Check the annual report. We know that Apple took in 8b in net revenue (i.e. their take) last year – of 156b in sales. Not sure how much of that is profit but I would assume it higher than Apple’s 40% gross margin – so yeah – it is a considerable chunk of change.
So what are the moral implication of funnelling money through a tax haven that has no real purpose other than to reduce tax load? It may be legal, but is it moral?
There are cases where it is moral.
The US is one of the few (and the only major one) that uses a residential system for taxes. Most other places use a territorial system. The different standards can be incompatible issues anytime there is a joint US / foreign operation. In theory taxes could be over 100% of profits. In practice this does not happen due to a host of tax treaties – but they cause their own headache.
Tax havens can be used to bypass this complexity and double (and triple) taxation. At the end of the day everybody pays’ their home tax rate – thus everybody contributes to society.
First, you need to distinguish between transfers of cash (non-taxable), profits, and expenses (which, from an accounting standpoint, is not exactly the same things as spending money.) The big issues is that the US uses a residential tax system (you pay American taxes no matter where you earned the profit) and Briton uses a territorial tax system (you pay taxes on the profits earned in Britton – which is basically how the entire world operates.).
Here is the formula: 1 – TA – TB + (TA*TB) TA = America’s tax percentage TB = Britton’s tax percentage
So, Google Britton earns 1 dollar of profits in Briton and pays taxes on those profits. Google Britton then pays a dividend ($1-TB) to Google Parent where is pay’s the USA Tax (-TA) but gets to claim a foreign tax deduction (+(TA*TB)).
The simple answer for US corps is not to pay the dividend to the parent company but keep it overseas.
Now, you are right – if Google USA had losses they could offset Google Britton’s – but they would need actually losses. Spending cash on stuff does not inherently generate losses. i.e. If I spend $1 (an asset) to buy a $1 asset (Gold, land, buildings, servers, R&D, a 747) no losses have occurred.
As to buying a building – I could buy a building or I could lease a building for 20 years with a right to buy at the end – economically they are basically the same. However, the tax treatment is very different. In the US (and I believe Britton) you get a tax benefit from leasing – which is what makes this deal so odd.
I will disagree a bit. Republicans either fall into the:
Socially liberal, economically free market (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Massachusetts Mitt Rommey) or
Socially conservative, economically free market (Mike Huckabee, Presidential Mitt Rommey) You basically have 2 different intellectual threads which spring from common historical roots. And no – they don’t get along.
Like I said, cheap fear mongering. One of the reasons why the USA has been successful has been its labor mobility – both internal and internationally. Short term pain for long term gain.
And if that was the real reason – well - IIRC Bulgaria, Romania, and Latvia 1. applied after Turkey and 2. have a lower per capita GNP then Turkey. Heck, Poland is basically at the same level as Turkey. That did not stop them from entering.
For years the EU has been putting up barriers and slowing down the processes that has stalled the talked for the better part of a decade. This ranges from petty (Greece & Cyprus) to cheap political grandstanding (Islamophobia, cheap labor). Would you want to join a club where the petty internal politics didn’t want you? And this was before the financial crisis.
Personally, I think if Turkey had been allowed to join this would have cemented Turkey into a secular block allowing them to be a bridge between Europe and the Middle East.
I saw something like this 3 years ago. The idea was to pump air into a large cave for storage. The air pressure would power the electric turbines on demand. They figured it was overall more efficient for the wind turbines to run mechanical pumps rather than generate electricity to run the air pumps.
You are right – Hawguy – I apologize for calling you a racist.
Your initial assessment that a cheap battery = cheap Chinese is sloppy logic – guilt by association. However, there is a big leap between that and racism.
I wonder if the energy per pound is higher for a solar panel then for the RTG? If so it might make sense to have a high energy phase (solar and RTG) and a low energy phase (only RTG.) That would be my guess – anybody have a better idea?
I know you are trying to be funny, but you are just showing that you are ignorant racist. Try not to be both at the same time. The batteries are Japanese.
Young Doc: No wonder this circuit failed. It says "Made in Japan". Marty McFly: What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan. Young Doc: Unbelievable.
First, the board could make a decision. The majority shareholders can’t block this. This is to prevent the majority shareholders screwing the minority shareholders. This normally happens in a cash merger. Stock is trading at $12.5 – we have an offer of $20 – not much of a decision.
Sometimes it’s a shareholder referendum. In this case the majority wins. This is when things are close – normally in a merger. Do I want to swap my 1 Compaq share for 0.6325 share of a Hewlett-Packard?
What am I missing? Other than the fact that the logistics of contacting a bunch of people who have stock shares in their IRA accounts and giving them an offer may be a lot of extra work for the private-equity buyer (but it should be pretty easy these days since most people have their portfolios with a relatively small number of brokerages; also, most shares are probably owned by institutions, not individuals anyway), I'm not seeing the downside.
The problem here is that you want to treat everybody fairly. When this has been done in the past the buyer would offer generous terms until they got to the 50% mark – at which point they effectively owned the firm – and which point they offered every else a much lower price. Take it or lump it.
This way it’s public. No sweetheart deals. Everybody gets the same price.
As to your larger point - sure, try to pick apart the ownership of Samsung or Formula One. Or read up on early American Railroad corporations.
But let’s start off with your example. You own Dell at $12.50 because you think Dell is worth $12.50. That’s fine. Michael Dell buys 51% of the company – no change in the fundamental underlying value of the company so it’s still $12.50. Then Michael announces that the new mission of Dell is provided him with a lavish lifestyle and that he will be confiscating all of the profits in various tricky joint ventures, sweat heart sales, and a lavish corporate lifestyle. Your stock falls to $1.00.
You suggest 95%, I use 51% - but in reality a holder of 20 to 30% can screw over the minority holders.
Your right – you could lump it. Sell the stock that you think is valued at $12.50 for a $1.00 and invest it someplace different. But how would that make you feel? Is the only option you have as an owner is to walk away?
One more point - you mentioned the “stereotypical one homeowner who refused to sell so now there's a giant building AROUND their tiny little house”. In this case you don’t own the house – you own a share of a house. Do you want to be trapped in that house?
I knew a family that owned a 1/64 share of a vacation home left to them by their grandparents. They had moved to the other cost. Scheduling was a headache – all 8 families wanted it in the summer. They had to pay 1/64 of the property taxes. They had to pay 1/64 of the repairs when the boyfriends of the 2nd cousins they had never meet had a college beer party in which they managed to sink the ski boat. etc.
There was a certain amount of infighting among the relatives. The richer folks who had moved away wanted to sell the place. The poor relatives nearby wanted to keep the place – but could not afford to but out those who wanted to sell.
So they sold the place and split the cash. It may not have been the best solution but it was a fair solution.
A takeover or merger works when company A offers to buy company B. Company A can offer some combination of stock in the new company, cash, or debt (less popular now). Company B then decides to take the deal or not.
So, let’s be specific. Private Equity firms tend not to have stock so they tend to offer cash. Dell is currently trading at $12.50 so they would offer more – let’s say $15 to $20 per share. The Dell Board has 3 options.
First, they can accept the bid. All of the old shareholders hand over their shares for cash. The second option is to refuse the offer. There are a lot of reasons to reject an offer. However, if the Buy Out firm is offering a cash price higher than the current stock price it would be hard to resist – bird in hand vs. 2 in the bush type of logic. Or the board could try to find a different suitor.
The trick is that the board must consider everybody’s position. The CEO / founding family / majority shareholder can’t squash a deal just because they would lose control. In this way the minority shareholder’s rights are protected.
As an aside, as to somebody trying to get a 50% share of the company – that is frowned upon. If one can gain effective control of a firm, the effective value of your shares go up and the real value of the minority shareholders go down. Many countries have rules that if you get effective control of a firm you have to put forward an offer for the whole firm.
Because it is a public company run for the good off all shareholders – and private equity buyouts is the one great defense against a complacent management or minority shareholder.
What if a firm will not be run for the benefit of the shareholder. Maybe the founding family likes the prestige and perks of “owning” a business. Maybe the CEO likes running a big firm – easier to justify the private jet. What are you to do then? Or, take the fillip argument. Dell right now trades at $12.50. Buyout firm offers $20 and you want to take it. But Michael Dell puts his foot down and says no – I want to stay on as CEO – what are you to do?
So the board must seriously consider all proposals but in front of it. Read up on Barbarians at the Gate. Or sit down and watch “Other’s People Money” – it’s fiction – but it’s a good start. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102609/
I think you are missing an important point – the Private Buyout Firm is the shareholder – they have bought out all of the other shareholders – hence the name.
The shareholder can’t sue themselves – so that’s out. If the firm goes bankrupt – the buyout firm loses their money, etc. (And contrary to popular belief they do have to put up a good chunk of change upfront.) The Buy Out firm wants the company to succeed. (There is a sub-class of Buy Out firms called vulture funds which dismember zombie firms – but that is another story.)
I think you are trying to zero on the fact that buy out firms prefer risker adventures – go big or go home. Bigger rewards but a bigger chance that one of the firms that purchased will go bankrupt.
And I would be careful with the cynicism. Yes, there is room for fraud and most use financial engineering which makes more tax sense then economic sense. However they also do a lot of good. It’s sloppily logic to slap a villain mustache – in particular this case.
Dell is putting up a large chunk of his money – so it probably not driven by short term expectations.
So I think it’s one of two things . First, Dell has insider information – not in the sense of secret numbers – but a feel of the market and the economy – and obviously thinks Dell Inc. is underpriced. Or he has some radical idea for the company and does not want to be slowed down by having to explain things to the shareholders.
If you want to see what happens when you do that all you have to do is jump across the pond to England. IIRC, the copyright defaults to creator. Each time a new writer introduces a new character rights get muddled. Terry Nation was for year able to keep Dalek’s off of Doctor Who until he got his fair share. This makes shared universe difficult. One can’t just grab a minor character in the Hulk – like Wolverine - and transfer them to the X-Men under a different writer.
And I am not saying your idea is a bad one – just that it would impacts. You just don’t see the big universe with multiple creators over there.
Neil Gaiman has done some good writing on the copyright dispute with Miracle Man. Check out his blog.
First, computers are expensive – or at least the rendering farms that ILM and Pixar uses. Second – and more importantly - CGI is expensive not because of the computers, but because of skilled artists.
And when we no longer need real actors – what do we have? Films generated by optimized algorithms – never having been touched by human hands?
I think it is going to be a very long time before computers supplement humans and garages can push out the majors. Look, I am amazed at what small indies can do now. Monsters is a great example – made for 800k http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/ Small shops can do an excellent level of quality if they narrowly focus their work.
Let’s say you wanted to do your own version of LotR can you tell computer to drop in 10,000 Orcs? Maybe – if you were going to use the generic Orc. But you probably wouldn’t want to do that – too much like paint by numbers – it would have the look and feel of the dozens of other fan flicks out there. And that is just one detail of thousands.
Blockbusters are going to want to fashion their own unique style which for the foreseeable future will take a lot of talented (and very expensive artists)
Find the parent of a young girl and ask them about Disney’s “Princess” line and how much they spend on it. Disney’s plan is to make ½ the profit on the lunch boxes, theme parks, dolls, etc.
As to the substitutes – eh. GoBots vs. Transformers. Amazon’s Fire vs. Apple IPad min. Little kids demand the “real” thing – not the generic.
And yes, Disney tries to move public domain stuff into the private domain – and that is one of the things I struggle with. Disney’s Rapunzel has some very specific new and creative points in term of story lines, music, visual style that I am o.k. being covered by IP.
Which is why I said I am still trying to sort things out. Disney et. al. are aggressive and have expensive lawyers – so that is going to deter some people – in particular smaller outfits. But in response to TrueKaiser - it did not stop 2 big budget Snow White films coming out last year.
Now – on a more serious note – I like seeing big budget movies based on comics, which only makes economic sense if they can sell the “official” trademarked merchandise.
On the other hand I don’t like our culture perpetually controlled by large corporations. Honestly, I am a bit more offended that Marvel / DC has a joint trademark on “super heroes”. Still trying to pick my way though this.
I would be interested in seeing a citation for that. The IRS has a very broad notion of what is “valuable”. IIRC the IRS treats airline miles as taxable when it's traded. Why does a bitcoin have less inherent value than that? I don’t see the reasoning.
The article does mention mass drivers – it’s under the coil or rail gun section – and he does admit that he gives them short shrift – maybe to be followed up.
I know there is a difference between anonymity and privacy,
I know that anonymity is disappearing due to technology.
I just don’t the idea of a all seeing eye tracking me everywhere – be it state or private. I find the trends disturbing. What I am searching for is an answer – a balance.
Slashdot Mirror
Check the annual report. We know that Apple took in 8b in net revenue (i.e. their take) last year – of 156b in sales. Not sure how much of that is profit but I would assume it higher than Apple’s 40% gross margin – so yeah – it is a considerable chunk of change.
So what are the moral implication of funnelling money through a tax haven that has no real purpose other than to reduce tax load? It may be legal, but is it moral?
There are cases where it is moral.
The US is one of the few (and the only major one) that uses a residential system for taxes. Most other places use a territorial system. The different standards can be incompatible issues anytime there is a joint US / foreign operation. In theory taxes could be over 100% of profits. In practice this does not happen due to a host of tax treaties – but they cause their own headache.
Tax havens can be used to bypass this complexity and double (and triple) taxation. At the end of the day everybody pays’ their home tax rate – thus everybody contributes to society.
First, you need to distinguish between transfers of cash (non-taxable), profits, and expenses (which, from an accounting standpoint, is not exactly the same things as spending money.)
The big issues is that the US uses a residential tax system (you pay American taxes no matter where you earned the profit) and Briton uses a territorial tax system (you pay taxes on the profits earned in Britton – which is basically how the entire world operates.).
Here is the formula:
1 – TA – TB + (TA*TB)
TA = America’s tax percentage
TB = Britton’s tax percentage
So, Google Britton earns 1 dollar of profits in Briton and pays taxes on those profits. Google Britton then pays a dividend ($1-TB) to Google Parent where is pay’s the USA Tax (-TA) but gets to claim a foreign tax deduction (+(TA*TB)).
The simple answer for US corps is not to pay the dividend to the parent company but keep it overseas.
Now, you are right – if Google USA had losses they could offset Google Britton’s – but they would need actually losses. Spending cash on stuff does not inherently generate losses. i.e. If I spend $1 (an asset) to buy a $1 asset (Gold, land, buildings, servers, R&D, a 747) no losses have occurred.
As to buying a building – I could buy a building or I could lease a building for 20 years with a right to buy at the end – economically they are basically the same. However, the tax treatment is very different. In the US (and I believe Britton) you get a tax benefit from leasing – which is what makes this deal so odd.
I will disagree a bit. Republicans either fall into the:
Socially liberal, economically free market (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Massachusetts Mitt Rommey) or
Socially conservative, economically free market (Mike Huckabee, Presidential Mitt Rommey)
You basically have 2 different intellectual threads which spring from common historical roots. And no – they don’t get along.
Like I said, cheap fear mongering. One of the reasons why the USA has been successful has been its labor mobility – both internal and internationally. Short term pain for long term gain.
And if that was the real reason – well - IIRC Bulgaria, Romania, and Latvia 1. applied after Turkey and 2. have a lower per capita GNP then Turkey. Heck, Poland is basically at the same level as Turkey. That did not stop them from entering.
It does run both ways.
For years the EU has been putting up barriers and slowing down the processes that has stalled the talked for the better part of a decade. This ranges from petty (Greece & Cyprus) to cheap political grandstanding (Islamophobia, cheap labor). Would you want to join a club where the petty internal politics didn’t want you? And this was before the financial crisis.
Personally, I think if Turkey had been allowed to join this would have cemented Turkey into a secular block allowing them to be a bridge between Europe and the Middle East.
I saw something like this 3 years ago. The idea was to pump air into a large cave for storage. The air pressure would power the electric turbines on demand. They figured it was overall more efficient for the wind turbines to run mechanical pumps rather than generate electricity to run the air pumps.
Not sure how closely this applies
You are right – Hawguy – I apologize for calling you a racist.
Your initial assessment that a cheap battery = cheap Chinese is sloppy logic – guilt by association. However, there is a big leap between that and racism.
I wonder if the energy per pound is higher for a solar panel then for the RTG? If so it might make sense to have a high energy phase (solar and RTG) and a low energy phase (only RTG.) That would be my guess – anybody have a better idea?
I know you are trying to be funny, but you are just showing that you are ignorant racist. Try not to be both at the same time. The batteries are Japanese.
Young Doc: No wonder this circuit failed. It says "Made in Japan".
Marty McFly: What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan.
Young Doc: Unbelievable.
It can happen one of the 2 ways.
First, the board could make a decision. The majority shareholders can’t block this. This is to prevent the majority shareholders screwing the minority shareholders. This normally happens in a cash merger. Stock is trading at $12.5 – we have an offer of $20 – not much of a decision.
Sometimes it’s a shareholder referendum. In this case the majority wins. This is when things are close – normally in a merger. Do I want to swap my 1 Compaq share for 0.6325 share of a Hewlett-Packard?
What am I missing? Other than the fact that the logistics of contacting a bunch of people who have stock shares in their IRA accounts and giving them an offer may be a lot of extra work for the private-equity buyer (but it should be pretty easy these days since most people have their portfolios with a relatively small number of brokerages; also, most shares are probably owned by institutions, not individuals anyway), I'm not seeing the downside.
The problem here is that you want to treat everybody fairly. When this has been done in the past the buyer would offer generous terms until they got to the 50% mark – at which point they effectively owned the firm – and which point they offered every else a much lower price. Take it or lump it.
This way it’s public. No sweetheart deals. Everybody gets the same price.
As to your larger point - sure, try to pick apart the ownership of Samsung or Formula One. Or read up on early American Railroad corporations.
But let’s start off with your example. You own Dell at $12.50 because you think Dell is worth $12.50. That’s fine. Michael Dell buys 51% of the company – no change in the fundamental underlying value of the company so it’s still $12.50. Then Michael announces that the new mission of Dell is provided him with a lavish lifestyle and that he will be confiscating all of the profits in various tricky joint ventures, sweat heart sales, and a lavish corporate lifestyle. Your stock falls to $1.00.
You suggest 95%, I use 51% - but in reality a holder of 20 to 30% can screw over the minority holders.
Your right – you could lump it. Sell the stock that you think is valued at $12.50 for a $1.00 and invest it someplace different. But how would that make you feel? Is the only option you have as an owner is to walk away?
One more point - you mentioned the “stereotypical one homeowner who refused to sell so now there's a giant building AROUND their tiny little house”. In this case you don’t own the house – you own a share of a house. Do you want to be trapped in that house?
I knew a family that owned a 1/64 share of a vacation home left to them by their grandparents. They had moved to the other cost. Scheduling was a headache – all 8 families wanted it in the summer. They had to pay 1/64 of the property taxes. They had to pay 1/64 of the repairs when the boyfriends of the 2nd cousins they had never meet had a college beer party in which they managed to sink the ski boat. etc.
There was a certain amount of infighting among the relatives. The richer folks who had moved away wanted to sell the place. The poor relatives nearby wanted to keep the place – but could not afford to but out those who wanted to sell.
So they sold the place and split the cash. It may not have been the best solution but it was a fair solution.
A takeover or merger works when company A offers to buy company B. Company A can offer some combination of stock in the new company, cash, or debt (less popular now). Company B then decides to take the deal or not.
So, let’s be specific. Private Equity firms tend not to have stock so they tend to offer cash. Dell is currently trading at $12.50 so they would offer more – let’s say $15 to $20 per share. The Dell Board has 3 options.
First, they can accept the bid. All of the old shareholders hand over their shares for cash. The second option is to refuse the offer. There are a lot of reasons to reject an offer. However, if the Buy Out firm is offering a cash price higher than the current stock price it would be hard to resist – bird in hand vs. 2 in the bush type of logic. Or the board could try to find a different suitor.
The trick is that the board must consider everybody’s position. The CEO / founding family / majority shareholder can’t squash a deal just because they would lose control. In this way the minority shareholder’s rights are protected.
As an aside, as to somebody trying to get a 50% share of the company – that is frowned upon. If one can gain effective control of a firm, the effective value of your shares go up and the real value of the minority shareholders go down. Many countries have rules that if you get effective control of a firm you have to put forward an offer for the whole firm.
Because it is a public company run for the good off all shareholders – and private equity buyouts is the one great defense against a complacent management or minority shareholder.
What if a firm will not be run for the benefit of the shareholder. Maybe the founding family likes the prestige and perks of “owning” a business. Maybe the CEO likes running a big firm – easier to justify the private jet. What are you to do then? Or, take the fillip argument. Dell right now trades at $12.50. Buyout firm offers $20 and you want to take it. But Michael Dell puts his foot down and says no – I want to stay on as CEO – what are you to do?
So the board must seriously consider all proposals but in front of it. Read up on Barbarians at the Gate. Or sit down and watch “Other’s People Money” – it’s fiction – but it’s a good start. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102609/
I think you are missing an important point – the Private Buyout Firm is the shareholder – they have bought out all of the other shareholders – hence the name.
The shareholder can’t sue themselves – so that’s out. If the firm goes bankrupt – the buyout firm loses their money, etc. (And contrary to popular belief they do have to put up a good chunk of change upfront.) The Buy Out firm wants the company to succeed. (There is a sub-class of Buy Out firms called vulture funds which dismember zombie firms – but that is another story.)
I think you are trying to zero on the fact that buy out firms prefer risker adventures – go big or go home. Bigger rewards but a bigger chance that one of the firms that purchased will go bankrupt.
Since the 80s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Predators'_Ball
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_gate
2012 Election coverage of Bain – Mitt Romney’s old stomping ground.
And I would be careful with the cynicism. Yes, there is room for fraud and most use financial engineering which makes more tax sense then economic sense. However they also do a lot of good. It’s sloppily logic to slap a villain mustache – in particular this case.
Dell is putting up a large chunk of his money – so it probably not driven by short term expectations.
So I think it’s one of two things . First, Dell has insider information – not in the sense of secret numbers – but a feel of the market and the economy – and obviously thinks Dell Inc. is underpriced. Or he has some radical idea for the company and does not want to be slowed down by having to explain things to the shareholders.
Don’t worry – I am sure Monster Audio cables is working on the problem as we speak.
If you want to see what happens when you do that all you have to do is jump across the pond to England. IIRC, the copyright defaults to creator. Each time a new writer introduces a new character rights get muddled. Terry Nation was for year able to keep Dalek’s off of Doctor Who until he got his fair share. This makes shared universe difficult. One can’t just grab a minor character in the Hulk – like Wolverine - and transfer them to the X-Men under a different writer.
And I am not saying your idea is a bad one – just that it would impacts. You just don’t see the big universe with multiple creators over there.
Neil Gaiman has done some good writing on the copyright dispute with Miracle Man. Check out his blog.
First, computers are expensive – or at least the rendering farms that ILM and Pixar uses. Second – and more importantly - CGI is expensive not because of the computers, but because of skilled artists.
And when we no longer need real actors – what do we have? Films generated by optimized algorithms – never having been touched by human hands?
I think it is going to be a very long time before computers supplement humans and garages can push out the majors. Look, I am amazed at what small indies can do now. Monsters is a great example – made for 800k http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/ Small shops can do an excellent level of quality if they narrowly focus their work.
Let’s say you wanted to do your own version of LotR can you tell computer to drop in 10,000 Orcs? Maybe – if you were going to use the generic Orc. But you probably wouldn’t want to do that – too much like paint by numbers – it would have the look and feel of the dozens of other fan flicks out there. And that is just one detail of thousands.
Blockbusters are going to want to fashion their own unique style which for the foreseeable future will take a lot of talented (and very expensive artists)
Find the parent of a young girl and ask them about Disney’s “Princess” line and how much they spend on it. Disney’s plan is to make ½ the profit on the lunch boxes, theme parks, dolls, etc.
As to the substitutes – eh. GoBots vs. Transformers. Amazon’s Fire vs. Apple IPad min. Little kids demand the “real” thing – not the generic.
And yes, Disney tries to move public domain stuff into the private domain – and that is one of the things I struggle with. Disney’s Rapunzel has some very specific new and creative points in term of story lines, music, visual style that I am o.k. being covered by IP.
Which is why I said I am still trying to sort things out. Disney et. al. are aggressive and have expensive lawyers – so that is going to deter some people – in particular smaller outfits. But in response to TrueKaiser - it did not stop 2 big budget Snow White films coming out last year.
Yes, the horror – just imagine a dark superman played by Nicolas Cage:
http://thepopcultist.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/how-producer-jon-peters-and-a-giant-spider-nearly-ruined-superman/
Now – on a more serious note – I like seeing big budget movies based on comics, which only makes economic sense if they can sell the “official” trademarked merchandise.
On the other hand I don’t like our culture perpetually controlled by large corporations. Honestly, I am a bit more offended that Marvel / DC has a joint trademark on “super heroes”. Still trying to pick my way though this.
I would be interested in seeing a citation for that. The IRS has a very broad notion of what is “valuable”. IIRC the IRS treats airline miles as taxable when it's traded. Why does a bitcoin have less inherent value than that? I don’t see the reasoning.
The article does mention mass drivers – it’s under the coil or rail gun section – and he does admit that he gives them short shrift – maybe to be followed up.
I know there is a difference between anonymity and privacy,
I know that anonymity is disappearing due to technology.
I just don’t the idea of a all seeing eye tracking me everywhere – be it state or private. I find the trends disturbing. What I am searching for is an answer – a balance.