Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

#81

Post by knowitnone3 »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #65
ArnoVW wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a pattern where criminal organizations fill governance gaps rather than starting as genuine governments. The Yakuza did this opportunistically at certain historical moments. Hamas is a similar example (not a criminal organisation, but..) , allthough they are more of a institution-building than the Yakuza ever was.

Mafias generally fill the same functions of the government but for the underworld: providing "protection", extracting "taxes", enforcing rules via the use of violence, and so on.

[dead]

Re: Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

#83

Post by M95D »

tessierashpool9 wrote: post #67
arjie wrote: post #17

It is an outrageously cool thing to give money for an infrastructure project. They must have some faith that the government can deliver on something with $3.5 million. That would be two public toilets in SF, one toilet of which actually cost $300k in paperwork and so on despite two local businessmen signing up to have the work done.

Plot twist: the donation is from the owner of the company doing the infra project with the intention to launder money.

1) I never bought/sold gold, but AFAIK, that doesn't need to be laundered.

2) Even if the company receives the money, they must still do the work. Only the profit minus taxes is recovered from the total donated value.

Re: Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

#86

Post by rcbdev »

tessierashpool9 wrote: post #67
arjie wrote: post #17

It is an outrageously cool thing to give money for an infrastructure project. They must have some faith that the government can deliver on something with $3.5 million. That would be two public toilets in SF, one toilet of which actually cost $300k in paperwork and so on despite two local businessmen signing up to have the work done.

Plot twist: the donation is from the owner of the company doing the infra project with the intention to launder money.

The real twist about this is that reddit.com has seemingly breached containment, and it is dragging down the writing quality in this thread.

Re: Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

#87

Post by worthless-trash »

yreg wrote: post #46
worthless-trash wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I imagine they could trivially track them, like most modern gold bars sold/collected in this volume.

There is no mystery, the donor just donated the money anonymously. All that means is that the city won't publish the name of the donor. It doesn't mean "no one knows who has paid for this".

Ah, thanks for the correction.

Re: Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

#88

Post by wildzzz »

Throaway1982 wrote: post #75
mhitza wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that why the American tourists in Europe always ask if tap water is drinkable?

No, its cause a lot of American tap water isn't drinkable lol

No, it's because a lot of the places Americans travel to like Mexico and the Caribbean have tap water that makes you sick.

Re: Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

#89

Post by Pay08 »

chmod775 wrote: post #63
Pay08 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it difficult? I assume the proportion of infrastructure experts would stay the same.

Because you now have more infrastructure than people to pay for and maintain it. As population density decreases, the people that remain are using oversized infrastructure. The relationship between required maintenance and amount of usage is far from linear. For a lot of infrastructure being underused means additional maintenance procedures become necessary. A way to combat this is to move people and condense the pop…

I've assumed that moving people in order to consolidate infrastructure use was already modus operandi in countries that need to worry about these things in the short term, but it makes sense that it doesn't work that way.

Re: Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

#90

Post by protocolture »

simianparrot wrote: post #70
ArnoVW wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a pattern where criminal organizations fill governance gaps rather than starting as genuine governments. The Yakuza did this opportunistically at certain historical moments. Hamas is a similar example (not a criminal organisation, but..) , allthough they are more of a institution-building than the Yakuza ever was.

[flagged]

Hamas is used as a byword for the paramilitary organisation Al Qassam in foreign media. The Hamas government outside of Al Qassam is almost boringly normal. Like the Gaza Health Ministry is part of the Hamas Government.
Post reply on HN