost like most people here are financial and political reactionaries.
Thanks, that is a much better reply than mine, which was going to be "shut your fucking overpriveleged mouth you stupid, selfish cunt".
Of course it can work, it just takes a whole bunch of people really wanting to be red shirts rather than space ship captains.
Why would living in a money-less post-scarcity world mean that everyone was equally good (or bad) at everything?
In a space military you'd presumably choose officers similarly to what you do now, by experience and merit. Although everybody would at least be broadly on the same playing field, so that you wouldn't get into Starfleet academy just because your father knew the director, or had lots of money to pay for a good education.
It's not money stopping me from being a professional footballer or concert pianist at the moment, why would it be any different in the future?
It's a bit like having an entire city (or planet) to yourself: it would be terrifyingly pointless.
(Items of limited supply aren't really addressed by the show, like how do they decide who gets to live in the prime waterfront apartment in San Francisco?)
If you had genuinely limitless energy, you'd replicate San Francisco and the bay on an asteroid or something and transport there instantaneously whenever the urge came over you.
People here don't seem to be taking in what "post-scarcity" means. It's not just "you have a basic income that stops you starving and puts aroof over your head". It's "you can have a copy of any material thing you desire".
No one is saying that it's immediately plausible, it's a way of starting speculative thought, just like time travel or alien contact or any other science fiction concept.
But what do you do when civilian Fucknut on a planet says "waaaaah, I want 2 acres of land" when most everybody else lives on 1? What about when he wants 5? 10? Where does reasonable stop? In a capitalist society we self-regulate that. You can have more, but it'll cost you more. What do you do when there's no cost?
That's no longer a post-scarcity planet. So presumably you would have to have some sort of government doling the land out equably (or else locally re-instate capitalism).
The point about being post-scarcity is that you don't have those sort of physical limitations: if someone wants a planet to themselves, replicate them one and wait for them to get bored with it.
In such an economy, who would I call to unclog my toilet or to repair the trash recycler?
A robot, I imagine.