Your argument begs an obvious question: If things are so terrible, why did you (or the company's founders) choose to set up as an S-Corp? I wouldn't presume to guess at your particular reasons, but choosing the structure of a company is a set of trade-offs between protecting yourself from liability, providing a means to raise outside investment, giving the owners and employees a way of sharing profits, addressing tax issues, and so on. Setting aside the tax _rates_ for a moment, the tax _code_ is mostly designed to allow people to set up companies that address those kinds of issue while stopping people from avoiding paying taxes using the same mechanisms.
So, to take a small example, a small businessperson might think it's worth paying California $800 a year to limit their personal liability from their business's operations. They could choose not to limit my liability by operating as a sole proprietor and save the $800.
Much as we like to moan about these things (don't get me started on how self-employment taxes punish small businesses), as a business owner one does get to choose how one is incorporated and taxed, which does have its benefits. Once you've made those choices, you do have to accept the trade-offs, I think.
First, read David Allen's Getting Things Done. Then use whichever system is going to be most convenient to carry around with you. The two main features of a workable system, in my experience, are:
1. It has to break things into enough separate categories that you aren't overwhelmed with massive lists.
2. You have to be able to have the system with you at all times, so you can make note of things as they come up.
Whether you use something paper-based, text-file-on-computer-based or app-on-an-iPhone based is really a matter of personal preference. I like pen and paper, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned like that.
But how is that fair to those that actually followed the law and came here legally?
Well, for one thing, the amnesty proposals put undocumented aliens at the back of the queue. Seems fair to me.
And you are also ignoring the hidden costs, for example we too have many illegals and if you get into an accident with one? NO insurance! I hope you enjoy those higher insurance premiums thanks to your friends that "are ordinary people who just want a chance to live".
There's an easy solution to this: allow undocumented aliens to get drivers licenses, so they can get insurance.
Then figure in the taxes they don't pay, the depression of wages, and the extra demands on services without the extra taxes to pay for them and I'm sorry, but if you want to get into this country you should have to get in line like everybody else.
You have it exactly backwards: undocumented aliens pay taxes without getting any services. They're one of the main reasons social security will be solvent for another 25 years, by the way. Regarding depression of wages, as has been pointed out elsewhere, it's hard to argue that wages are depressed when no-one else is stepping forward to do the jobs undocumented workers are doing.
You are right about one thing: they should have to get in line like everybody else.. that's another way of describing "amnesty".
Oh and talk to someone who immigrated here legally and ask them how they like having spent years jumping through hoops just to have talk of amnesty for illegals brought up. Not a subject to bring up if you want happy talk.
Since my site is now thoroughly slashdotted (thanks everyone!), you might want to check out the video at blip.tv:
http://brucenash.blip.tv/#1425102
Bruce
Well put. If you assume that marketing is only done by commercial enterprises.
All the things that you mention (the Great Library of Alexandria, ancient monks copying manuscripts) happened because someone had a vested interest in those things happening , and successfully sold them to someone else who had the means to make them happen. The connection might not be direct. e.g. The monks were driven by their beliefs to copy manuscripts (primarily religious texts), because they had been "sold" the idea that Christianity was the way to eternal salvation.
If you look at other ancient marvels, the marketing connection is more obvious... with apologies to the followers of Horus, the pyramids were built because the religious leaders found a good way to pump up the egos of the Pharoahs.
What happened was that marketing moved from being an activity pursued mainly by kings and religions to become something that business did as well. Actually, I think you'll find marketing by businesses started to happen as soon as businesses began to compete on a broad geographical basis, which was basically when the roads and rail systems became efficient and there was a reliable monetary system (see e.g. Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle vol. 43, pp. 5,292 - 5,313).
I'm not saying marketing is a good thing. Just that it's been around for a lot longer than you acknowledge, and is probably inevitable given freedom of speech, and an incentive to do so.
Re:I hate the DMCA as much as anyone
on
DMCA Abuse Widespread
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The data set falls into two halves -- self-reported takedown notices and takedown notices sent to Google. The Google part of the set is a complete record of all the notices they have received over the last 3 years or so.
One would expect the self-reported notices to have a bias, but it turns out that Google notices shows the same proportion of flawed notices: 30%.
Bruce
(Full disclosure: my wife is one of the co-authors of the paper.)
It seems to me that we're seeing here the evolution of two distinct business models for movies.
Major studio movies will continue to use a similar model to today, possibly with a smaller theatrical window. Although the home market provides bigger revenues, the studios aren't going to give up the $100m - $200m they can make from a theatrical run. Insted they'll optimize the release window so as to maximize revenue. For example, have a global Summer release of a blockbuster, then put out the DVD in time for Christmas, with pay TV in between.
The goal for the studios in this model is to maximize the number of times one person will pay for the movie. Ideally they want someone to buy a ticket at the movie theater, then buy the DVD three months later, then buy a DVD special edition a couple of years after that. (And an HD-DVD after that, and so on...)
For independents, the model will be different, I think. The advertising dollars involved are much smaller, and people are much more likely to base their viewing decision on reviews. In this model, it's better to spend you marketing bucks once and generate as much money as you can, however you can. You might forgo someone paying twice for a movie, but more likely you'll increase your revenues by having multiple distribution channels.
The reason this is still evolving is, I believe, partly because newspapers (mostly) only review theatrical releases, and partly that the independent distributors generally focus on one type of distribution, not all four (theatrical, home theater, TV, online). Cuban and Wagner's innovation is really in having a single distribution management system for independent movies, not in releasing in multiple formats at the same time. Now they can tweak the variables to maximize revenue.
Perhaps someone here can clear something up for me about the formation of black holes...
Let's say I'm watching something (a gigantic encyclopedia, say) collapse to form a black hole.
As the object collapses, its gravitational field gets stronger, and therefore, as observed from my vantage point, the time dilation effect gets stronger. i.e. From my perspective, the collapse proceeds ever more slowly. Although it never stops collapsing, I don't believe I would observe it actually turn into a black hole in a finite amount of time.
From the point of view of someone standing on the surface of the object, the reverse happens -- time in the universe outside seems to accelerate, to the point where the universe ends before the black hole is created.
So... my question is... are black holes actually formed in the universe, from our perspective? Or are there just a bunch of objects that look almost exactly, but not quite, like black holes (because they've been collapsing for billions of years)? Or were all the black holes created in the big bang? Or is there some neat trick that allows a nearly-black-hole to flip into a really-black-hole?
Sorry for the slight digression... it's just a question that's been bugging me for years.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I herd you like conspiracy theories...
How does that compare to herding cats?
Your argument begs an obvious question: If things are so terrible, why did you (or the company's founders) choose to set up as an S-Corp? I wouldn't presume to guess at your particular reasons, but choosing the structure of a company is a set of trade-offs between protecting yourself from liability, providing a means to raise outside investment, giving the owners and employees a way of sharing profits, addressing tax issues, and so on. Setting aside the tax _rates_ for a moment, the tax _code_ is mostly designed to allow people to set up companies that address those kinds of issue while stopping people from avoiding paying taxes using the same mechanisms.
So, to take a small example, a small businessperson might think it's worth paying California $800 a year to limit their personal liability from their business's operations. They could choose not to limit my liability by operating as a sole proprietor and save the $800.
Much as we like to moan about these things (don't get me started on how self-employment taxes punish small businesses), as a business owner one does get to choose how one is incorporated and taxed, which does have its benefits. Once you've made those choices, you do have to accept the trade-offs, I think.
Hmm. Let's just clarify that, shall we:
- GE paid almost $2.7 billion in cash taxes OVERSEAS in 2010
Kind of makes the point, don't you think?
1. It has to break things into enough separate categories that you aren't overwhelmed with massive lists.
2. You have to be able to have the system with you at all times, so you can make note of things as they come up.
Whether you use something paper-based, text-file-on-computer-based or app-on-an-iPhone based is really a matter of personal preference. I like pen and paper, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned like that.
But how is that fair to those that actually followed the law and came here legally?
Well, for one thing, the amnesty proposals put undocumented aliens at the back of the queue. Seems fair to me.
And you are also ignoring the hidden costs, for example we too have many illegals and if you get into an accident with one? NO insurance! I hope you enjoy those higher insurance premiums thanks to your friends that "are ordinary people who just want a chance to live".
There's an easy solution to this: allow undocumented aliens to get drivers licenses, so they can get insurance.
Then figure in the taxes they don't pay, the depression of wages, and the extra demands on services without the extra taxes to pay for them and I'm sorry, but if you want to get into this country you should have to get in line like everybody else.
You have it exactly backwards: undocumented aliens pay taxes without getting any services. They're one of the main reasons social security will be solvent for another 25 years, by the way. Regarding depression of wages, as has been pointed out elsewhere, it's hard to argue that wages are depressed when no-one else is stepping forward to do the jobs undocumented workers are doing. You are right about one thing: they should have to get in line like everybody else.. that's another way of describing "amnesty".
Oh and talk to someone who immigrated here legally and ask them how they like having spent years jumping through hoops just to have talk of amnesty for illegals brought up. Not a subject to bring up if you want happy talk.
Funny, I'm one of those people.
Since my site is now thoroughly slashdotted (thanks everyone!), you might want to check out the video at blip.tv: http://brucenash.blip.tv/#1425102 Bruce
Well put. If you assume that marketing is only done by commercial enterprises.
All the things that you mention (the Great Library of Alexandria, ancient monks copying manuscripts) happened because someone had a vested interest in those things happening , and successfully sold them to someone else who had the means to make them happen. The connection might not be direct. e.g. The monks were driven by their beliefs to copy manuscripts (primarily religious texts), because they had been "sold" the idea that Christianity was the way to eternal salvation.
If you look at other ancient marvels, the marketing connection is more obvious... with apologies to the followers of Horus, the pyramids were built because the religious leaders found a good way to pump up the egos of the Pharoahs.
What happened was that marketing moved from being an activity pursued mainly by kings and religions to become something that business did as well. Actually, I think you'll find marketing by businesses started to happen as soon as businesses began to compete on a broad geographical basis, which was basically when the roads and rail systems became efficient and there was a reliable monetary system (see e.g. Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle vol. 43, pp. 5,292 - 5,313).
I'm not saying marketing is a good thing. Just that it's been around for a lot longer than you acknowledge, and is probably inevitable given freedom of speech, and an incentive to do so.
The data set falls into two halves -- self-reported takedown notices and takedown notices sent to Google. The Google part of the set is a complete record of all the notices they have received over the last 3 years or so.
One would expect the self-reported notices to have a bias, but it turns out that Google notices shows the same proportion of flawed notices: 30%.
Bruce
(Full disclosure: my wife is one of the co-authors of the paper.)
It seems to me that we're seeing here the evolution of two distinct business models for movies.
Major studio movies will continue to use a similar model to today, possibly with a smaller theatrical window. Although the home market provides bigger revenues, the studios aren't going to give up the $100m - $200m they can make from a theatrical run. Insted they'll optimize the release window so as to maximize revenue. For example, have a global Summer release of a blockbuster, then put out the DVD in time for Christmas, with pay TV in between.
The goal for the studios in this model is to maximize the number of times one person will pay for the movie. Ideally they want someone to buy a ticket at the movie theater, then buy the DVD three months later, then buy a DVD special edition a couple of years after that. (And an HD-DVD after that, and so on...)
For independents, the model will be different, I think. The advertising dollars involved are much smaller, and people are much more likely to base their viewing decision on reviews. In this model, it's better to spend you marketing bucks once and generate as much money as you can, however you can. You might forgo someone paying twice for a movie, but more likely you'll increase your revenues by having multiple distribution channels.
The reason this is still evolving is, I believe, partly because newspapers (mostly) only review theatrical releases, and partly that the independent distributors generally focus on one type of distribution, not all four (theatrical, home theater, TV, online). Cuban and Wagner's innovation is really in having a single distribution management system for independent movies, not in releasing in multiple formats at the same time. Now they can tweak the variables to maximize revenue.
Bruce Nash
http://www.the-numbers.com/
Perhaps someone here can clear something up for me about the formation of black holes...
Let's say I'm watching something (a gigantic encyclopedia, say) collapse to form a black hole.
As the object collapses, its gravitational field gets stronger, and therefore, as observed from my vantage point, the time dilation effect gets stronger. i.e. From my perspective, the collapse proceeds ever more slowly. Although it never stops collapsing, I don't believe I would observe it actually turn into a black hole in a finite amount of time.
From the point of view of someone standing on the surface of the object, the reverse happens -- time in the universe outside seems to accelerate, to the point where the universe ends before the black hole is created.
So... my question is... are black holes actually formed in the universe, from our perspective? Or are there just a bunch of objects that look almost exactly, but not quite, like black holes (because they've been collapsing for billions of years)? Or were all the black holes created in the big bang? Or is there some neat trick that allows a nearly-black-hole to flip into a really-black-hole?
Sorry for the slight digression... it's just a question that's been bugging me for years.
Bruce