Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes • Hacker News Board

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#151

Post by vithlani » Fri, May 06, 2016, 4:50 AM UTC

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #117

lewis500 wrote: post #73

This reporter is credulous, because the Guardian is just awful. "Barry Chang barely made it into the lobby when Apple’s security team surrounded and escorted him off the property. “They said ‘you cannot come in, you’re not invited’. After that I left and have not gone back,” said an exasperated Chang." Uh huh. Yeah I bet it happened just like that. What buffoon of a reporter prints a politician's self-serving and inc…

Did you also notice that the way the Guardian wrote that paragraph makes it sound like Apple turned away the mayor, when in fact he was not the mayor at the time he went to Apple unannounced. I cannot read that any other way except to intentionally mislead people for a greater impact on the story. I really hate this kind of journalism. "The last time the mayor of Cupertino walked into Apple" Yes, he is the current ma…

I have increasingly been noticing such writing from the Guardian.

Witness this: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/05/republican-no...

It is so damn clear that this guy is the nominee that even his most obstinate, pig-headed and ESTABLISHMENT funded opponent has withdrawn -- and yet the Guardian says he faces a "difficult" path.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#152

Post by dragontamer » Fri, May 06, 2016, 6:36 AM UTC

whatok wrote: post #100

kuschku wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a solution how you can get both. The German city of Wolfsburg, and the state of Niedersachsen have done it with VW. The solution: You just buy a large amount of shares of the companies that are started in your city. Municipalities get a far larger share of the profits directly, politicians have an incentive to ensure companies are profitable, and companies can’t avoid paying for the infrastructure they use.

This is an awful idea. Governments do not have the expertise to participate as an psuedo-activist investor. On top of that, what happens when the city's crown jewel goes bankrupt and those shares go to zero? Diversification is key. There's a reason why there were so many pension changes post-Enron. It's not good for individuals to be so heavily concentrated into a single company and it sure is not good for cities.

> Governments do not have the expertise to participate as an psuedo-activist investor.

Don't have an American bias when people share their cultures from around the world.

There are a lot of governments, and all of our experience with the American government basically means jack diddly with respect to the German government.

With that said, I do share your concerns, but I'm not going to make claims about a government I never visited and never worked with in my life that's roughly 10 time-zones away.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#153

Post by imgabe » Fri, May 06, 2016, 12:24 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #147

imgabe wrote: post #65

Slightly off topic, but is that really the design for Apple's new headquarters, a giant ring? So if you want to get from a place on one side to the other, you have to walk halfway around the circle or cut through the giant park in the middle? That seems horribly inefficient.

You might need to think more about what "efficient" actually means. Apple did.

If you can move in a 2 dimensional plane, such as inside a regular building, you can go in a straight line between any two points.

If you're constricted to moving around the circumference of a circle, you necessarily have to go in a curved line.

Curved lines are longer than straight lines.

So the average distance between any two points is necessarily going to be longer in the Apple building than in a normal building with the same floor area.

Add to that, normal buildings have cores where the utilities are run in the center and radiate out to the edges. Running wiring, plumbing, and ductwork around a circle will involve miles of additional material that would otherwise be unnecessary.

I think maybe you and Apple have a definition of efficient that differs from the rest of the population.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#154

Post by ascagnel_ » Fri, May 06, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #99

Regardless of the politics, Apple and Google and all the other Peninsula companies should be willing to help fund public transit because it is directly affecting their ability to recruit employees.

Public transit has a huge NIMBY problem. It raises value in a radius around transit stops, but decreases the value of anything along it's route.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#155

Post by whatok » Fri, May 06, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #152

whatok wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an awful idea. Governments do not have the expertise to participate as an psuedo-activist investor. On top of that, what happens when the city's crown jewel goes bankrupt and those shares go to zero? Diversification is key. There's a reason why there were so many pension changes post-Enron. It's not good for individuals to be so heavily concentrated into a single company and it sure is not good for cities.

> Governments do not have the expertise to participate as an psuedo-activist investor. Don't have an American bias when people share their cultures from around the world. There are a lot of governments, and all of our experience with the American government basically means jack diddly with respect to the German government. With that said, I do share your concerns, but I'm not going to make claims about a government I…

There's no American bias on this. If the world's activist investors employ extremely highly paid and numerous staff and maybe get things 50/50, what type of staff will a government employ that can do better?

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#156

Post by whatok » Fri, May 06, 2016, 2:41 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #128

whatok wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an awful idea. Governments do not have the expertise to participate as an psuedo-activist investor. On top of that, what happens when the city's crown jewel goes bankrupt and those shares go to zero? Diversification is key. There's a reason why there were so many pension changes post-Enron. It's not good for individuals to be so heavily concentrated into a single company and it sure is not good for cities.

If all big companies in a city go down, the city will suffer anyway – investing in the large companies in your city can’t make things worse. The German government has done it for several decades, with great success – you should take a look at their model.

My understanding is that Wolfsburg was built in order to house Volkswagen workers. There is a massive difference in planning a city around a specific need versus a well-established city investing in companies. While I still do not agree with governments investing in companies, I will say that it makes more sense if you are planning an entire city around it.

In all other cases, cities investing in companies are either going to take on a VC role which I'd very much argue that they are not capable of performing well (and introduces so much room for corruption) or will be investing in mature companies and likely without the balance sheet to make a dent as far as voting power goes. I don't see how either leads to anything productive.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#157

Post by talmand » Fri, May 06, 2016, 3:05 PM UTC

djschnei wrote: post #122

talmand wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If failure to pay property taxes means you vacating the property after government seizure, then you don't own the land anyway. Threat of seizure is a serious problem for a business, why not force them to pay twice?

uuuuuh because it's immoral? You're saying "well we already threaten them with violence/guns to pay once, might as well do it twice" - I shouldn't have to explain my objections.

I'm not sure you understand the point of my comment. I was sarcastically agreeing with you.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#158

Post by kafkaesq » Fri, May 06, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #134

kafkaesq wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot read that any other way except to intentionally mislead people for a greater impact on the story. It was a bit careless on their part. Most likely the author simply didn't know when the uninvited visit occurred didn't think to double check. In general I don't see much benefit in imputing malicious motives to others, when far simpler explanations will suffice.

This would be a reasonable approach if we weren't talking about a piece of published journalism. That makes it both more unlikely that it was accidental (due to a higher bar of fact-checking), and more blameworthy even if it was due to negligence.

What can I say?

If you're looking for bad actors and intentional wrongdoers behind every mishap in the world... then that's the kind of world you'll end up living in.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#159

Post by PavlovsCat » Fri, May 06, 2016, 6:56 PM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #133

PavlovsCat wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, an ad-hominem and a straw man, and of course total avoidance of the core point. What a surprise.

What? There's no ad-hominem there. And what straw man? Chomsky claimed in the quoted sentence that things like huge corporate profits were not reported, your parent post says that's incorrect and they're often reported. Maybe he's right, maybe you're right, but there's no straw man. Sometimes I feel like people have browser plugins that randomly pluck sins from the Wikipedia page for logical fallacies.

> What? There's no ad-hominem there

"oh boy, a Chomsky quote"? That implies no connotation there to you? There is no ad hominem you notice then.

> Chomsky claimed in the quoted sentence that things like huge corporate profits were not reported, your parent post says that's incorrect and they're often reported

Does that address the central point, or does it take one sentence out of context, then takes it literally without seeing the woods for the trees? Call it a straw man, call it not getting the point and splitting irrelevant hairs, same difference. Yes, all sorts of things do get reported, nope, doesn't change anything about the gist of the quote.

Here's a random comment from you to explain it better:

> your remarks are no different than a 7 year old putting down somebody for throwing like a girl.

Does that mean that's what they are literally saying, saying word by word the exact same sentence any 7 year old would say? Is the discussion about throwing? You didn't say "similar to", you said "no difference", after all. It gets worse, notice that you said "7 year old", not "roughly 7 years old". So a person who is exact 7 years old, no day, no minute, not even a second, not even tenth of a second older... but hey, it would take too long for any child to say a few words while they are still exactly 7, we could even wonder if that exact moment can even be found. So that clearly makes no sense.

Imagine getting such a response of someone either acting dumb or not getting it, and when you call it out as such, you get MORE games and a downvote. You would notice the problem quite easily, why don't you notice it here? Maybe because you don't even feel forced to seriously think about it; the difference is not that the Chomsky quote has been dealt with even just one iota more seriously or more honestly, the difference is in where the status quo lies, and what power doesn't care about or even supports. When you are on its side, one can get away with "oh boy, a Chomsky quote" and other such nonsense. Just like you could accuse someone of throwing like a girl around jocks no questions asked. Nobody will ever take you to task for your response to me. It's not like you just called anyone a racial slur, you just supported someone dismissing words with utter sophistry. Nothing to even skip a beat over, right? And the interwebs is positively littered with that, that's kind of one of the reactions Chomsky evokes. You might call him a litmus test.

And you know, I said "ad-hominem and straw man" because I didn't want to insult anyone's intelligence with this rant. It's not that I can't back up what I say in however much detail you need, I just find it unproductive. Just like I tend to collect and re-post quotes that say things I agree with; which I could say in my own words, in more words and less elegantly. Why do that, when there is a "quote for the occasion"? When people interpret a quote as saying "this is true because X says it", that's their problem, I don't operate that way.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#160

Post by rfrey » Fri, May 06, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #159

rfrey wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? There's no ad-hominem there. And what straw man? Chomsky claimed in the quoted sentence that things like huge corporate profits were not reported, your parent post says that's incorrect and they're often reported. Maybe he's right, maybe you're right, but there's no straw man. Sometimes I feel like people have browser plugins that randomly pluck sins from the Wikipedia page for logical fallacies.

> What? There's no ad-hominem there "oh boy, a Chomsky quote"? That implies no connotation there to you? There is no ad hominem you notice then. > Chomsky claimed in the quoted sentence that things like huge corporate profits were not reported, your parent post says that's incorrect and they're often reported Does that address the central point, or does it take one sentence out of context, then takes it literally wit…

OK, well in my opinion if your complaint was that the original poster was misinterpreting or misrepresenting Chomsky, I think it would have been more helpful to say that, and maybe to reiterate the central point that you (through the Chomsky quote) were trying to convey.

To me, the "oh boy, a Chomsky quote" telegraphed the writer's bias against Chomsky, and the follow-on sentence showed what the writer read in your quote. Bias or dislike for a writer is not ad-hominem: it's bias and dislike. And the interpretation of the sentence was fair: a central theme of Chomsky is that the media acts to maintain the status quo, through selective reporting. And a fair criticism of Chomsky is that observation shows a fair bit of reporting on many sides of many issues.

That's quite a bit different then the comment you pulled from me (posted minutes after this one, and a pretty good indicator that I'm probably too cranky to be using the Internet this evening), since the throw-like-a-girl quote makes no sense outside of its context: you have to manufacture context for it to make sense. The Chomsky snippet you object to makes perfect sense to anyone who's read Chomsky, and even if not, the poster can hardly be accused of trying to sneak something past us when the full quote is right above it.

I like Chomsky: I think he's smart and observant and courageous. But that interpretation was what I got out of the quote as well, even though I'll bet we're pretty aligned on many issues. So if that wasn't what you meant I think you would have been better served with a response that actually said the point you were trying to make. Saying "ad hominem!" just because somebody doesn't like Chomsky doesn't serve you or your argument.