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Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

reuters.com

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Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#151

Post by krisroadruck »

kalleboo wrote: post #140
krisroadruck wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you could allow them to leave without taxing them 50% of their wealth on the way out the door, a lot of them would go. You pretty much hit the nail on the head in 2 directions. People are not given the option to vote with thier feet or their dollars. I know I wont ever need social security (if it even still exists by the time I want to stop making money) and yet I can not opt out of it. Why? The reason why is…

You're talking about the US now right? The US is a special kind of fucked up. No way I'm going to defend that, I'm Swedish. We have safety nets and self-funded public pensions (you can even choose the investment).

Indeed I am. Good catch. Yeah Sweden has a better deal all around. And you guys even have decent pervasive internet!

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#152

Post by TeMPOraL »

zzzzzzzzzman wrote: post #146
DasIch wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concerned citizens do pool their funds together to pay for their own defence, they do this with a system called "government".

You are correct. So then why do those same citizens yell at me to pay my taxes, when I am not concerned as they are, and don't want the sub-par and expensive defense services they are providing me :)

Because you're benefiting from those sub-par services anyway. They're still better than none at all.

There is always an option to unsubscribe from living in a society - it's called "renunciation of citizenship".

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#153

Post by mafribe »

robert_foss wrote: post #26
edblarney wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So, they want to encourage ride-sharing in the original meaning - carpooling. Not the "taxi company in disguise" meaning. Sounds fair enough to me." I'm not necessarily a fan of Uber, but this is ridiculous. If 'taxis' are legal in Sweden then there's no reason Uber should not be able to operate so long as they are obeying the laws . Ostensibly, this is about a specific issue - distance travelled and the lack of abi…

As a Swede: 1) Cheating on taxes is quite literally stealing from every other person in the country. That being said I think there is a lot of small scale cheating going, especially for small cash-driven businesses. 2) There's no hostility towards entrepreneurs as far as I've seen it, quite the opposite. However people in general do seem to realize that there is a very real tradeoff between business interests and the…

   You can't have 0% corporate tax 
   and free healthcare and education.
Sure you can. You tax more elsewhere, e.g. higher VAT, higher income tax, higher captial gains, higher giraffe tax ... The possibilities are infinite.

Taxation is ultimately a social tool to organise how people work as a group/nation, who does what etc.

I think Estonia has or had 0% corporate tax.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#154

Post by sgift »

zzzzzzzzzman wrote: post #79
dvdhnt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Then, another monkey from the group refuses to give up one of his bananas. How is this refusal equal to stealing?" You're leaving out the veterinarian who accepts a payment of bananas equal to the number of monkeys within the group. That'd be fine if the refusing monkey didn't go on to accept healthcare from said vet. But since he does, the other monkeys must chip in more banana to meet the required payment since no…

"But since he does..." This is a fatal assumption to make ;) I personally pay income taxes, do not have health insurance, and on the off times I require medical/dental care, I go to a private medical practice. It is therefore immoral to force me to pay for a service I am choosing not to use :)

> It is therefore immoral to force me to pay for a service I am choosing not to use :)

Only if you define moral as "everyone for himself, weaker ones be damned" and sure that's your privilege to hope (and vote) for, but not a society I'd want to live in.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#155

Post by ionised »

zzzzzzzzzman wrote: post #114
ionised wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That other monkey is free to leave and go far away, and not reap the benefits afforded to the group of monkeys when they pool their assets.

I 100000% agree! The only issue is that on this Earth, far away = Antarctica, Bouvet Island, a barge in the ocean.... Surely there needs to be some middle ground where I can live in a relatively hospitable place without having to worry about being placed under surveillance and being forced to pay large income and property taxes ;)

Those places are called tax havens, but they still operate on taxes paid by the regular citizenry, which is unfair.

You are unfortunately stuck sharing your respective country with other people, and if you ever use a road, a doctor, an emergency service, have a standing army or series of power stations and central banks that keep the economy chugging along, you should absolutely pay what the people consider a fair share of taxes.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#156

Post by TeMPOraL »

zzzzzzzzzman wrote: post #113
kartan wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One monkey says to a group of other monkeys, A monkey can live for himself, in a modern society no human is an island. You need extremely complex systems on place: Communications, education, law, law enforcement, infrastructures, etc. Millions of human beings in a complex society are not 5 monkeys. I understand your point, but I think that it doesn't apply at this scale.

I greatly appreciate your accurate and civil response! I think it is achievable at some scale. The right number of course is somewhere between 5 monkeys on an island, and 7 billion monkeys on a planet. You could conceivably take your money, buy a boat, load it up with 20 years worth of solar panels, greenhouse materials, medicine, guns, etc... and you can boat out to a cold desolate rock in the ocean like Bouvet Isla…

> You could conceivably take your money, buy a boat, load it up with 20 years worth of solar panels, greenhouse materials, medicine, guns, etc... and you can boat out to a cold desolate rock in the ocean like Bouvet Island, and you can live a complete life of anarchy and no taxes, etc etc.

And over time, the panels will deteriorate and break, medicine will run out, guns will rust, explosives in ammo will go bad (assuming people haven't already used it all up trying to kill each other). Then, the Anarchy Island will quickly revert to hunter-gatherer/early agrarian level of advancement and quality-of-life.

I understand that you'd love not to pay for things you disagree with, but what alternative do you propose? I think America itself is a perfect example showing that education, security and healthcare do not work well when privatized.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#157

Post by jazzyk »

pyrale wrote: post #109
toss1941 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully public facilities like gyms and pools are just one brand of soda, as it were. Some people don't like Pepsi, they'd rather drink Coca Cola, or put more plainly at least go to gyms and pools where the people have an appreciation of the cost of good things. There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on. If you are subsidi…

> There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on. And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it. Maybe the problem is that you decided that freedom is dead presidents printed using green ink.

>And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it

So, what are you proposing? That everything is funded from taxes, so that people who make less money could enjoy the same things as people who make a lot?

This is called communism, and has failed miserably (see Venezuela, Cuba, etc).

There is an acceptable level of sharing (healthcare, defense, police), but swimming pools? What about spas?

Equality is all about equality of opportunity, not equality of consumption.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#158

Post by sctb »

laughingman123 wrote: post #102

These anti neoliberal nuts don't understand , for them taxation is just stealing .. They collectively bury their heads and ignore that any business they do is possible because of collective efforts of the human community before them, from invention of fire to quantum theory. And enabling people to study and have healthcare has overall positive benifita on society . How many scientists, engineers have we missed becaus…

> These anti neoliberal nuts don't understand...

If a comment starts like this you can be sure it's not a good one for Hacker News. This site is not a platform for political and ideological warfare, and this account has been abusing it primarily for this purpose, so we've banned it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13079647 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#159

Post by [deleted] »

zzzzzzzzzman wrote: post #42

"1) Cheating on taxes is quite literally stealing from every other person in the country. That being said I think there is a lot of small scale cheating going, especially for small cash-driven businesses." I disagree. One monkey says to a group of other monkeys, "we all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have and place it into a central banana disbursement fund". Then, another monkey from the group ref…

[deleted]

Re: Sweden proposes ban on ride-sharing services that make profits

#160

Post by dang »

zzzzzzzzzman wrote: post #42

"1) Cheating on taxes is quite literally stealing from every other person in the country. That being said I think there is a lot of small scale cheating going, especially for small cash-driven businesses." I disagree. One monkey says to a group of other monkeys, "we all need to take one of the 5 bananas we individually have and place it into a central banana disbursement fund". Then, another monkey from the group ref…

Please don't. This the kind of thing we mean when we ask people not to post generic ideological tangents to HN. We're not going to get anything useful out of the 30,000th "taxation is theft" flamewar.

People who feel passionately for or against these generic positions need to contain themselves on HN, because the railing and ranting they lead to is inimical to thoughtful, curious discussion—the kind we want.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13079647 and marked it off-topic.

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