Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm • Hacker News Board

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#311

Post by sgt101 » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #87

anigbrowl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but you weren't sold a moral paradigm to stuff corporate coffers? Your argument rests on the premise that you're a free thinker and everyone else is brainwashed. This conceit seems to be very common among libertarians.

Governments are bound by the international market of other governments. They have to balance their taxation morality claims with incentivizing investment to have anything to tax at all. They’ve missed that balance by a long shot. Oops. Some places have attractive laws that attract investment. Some people lobbied for those specific laws and wrote them themselves. Think about how that happens. I would do the same as so…

Napoleon says "no". You do that and then one day 300000 people show up with guns. The lesson of modernity is that citizen armies beat all other forces hands down every time; contractors may be incredibly skilled but at the end of the day they are not fighting for the future. This was what the Prussians found and the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Taxation isn't about morality, it's about functionality. It's about economic efficiency and social management.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#312

Post by colordrops » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:22 PM UTC

Buttes wrote: post #303

colordrops wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She won due to superdelegates and DNC corruption as well as media capture. The fact that Bernie did as well as he did in the face of this is a testament to how bad of a candidate she was.

Why should the superdelegates have flipped their votes against the popular vote? This makes no sense. The only way Bernie would have won is if he convinced superdelegates from states that came out for Clinton to go against the popular vote in their state and erroneously vote for him. He still would have lost with no superdelegates, or if their votes were awarded to their state's primary winner. Fantasy land.

Superdelegates shouldn't have existed in the first place. It's antidemocratic.

You are the epitomy of what happened during the election - bullying and deciding on how the election should go for others.

All the media and political establishment took Hillary's side. If they treated them equally he would have won.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

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Post by ianai » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

Buttes wrote: post #229

erentz wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair a lot were clamoring behind Bernie Sanders. But Hillary bent the DNC to do some fairly corrupt shit and so you got Trump. The democrats are still trapped by this neolib-technocrat-west-wing fantasy-land where the best person at debating wins regardless of the fact they don’t actually stand for anything.

>they don’t actually stand for anything. I've met lots of young women who adore Hillary and would beg to differ. The woman is a feminist icon.

Not to neglect that she actually did win the popular vote. The majority is being held to the beliefs of the minority.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#314

Post by Buttes » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #312

Buttes wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the superdelegates have flipped their votes against the popular vote? This makes no sense. The only way Bernie would have won is if he convinced superdelegates from states that came out for Clinton to go against the popular vote in their state and erroneously vote for him. He still would have lost with no superdelegates, or if their votes were awarded to their state's primary winner. Fantasy land.

Superdelegates shouldn't have existed in the first place. It's antidemocratic. You are the epitomy of what happened during the election - bullying and deciding on how the election should go for others. All the media and political establishment took Hillary's side. If they treated them equally he would have won.

Sanders would still have lost if there were no superdelegates.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

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Post by bousaid » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #79

Since there are no top level comments putting this out for probably obvious reasons, here is a supportive comment for the article. This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of ru…

It’s interesting. In other third world countries like Tunisia (my mother’s homeland) income inequality is even worse, yet the lower classes are content with where they are. In America it seems like everyone is crawling to “make it.”

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

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Post by toyg » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

paranoia101 wrote: post #205

pohl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t the reporter behind the Panama Papers killed by a car bomb?

Yah! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb...

There is a misunderstanding: Daphne Caruana Galizia was the leading journalist on the Panama Papers in Malta.

The main source for the PP revelations was the Süddeutsche Zeitung (same guys as this time) and lot of other people were involved all over the world; Caruana Galizia was only one of them, not "the" person.

As far as I know, no reporter from the SZ, the Guardian and other ICIJ members was harmed after the PP revelations. Malta is a very shady place, very close to Southern Italy for political culture.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

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Post by forapurpose » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:24 PM UTC

20after4 wrote: post #141

forapurpose wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should be doing is insulating the government from outside influence. We should be insulating it from the influence of money, not of voters. The influence of voters is the foundation of democracy and legitimate government.

This seems impossible as long as people love money it will be a powerful tool that can exert influence over politicians one way or another.

Of course we can't do it perfectly. We can't eliminate murder either. But we can greatly reduce it.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#318

Post by dang » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

vonnik wrote: post #282

thesagan wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very shady looking into anyone's comment history and bring up other supposed dirt and use it like that. Smear tactic. Now you don't look so good either.

DELETED based on moderator feedback.

This breaks both the HN guideline against personal attacks ('be civil') and the one against insinuations of astroturfing and shillage without evidence. Someone having an opposing opinion is not evidence. Please don't do this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The rest of the internet may be losing its mind; that doesn't mean we need to. Commenters here can do better than this.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#319

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:27 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #79

Since there are no top level comments putting this out for probably obvious reasons, here is a supportive comment for the article. This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of ru…

>People already have a sense that things aren't fair. There's a reason why tax reform is polling so poorly. There's a reason why most of the country thinks taxes should be higher on the wealthy and corporations. They have a feeling that they are not seeing the rise of productivity in their own life, and they want justice.

There's also just the sheer sense of stagnation. I get mildly enraged every time I look at America's idea of a middle-school and high-school curriculum, then compare it to what people learn abroad. How is it that "everyone else" has more leisure, suffers less stress, and still winds up doing harder things than Americans more easily? America has started thinking like a less developed country, that productivity arises from suffering.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#320

Post by IsaacL » Sun, Nov 05, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #223

grondilu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't we all have the right to a basic level of livelihood? You have the right to it, but you're not entitled to it. To me, having the right to do something means you can't be prosecuted for doing it. It doesn't mean that society must help you.

Ok, let's set aside for a moment your personal politics, since compassion is clearly not a concept you're likely to grasp right now. As a practical matter, what do you think happens to any society that suffers a class divide severe enough that (a) the majority of the citizenry ends up in the underclass and (b) being in the underclass sucks badly enough to really piss people off? Societies need to take care of their c…

"As a practical matter, what do you think happens to any society that suffers a class divide severe enough that (a) the majority of the citizenry ends up in the underclass and (b) being in the underclass sucks badly enough to really piss people off?"

It has a violent revolution. But your question contains an unstated assumption: that capitalism leads to "the majority of the citizenry [ending] up in the underclass". Feudal societies saw most people living in poverty. Communist societies saw most people living in poverty. Properly functioning capitalist societies have a healthy middle class, and a tolerable standard of living even for people at the bottom.

"So you can pontificate about the ideological merits of extreme Libertarianism all you want, but in practice it works exactly as well as extreme socialism."

The society that came closest to "extreme Libertarianism" was the United States in the 19th century. (Especially after the civil war). That was the century of the industrial revolution, huge advances in technology and wealth production, and an unprecedented rise in the standard of living.