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I Worked for a Criminal Organization

openmonstervision.github.io

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Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#171

Post by henvic »

Kaiyou wrote: post #155
jackcodes wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that taxes ultimately don’t result in lost schools and hospitals, as it’s never that 1:1, but do you ever think you could have cost your country a hospital, a new road, or a new warhead or whatever?

Taxes are pretty much theft at gunpoint, so I imagine nobody losing sleep over dealing with it in an appropriate way.

On point. Tax is extortion. If you don't pay, they'll send the thugs after you. Try to stand your ground and they escalate the violence up to murder.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#172

Post by henvic »

speedplane wrote: post #103
scandox wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a funny one because it's potentially one of the most serious crimes. You're stealing from everybody, undermining the basis of trust in the entire system in which we live and probably in the long term eroding the basis of democracy. You're creating a non-level playing field. On the other hand, black and grey market activity are also I think quite an important counter-balance to the possibility of totalitarian gov…

> It's a funny one because [Tax Evasion is] potentially one of the most serious crimes. You're stealing from everybody, undermining the basis of trust in the entire system in which we live and probably in the long term eroding the basis of democracy. You're creating a non-level playing field. This is true, and in addition, it's a very unequal crime. To properly evade taxes and get away with it, you need professional…

Tax evasion is not even a real crime. Tax is stealing from someone. Tax evasion and avoidance are great for society and we would be poorer if people didn't do it. Virtually all tax money usually goes to wars, warmongers, and the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats. Virtually nothing returns to society as services.

When people find a way to pay fewer taxes, it means money is not only not going to wars, but also being able to be used for better things for everyone.

http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#173

Post by ikeboy »

saber6 wrote: post #169
ikeboy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no relationship to any of the entities involved. I'm just pointing out how clueless OP is. And I was somewhat taken aback at how much pushback I got based on people completely misreading the article. It's one thing to disagree with me over what exactly is legal, it's another to start asserting that the company itself was running spamming services in the absence of any evidence. That surprised me. The governmen…

This entity was a known spam shop. It took a while but someone finally put together a model showing the (what were thought to be) hidden relationships. Don’t defend fraud artists dude.

I'll defend whoever I like when someone makes incorrect claims.

Although here I'm mainly trying to clarify the law. People taking OP at face value will come away with a very incorrect impression of what's legal and not.

Also, OP didn't "put together a model" exposing hidden relationships. Every company they named was already in the indictment from last May.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#174

Post by TeMPOraL »

athenot wrote: post #163
TeMPOraL wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the only one. And don't even get me started on adtech. I share your sentiment 100%. See [0]. -- [0] - http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html .

This is a great article. > I remember reading about cases of scientific papers that were advertisements pretending to be research work. I'll update this point when I find some actual examples. Not exactly the same but related: soda manufacturers have been stressing the correlation between inactivity and diabetes, and in the process sliding in the message that sugar intake is not that big of a factor. That messaging g…

Thanks. It's related enough; if you know of a decent article on the topic, I'll happily link to it.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#175

Post by TeMPOraL »

normalnorm wrote: post #144
TeMPOraL wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the only one. And don't even get me started on adtech. I share your sentiment 100%. See [0]. -- [0] - http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html .

Excellent blog post. You mention several things that we are so used to, that we don't even notice the abuse, such as the polluting of culture by association of works of art with commercial brands through relentless advertising. To this day, I associate Carmina Burana with cheap male cologne. Another one for you: in Berlin, buildings under renovation are allowed to place gigantic ads on the scaffolding. I imagine the…

Thanks. I'll be adding this to the article.

I've heard opinions that something similar is happening in my country too (Poland), and it would explain some strategically placed buildings in Kraków that can never seem to finish being renovated, and that also happen to feature ridiculously large ads on the scaffolding.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#176

Post by nkrisc »

spottybanana wrote: post #151
nkrisc wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is when people try to stack-rank the "badness" of crimes. "Is bankrupting a thousand people through fraud worse than killing someone?" The answer is: it doesn't matter which is worse. Both destroy lives in different ways. Fraud and spam are crimes that ruin lives in their own ways.

> The answer is: it doesn't matter which is worse. Both destroy lives in different ways. Though it is very natural for people to think "how bad I am" or "how bad is that company compared to the other companies" and so on. Also in the end the justice system has to sentence these crimes and there has to be some kind of "badness" metric that should be seen as fair by the general public. I don't think this "they are all…

Sure, I understand why people want to. I just think it's a futile effort. In order to determine whether bankrupting 1000 people is worse than killing 1 person you have to quantify all those variables, including the value of a human life (an actuary will gladly do that for you). By some measures, say economic impact, killing a single person may not matter at all, depending on who they are. What people want is to quantify morality. Good luck.

However what we do see that correlates to some "badness" metric is the punishment we mete out for crimes. Years of imprisonment is a simple, linear measure that can be used to measure crimes against one another.

You see it all the time. So and so killed a person and got X years in prison, but this other guy ran a Ponzi scheme and got Y years in prison. Whether X is greater than Y, and your viewpoint, will determine if you think that's fair or not. But my original point is I think it's a rather pointless determination to begin with because it isn't really telling you anything. It doesn't answer the question of whether one crime is worse than another because that's fundamentally a philosophical question that I don't think can be measured.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#177

Post by TeMPOraL »

arethuza wrote: post #134
nkrisc wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is when people try to stack-rank the "badness" of crimes. "Is bankrupting a thousand people through fraud worse than killing someone?" The answer is: it doesn't matter which is worse. Both destroy lives in different ways. Fraud and spam are crimes that ruin lives in their own ways.

I suspect that if someone did bankrupt a thousand people through fraud you are going to have a number of suicides on their hands.

Agreed. If you account for second-order effects, the result could look pretty grim. That's why I'm of the opinion that some white-collar crimes can absolutely be worse than violent ones - including murder - and that they should be punished accordingly.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#178

Post by wpietri »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #98
wpietri wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> criminality should be obvious to a general person This standard would work for about 5 minutes before a criminal complicated things enough that their crime was no longer obviously wrong.

Indeed. Also, with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke: Any sufficiently complicated business model is indistinguishable from fraud.

That's beautiful. And so very true.

I think the very best liars and fraudsters are the ones who they themselves don't know what's true. And what better way to not know than complexity!

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#179

Post by missingrib »

wongarsu wrote: post #122
spottybanana wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a funny one because it's potentially one of the most serious crimes. No. How about serial killers, real theft etc. > You're stealing from everybody No, tax evasion is not theft. It is primarily your earned income where you pay taxes from. Tax evasion is tax evasion, no reason to confuse it with other crimes. Think about it this way: easiest way to avoid taxes is not to work at all. Are all those who are slacki…

> It is primarily your earned income where you pay taxes from. Income you were able to earn because infrastructure allows businesses to operate, police forces protect their property, physical safety and the shipment of goods, a court system allows peaceful resolution of conflicts, armed forces protect you from invasion, fire departments prevent entire cities from burning down by putting fires out early etc. Taking th…

The "benefits" were forced upon you without your consent, though. And some of those are blatantly misleading. For instance, most of the defense budget isn't spent on protecting the US from invasion. Most companies protect their property by hiring security guards, not calling the police.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#180

Post by breischl »

dcustodio wrote: post #112
hackermailman wrote: post #13

Not uncommon in some cities in Canada to find out you're working for a criminal outfit if writing point of sale/restaurant software where they want you to produce one receipt for the customer and a different one for the restaurant or salon or shady car mechanic that then pockets the unreported tax aka a 'zapper'. Profitek was busted once, InfoSpec Systems, zappers are in high demand

Years ago the Portuguese government encouraged consumers to submit their receipts in a portal and each submitted receipt was a entry to a raffle where the prizes were luxury cars. This way they could match the receipts from consumers with the ones reported by the shops. It felt wrong to put citizens policing the shops but it worked.

At a different level that's part of the reason receipts exist, and why you occasionally see things like "if we don't give you a receipt your order is free."

In those cases it's typically about preventing the employees from not ringing up the sale and just pocketing the cash. The receipt proves that the order was entered into the system. Same idea, just a difference of who's stealing from whom.

Hm, I suppose that scam is less of a problem in the era of credit cards.

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