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The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

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Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#81
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is both a different question to whether “global leaders” were at Epsteins island and not entirely true.. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/what-the-unsealed-ep...

Intelligencer? Do they feel the name is clever, is it historical or is it just the most stupid sounding name they could come up with?

Historical.. It was the name of a paper that Jonathan Swift founded (among other historical papers by the same name)

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13169/pg13169-images.ht...

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#82
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my naive perspective it almost reads that you won't be able to receive your money on the proper hongkong HSBC select account and are upset about it Reality is that tax dodging is a wildly out of control problem, and worse it is considered to be de defacto standard to even run a business at all. From south Dakota to the city of London and beyond. It is really a problem

The outlash against oligarchs has almost nothing to do with tax dodging. If anything they pay many thousand times more than they consume in public services (they're not even in London the whole year and the property tax alone on one penthouse is probably more than the average person pays in taxes in a decade). It is more about sanctions right now than anything. This paper promotes the "facilitators" idea that if we c…

Property tax in London? You mean ... council tax? For a penthouse in the City - 2,194 pa. There is a one time sales tax (stamp duty) but that's not what you mean I think.

Oligarchs owning property in London are not forced to contribute to the London coffers .... not at all

https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/council-tax/council...

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#83
post #21

Every time I have to fill in some AML (anti-money laundering) form I think how much of a waste of time and money it is for every party involved since the real big fish are getting around it with professional help. It's all very kafkaesque and invasive so I come to the conclusion it's more about powerful governments existing to gain more power than it is about solving any injustice.

Watch this.

The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire | Finance Documentary | History

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfnkLurLA8

And if you dont like the source, here are some alternatives.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/09/city-london...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/oct/31/corporation-londo...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corpor...

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/19/city-of...

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#84

Just make it legal to eat oligarchs.

Except you're focusing on the wrong part of the problem here. Most oligarchs are building huge wealth not only so that they can control their own existence without any interference but also so that their children will be able to enjoy that multi-generational wealth. They want to be seen as dynasty builders.

The solution should be to eat their children instead so that, for them, we have removed the incentive to hold such massive wealth as there will be no one to inherit.

We'd still need to make that legal though and figure out a good spice mix and vegetable accompaniment. These are not insurmountable problems though.

The first thing can be handled by initially making it legal among societies with a known history of cannibalism since it would not be a stretch for them. It can be portrayed as them making an effort to rediscover their lost traditions. Documentary filmmakers can follow their journey of discovery and someone with an accent can do a dry narration punctuated with bits of inside jokes.

Then, using the power of social media to brainwash on a huge scale we could normalize this deviance by portraying these cannibal societies in a flattering way, mentioning their cannibalism in an offhand way but emphasizing more their strong connections to nature, their local environments and their reverence for tropical sunsets, bright colors smeared on their body parts, and non-obvious astronomical alignments.

We already see, every day, the power of advertisers and marketers to convince ordinary people to buy, use, or believe things that most of us understand are probably bullshit. Therefore we should begin by marketing these products to Americans. Employ those marketers to shift focus from pot legalization, where they have scored some wins after only a generation or two of effort, to reduction of financial crime and destruction of oligarchies by adding children of the oligarchs to the food supply. Congress and the FCC likely will, after appropriate levels of lobbying and graft, support legislation allowing televised commercials for products made from oligarch children to be shown during major sporting events and prime time TV shows. It will take a little money to make this happen but there's plenty out there for everyone and we can always just print more.

Of course, products like this will see minimal market penetration in the EU without some serious corruption and catchy advertising slogans. Their regulators are tough and they actually test food products before allowing them to market. They have to make sure that a Russian oligarch kid product was actually produced by a Russian in Russia as per tradition. We know that Americans can be convinced that all those unpronounceable food ingredients in their food must be there because it's all either good for them or it's somehow organic. They've been conditioned by marketing to believe it's better than all the stuff they routinely ate before producers jacked up prices and added organic labels to their product lines.

The EU is a bit more strict, disallowing all kinds of things Americans routinely consume. Therefore there must be considerable effort expended to shift perceptions of American food products and that is where the Linux fanboys come into the game. Their enthusiasm for Linux, in all thousand-and-one variants and obscure distros, has built a self-sustaining amalgam of business, government, and home users whose energies can be refocused to engender support among the general EU population for these children of the oligarchs products that their more discerning taste buds would typically ignore or reject.

With appropriate marketing, some street demonstrations in selected cities, and careful product placement at events like info-sec hackathons and Oktoberfest, EU citizenry can become heavy consumers too of products like tubular meat sticks (with spices!).

For any countries that reject these consumer products we can always send in the British. They've likely invaded the same countries in the past anyway and stirring up shit to rebuild empires makes as much sense as stirring up shit to build empires did. After all, they hauled William Wallace's preserved leg around as a show-and-tell example of what happens to someone who refuses to bow to their monarchy and ended up with an empire that stretched across every time zone. Biggest bullshitters anywhere. Bigger even than Texans and I'm a Texan so I know a bit about bullshit. This whole post is bullshit. There's no reason why they can't be the biggest salesmen for oligarch kid parts.

We just have to make sure, as a global community, that we don't come close to running out of oligarchs or their children as the market could be huge with the right players pushing the products. Supply must always be balanced with demand or non-oligarch children like our own could become commoditized.

Perhaps the industry would need to function in the homeopathic product space where infinite dilutions can be cleverly advertised to the clueless consumers as the perfect way to enjoy and benefit from the product. Maybe in the end we only need one oligarch kid, or just a toenail clipping, or like many over-the-counter supplements peddled to American consumers, we can simply list it as an ingredient but omit it entirely. We might not need any at all! Perception is key here and that is where the real power of advertising and marketing comes into play.

No one ever checks anyway. Capitalism rocks and we all just roll (over).

That's enough sarcasm for one post.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#85
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a quota of anonymous spending, say $50/day, $1000/ month and anything after that is public on government ledger You're describing cash + digital money.

1. This system is too complicated and messy, we need to throw it away and rebuild it from scratch. 2. This new system is so simple and works perfectly. 3. Hmm, it doesn't account for this one problem. Doesn't matter, we can just iterate and add in a special case. Repeat 3 a few hundred/thousand times. 4. This system is too complicated and messy, we need to throw it away and rebuild it from scratch.

Yeah, I think the crypto keyword threw you off, I actually dislike the entire web3 space.

I also do see change as inevitable, as that's what humans usually do.

That's why I think we'd need to have actively describe some desired properties of whatever money will be in the future.

Partial anonymity is one of them, but it's actually being eroded now: you can't order an Uber with cash or book an airbnb for a night with cash.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#86
post #18

After being in the crypto space for a while, and thinking a lot about the problem of tracing money, I've come to the conclusion that the system I'd prefer would be a hybrid. Everyone needs a quota of anonymous spending, say $50/day, $1000/ month and anything after that is public on government ledger. I've mentioned this to a few friends, who've always called it dystopian, yet all alternate systems seems to be worse i…

You haven't considered another option: make legal the illegal. At some point you have to ask yourself, how much liberties are you willing to give away for the feeling of safety.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#88

Just make it legal to eat oligarchs.

Except you're focusing on the wrong part of the problem here. Most oligarchs are building huge wealth not only so that they can control their own existence without any interference but also so that their children will be able to enjoy that multi-generational wealth. They want to be seen as dynasty builders. The solution should be to eat their children instead so that, for them, we have removed the incentive to hold s…

This was a beautiful rant, can I use parts of it in a VtM game?

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#89
post #77
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, if we assume that it only works if you can hide a small amount of illicit activity in a flurry of legit activity, it can't be such a large problem; maybe you can make 5% of your transactions illicit, but not even 50%. I don't think this is the case with Russian oligarchs right now. I always had thought that the idea of shell companies is that there is a long chain, or even DAG, of companies that own basically not…

we cant accurately enough guess how these boutique wealth management firms do their thing... but we could pay them to do the guessing for us.

>we could pay them to do the guessing for us.

No we can’t. Their clients would drop them with prejudice if they even suggested serving commoners.

Re: The Offshore Networks of Oligarchs

#90
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointless yelling ensuing: why do you care if people track your chocolate spending? You’re not important enough for anyone to ever put your face to your name to your purchase of the chocolate. Forgive me if I’m talking to someone famous, but I’m not. Nobody gives a damn about you on the internet. They want to know you bought chocolate because they want to sell you more chocolate. That’s it! Just be grateful you don’t…

It's easy to say when times are good. Government basically sort of tries & does good. But as others have pointed out, America has some ghastly data-collection-against-the-people situations in the past 100 years alone. For example, Ralph Van Deman[1]. After being instrumental in the Philippine-American war (1899-1902)'s military intelligence division, creating some of the first (and incredibly far reaching) catalogs o…

You failed to grasp the context of my comment. Do you really think I would advocate for a total lack of privacy? Of course it’s a balancing act.

The immediate example has to do with supplying identifying information in order to purchase online goods. I view it as the regulations that enable the data collection are in place to empower the consumer. Obviously, if we could keep the good parts (good return processes, immediate credit return for fraudulent transactions, etc.) I would prefer more privacy to less. It’s just not possible in today’s technological climate.

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