Uncover the theft of hundreds of thousands will get you a bonus.
Uncover the theft of millions will get you a big promotion.
Uncover the theft of billions by corrupt state actors and international crime syndicates is only ever going to get you dead.
Perhaps I have a different mindset, but if I had been looking into this, I think I would have stopped digging as soon as I got a hint of how deep this rabbit hole actually was. Risk vs Reward.
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. - The Categorical imperative (Kant).
Basically, it's the next level of "do unto others". To determine whether your action is right or wrong, ask yourself what would happen to society if every person performed that action as a matter of habit.
When I was 18, I'm sure I would have agreed with you. After some more time living among other people, I think I can say I've moved past that. If you have not, all the more power to you!
At 18, I thought Atlas Shrugged was the pinnacle of philosophy. I'm 40 now, it's been only 3 years since I've started to look at morality through the lens of CI.
Even this is a little unsophisticated for the same reason as the Golden Rule. The problem is that other people aren't just mirror versions of you.
In small children "theory of mind" develops, the child supposes that perhaps this experience they're having, whatever that is, is also an experience the other people who look like them are having. And this theory works well, you can make useful predictions with it. Because Daddy is like you, and you like apple drink better than pond water, you can surmise correctly that Daddy will prefer the apple drink over the pond water too. Being smacked in the face (e.g. by your own unco-ordinated limbs) hurts, and so it's not a surprise that Daddy doesn't like a smack in the face either.
But the explanatory power of theory of mind is limited if you stop there. I don't like Peanut Butter. But it turns out that other people _do_ like Peanut Butter, their minds are similar but not identical. If I see some bread with Peanut Butter spread on it, to me that bread is ruined, but to someone else that's a delicious snack.
I don't want to marry. So for me a Categorical Imperative forbidding marriage is no problem. But it's clear to me that other people value marriage and so, against my better judgement, it should continue to be permitted. Some people feel marriage should be restricted, that couples ought to be of opposite biological sex, or the same skin colour, or of child-bearing age, or whatever other constraint. I have no dog in that fight but it's simplest if we're to allow something I have no need for, to assume that everybody will avail themselves of this custom only if they value it, and so it may as well be open to everyone until we see some clear evidence of ill-effects.
That's a good point. I wonder whether the answer is that CI applies to actions _taken_, not _avoided_. I could be wrong though. This requires further thought.
It's no different than a peasant (or even a lesser lord) challenging a king in the feudal era. You spoke out against the king, you lost your head.
Billionaires are our kings. Jeff Bezos' wealth is 3 times the GDP of North Kora, which has a standing army of over a million people. They are more wealthy than a number of independent states. Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were threatened? When a peasant threatens his power, he doesn't even need to do that: a single assassin is enough. Replace Bezos (who I doubt would order a hit but you never know) with a Russian oligarch (who absolutely would order a hit) and you have your explanation.
If Jeff Bezos was to commit murder tomorrow and be caught I suspect the police would chase him, catch him, throw him in jail, he'd make bail and it would turn into a scene like OJ. I don't expect he'd be able to raise an army to break him out or defend is home. He might be able to flee the country but even that might be hard even with all his money.
If he had covertly planned ahead and already had his mercenary army in place maybe. (though maybe he'll have the secret code for all the drones....)
Recently a Mexican cartel outgunned the Mexican police and forced the release of El Chapo's son. It's hard to imagine something like that happening in a wealthy country, but it's not unheard of in the real world.
Mexican cartels are much closer to terrorists, rebel groups, or rival states than they are to businesses operating in a functioning country.
The difference in what's basically a warlord who already has loyal troops to command, controls territory, and assets that can't be easily seized and Jeff Bezos is too much to make a comparison remotely useful.
Sure, it seems out of character for someone like Bezos to raise an army of armed thugs like you might expect from the Sinaloa cartel. But history is full of wealthy people getting away with obvious crimes. A more likely response from someone with Bezos' personality to some situation like this is taking a private plane to a no extradition country, bankrupt a state with lawsuits from an army of lawyers, or bribing/blackmailing low level officials. Bezos isn't an Epstein, and we did eventually put Epstein in prison, but we knew that guy was raping kids ages ago and the state of FL let him go free under very sketchy circumstances.
It has happened (and still happens) in the US when white nationalist militias have a lot of guns. The cops don't want another Ruby Ridge or Waco; see also Cliven Bundy.
No Jeff Bezos doesn't have the liquid assets to recruit and equip 100,000 mercenaries. Not even close. We've seen billionaires go to jail before btw (without raising a private army to protect them).
The comparison of his total net worth to the North Korea's yearly GDP and army size is irrelevant.
If he even tried to raise an army to resist the will of the US government, they would seize his assets so fast his head would spin.
That's not to say money doesn't buy political influence, but it's a much subtler kind of influence.
This is a good point. "Net worth" frequently isn't even liquid, but moreover, it's also completely subject to the whims of the government that controls that currency. That government is able to enforce its whims using sheer force, through its military.
NK may not have that much worth in USD, but it occupies territory and has military force to back its claim, and that military is motivated by things other than USD numbers on computers somewhere.
Watching Putin force oligarchs to hand over billions in 2015-2016 and the rush to get money out of Russia makes me think you are over stating this more than a little.
> [...] Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were threatened? [...]
In abstract, from the numbers sense (dollars), sure, your argument stands that test.
However, it does not stand the common sense test: what are said contractors going to do once the gig is over? Part of mil contracting is keeping yourself in the good graces of the sugar-daddy government to keep the funds rolling into the future when needs arise. Oh yeah, and also avoid going to prison (for reference, see Blackwater / US Contractor indemnification in Iraq).
This is why humanity invented the Hero. We recognize that irrational selflessness can be extremely beneficial for society.
The more heroes we have, the less corrupt the system, the stakes of corruption would be lower and the price of heroism should decrease, thus society at large and these selfless heros will probably benefit together.
So we could call this guy stupid, or hail him as a hero.
In which society would you like you and your children to live in, the one where heroes are acknowledged or the one they are dismissed as dumb and irrational?
Mind you, calling someone a hero cost you next to nothing in utility so I think the choice is a no brainier.
>In which society would you like you and your children to live in, the one where heroes are acknowledged or the one they are dismissed as dumb and irrational?
I would like to live in the former, but you have to face reality: we do not live in such a society, we live in one where heroes like him will only be murdered, and no one will really care as it'll be forgotten quickly.
Sergei Magnitsky brought light to Russia corruption and paid with his life. But because of his sacrifice, the United States, UK, Canada, and others implemented the Magnitsky Act which allows for the sanctioning of individuals involved in human rights abuses. It shuts the sanctioned individuals out of banking systems and prevents their entry to the country with a ratified Magnitsky Act. More and more countries are implementing their own version of this law.
People who expose corruption don't always live to see the day their efforts make a difference. But the bad guys don't always win either.
> Mind you, calling someone a hero cost you next to nothing in utility so I think the choice is a no brainier.
People who express their homosexuality in Russia face repercussions. Someone who opposes racism such as black face in The Netherlands gets repercussions. Someone who leaks a video of war crimes faces repercussions. Expressing your support for these people likely has repercussions as well. They might not be opaque, but think about something as being put on a list (hello Tor Tails) or being bullied as two examples of repercussions.
I mean, murder is just one. There's one thing worse than murdering me, btw. Murdering my offspring, my child. In North Korea they got that one covered. Your whole family will suffer if/when you (attempted to) fled/flee. In our more civilized societies the repercussions are (much) less severe, but I don't believe there are none.
If there wasn't a risk of a high price to be paid by the heroic individual, it wouldn't be very heroic.
Also a friendly reminder that, for instance, Edward Snowden is hiding in Russia of all places from a possible death penalty.
Capital punishment for an ultimataly selfless act, motivated by his moral code and love for a country that very much would like to see him gone for good.
There is significant and maybe a majority of people who have flexible morality. CA-50 re-elected a congressmen who was under indicted for corruption and theft of campaign funds. A CIA whistleblower is in hiding and career military officer in under protection for reporting or testifying about corruption at the white house. Hero only exists if a significant majority of society has capability to distinguish right from wrong. Otherwise it will get rolled up into partisan politics and tribalism.
Heroes are characterized by extreme competence at something. Some people dedicate that to doing good because they believe it to be valuable for it's own sake.
Selflessness just gets you walked over. Being good is both an individual positive for the hero and a collective gain for the people.
Being a hero does not require extreme competence. It requires courage to stand up for what you believe even at great personal risk or cost and a moral compass pointed in the right direction.
It is part of it too, but the courageous hero without competence ends up dead. Roman legionaries used to joke heroes are the people they kill. The minimizing of vulnerability in an extreme situation combined with ability to overcome it and the courage to do so defines a heroic struggle. The caregiver is the foil, the maximizing of vulnerability around others and the social integration of such is the classic back and forth.
A scene in a A Bridge Too Far (ww2) shows an implementation of it. A soldier has a near-dead friend in his arms that he knows is alive, he dodged live rounds to keep his friend from a group of Germans in a forest clearing. He arrives at a MASH style base camp and seeks treatment from a doctor. The doctor is overworked and prejudges the friend to be dead, indicating that he should be left with the row of dead soldiers he was unable to save. The soldier demands treatment and when it is repeatedly rejected he pulls a gun on the doctor, threatening to kill him. The doctor eventually relents, treats the friend finding him alive. The soldier puts away his gun and capitulates to the punishment incoming to him for breaking the rules, the doctor reports him to the MP and manufactures a slap-on-the-wrist for the soldier. The doctor after having been exposed to near death and allowed the soldier to remain apart of the social system asks him "would you have shot me?". The soldier pauses and silently salutes.
That story would never have happened if it were not for the hero's ability to survive in a hostile environment and achieve his goal of returning alive with his friend, courage or not. The friend would never have lived if the doctor had not risked being vulnerable to having another death on his hands because of an arrogant soldier.
They both gave that friend a chance at creating something of enduring value from successful missions in the future and an everyday life for the friend himself.
People don't buy $200 billion worth of drugs. To get that much, the nation state and oligarchs need to be rigging the economy and stealing with massive crony capitalism.
Maybe. The problem with a lot of stuff like that is that it's really hard to release information anonymously. The nature of the information is such that not many people would have had access to it, so for the assassins, the number of suspects is very low, and it's not that hard for them to figure out who did it.
I think the comment was making an analogy to a more contemporary issue.
As far as whether they could figure out how to target Koslov personally, that requires more info than we have. The nature of any complicated scheme is that, while yes, information is compartmentalized, doing it at all requires a lot more "regular people" than you expect. Leaders alone can't effect a criminal conspiracy.
At the end of the day, someone like, say, a mid-level foreign affairs analyst probably saw this stuff and could have blown the whistle too.
This is also true. In such a scenario probably an effective torture proof dead man switch (the one the whistleblower can't turn off once they kidnap him) could have helped.
Something on the lines of "here's 500 pages of sensitive data in the wild about your crimes, if I or anyone of my family members disappear or die a thousand more pages will be published, and nobody can turn off this feature, including me".
I know I'm making this a lot easier than it really is...
Let’s not pretend the US is any better. Epstein was assassinated. MLK was assassinated. Malcom X was assassinated. Assange is being murdered by the UK government as we speak.
Oh Wikileaks, why would you publish more material that harms the leaders of the Russian state? It's as if you don't even care that you're contradicting the constant media accounts of your pro-Russian bias. Corporate-media stenographers have families to feed!
That's the point; WL have never had any bias. They just publish genuine documents. They don't care whose ox is gored. The ridiculous conspiracy theorizing on display for the last three years says nothing about WL and everything about USA.
If, being aware of everything that's happening around us, you still choose to represent reality as "ridiculous conspiracy theorizing", then you're either in a cult, or a dedicated troll, neither of which I'm interested in wasting my time debating.
Russia have been accused of various things, few of which seem credible and none of which have been associated with any evidence available to the public. Even so, they haven't even been accused of anything besides excessive communication. That's 1A. No one has to be silent if they're talking about an election. If this democracy can't handle $4700 in AdWords spend [0], it ain't really a democracy.
> The Mueller report contains new information about how the Russian government hacked documents and emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
> The Russian military intelligence unit known by its initials GRU targeted U.S. state election offices as well as U.S. makers of voting machines, according to Mueller’s report.
The projection is strong in this one. No evidence has ever been introduced to support any of these assertions. Mueller not only didn't write, but he never read his own report, as evidenced by his pathetic Congressional testimony about it. This testimony was almost as bad as his previous Congressional testimony in support of the existence of WMDs in Iraq. At least in this case he wasn't lying so much as struggling to follow a script he didn't understand. We could almost see Andrew Weissmann's puppet hand run up his ass. Every time any assertion in any of these reports and indictments has been challenged in court, the DoJ has declined to support it.
All tax money in Russia and elsewhere is stolen and therefore dirty and corrupt to begin with anyway. Try not paying taxes and you'll get jailed -- and if you refuse this you'll get gunned down.
I think doing anything you can to avoid paying taxes without getting yourself into trouble is a moral obligation.
I like paying taxes. I get "free" healthcare and education and so many other things here in Sweden that wouldn't be possible without taxes. Simply not having to ever think about the financials of those things is worth a good 5% taxes if you ask me.
I wouldn't want to pay any less in taxes if it meant taking any of that away, but I would happily pitch in more if each additional krona would do as much or more than the one before it.
Yeah that's all nice and shiny, but imagine if those taxes were simply stolen by corrupt government. Your mom would die from simple appendectomy infection because hospitals don't have enough money to do things properly. Plus if you got fired, you would have next to 0 support from the state, and either you have some savings you just eat through or your kids starve. And on top of that, any simple bureaucracy you want to do would require bribes left and right just to get things done that in normal society are done efficiently and almost effortlessly. Police would be corrupt too and chasing any dissent more than criminals. Roads you drive on would be semi-useless and getting worse. Etc...
In that situation, you know your tax money is >90% spend just to enrich somebody, probably also helping mafia, you would have a different perspective.
I don't claim I have a solution. I don't. I left my east/central European home that is nowhere as bad as failed state of Russia, but even with that corruption is still pretty bad, a-holes stealing from everybody are often well known, sometimes proper celebrities laughing off their supercars. I know I don't want to raise my kids in such a society, no matter how close to my heart it is and how easy life I had back home with my qualifications and savings. I know I wouldn't change anything back home and just be frustrated or apathetic, just like all my peers that stayed at home. Or I would get a sniper rifle and take those corrupt people down, without much remorse (actually I am very surprised not a single unbalanced person ever done that, anywhere). So, I moved and don't plan to come back in productive age.
The point is, people give up on thinking about greater societal good and it becomes everybody for themselves. Paying taxes is basically charity for rest of population of given state, where you don't get anything immediately back, but hope for overall well being.
I don't think people in the west understand how dysfunctional society can be if corruption is everywhere.
If somebody from Sweden states how he is happy about being taxed because he/she sees the results, thats great. It doesn't mean anything for place like Russia where you simply don't see much coming back to you from state, but you very clearly see how some corrupt / well connected / mafia are getting back most of it.
[ NOTE: It takes hours and days to communicate here because people do not like my opinions -- so "Hacker News" (lol) throttles me so I cannot really respond to you or anyone in reasonable time. ]
Lol. No you do not like paying taxes; that's your Stockholm syndrome or sunk cost fallacy (variant of it) talking. It's not free; it's crazy expensive and goes to a lot of crazy and/or evil b.s. you have no interest in or control over.
I was born in Norway, but left the country because of high taxes and govt imposed fees and "regulations". I now only pay simple 15% fixed no matter how much I earn (corp + dividend setup) and have private health insurance++. This enabled me to start a family and buy a house after years of struggle, confusion (forskuddsskatt?? wtf.) and trouble (security and fire course needed to start a simple IT freelance business?? wtf.) back home. My baby girl was born at a private hospital here; very reasonable and good.
After 2.5 - 3 years I'm making 6 figures now and growing fast. Back in Norway I was miserable, passive and would still have been miserable if I thought "taxes are good for me". I'm not alone with this: https://www.tv2.no/v/1517820/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EF39ZP-7Fo ..this wonderful, resourceful woman left for Bali after decades of harassment from the govt with their "nice" services. No thanks; I don't need any of it.
IDK why this got downvoted. State spending and economic growth are inversely proportional. The bigger the government, the less economic growth there is.
This is a bald assertion and there are a tremendous amount of confounding factors.
Globally, the fastest growing GDPs are associated with some of the weakest economies (Lybia, in 2018, for what it's worth).
GDP growth is highly dependent on present GDP/capita (e.g., average income) levels. If you're starting high, you'll have little growth.
Within a given country, given fiscal stimulus during recessions, you'll see increased government spending as a share of GDP precisely when GDP is lowest. Not because high government spending as a share of GDP causes reduced growth, but because it is a direct response to that growth.
If you'd want to make a supportable claim, you'd have to account for at least these, and quite probably other factors.
The countries with stable, high per-capita, and generally growing GDP have not only a large share of government spending as a share of GDP, but numerous other factors: stable institutions, low corruption, generally a membership within the NATO or a similar alliance (ASEAN, ANZAC), which translates to protected trade routes and access to global oil shipments (a huge factor in GDP), and more.
Which may account for some of the reception shown to answers to complex problems which are clear, simple, and wrong.
Every dollar spent by the government is a dollar added to the GDP, which is the primary measure of economic growth.
Just because the government does something, does not mean it's bad or good. Generally, governments create a lot of value, and the surpluses not measured in GDP can be immense.
Consider if the government didn't build any roads - everything was toll-based - it'd be a mess, and a huge strategic drag on the GDP.
Because there's not 'market oriented' way to measure what government does (well, no easy way). what we do is just count 'a dollar spend = a dollar GDP'. In the private side we measure Consumption.
So what this means is that if the government borrows and spends billions on 'whatever' - the economy literally grows by the dollar amount they spent. Assuming that 'whatever' is value creating in some way, it can be a good thing which is why Keynesian theory types suggest that the government should indeed do that during economic downturns in the private sector.
Obviously, the big problem is that it's really hard to 'value' what the government does, but it's not black magic either. There are ways to do it, it's just hard.
I'm a libertarian but this is simply not true. There is a clear connection between overall economic freedom and economic growth. However stats like Denmark can have a big state, but still have a fair amount of economic freedom.
Ha. I've been thinking about these sorts of problems and I'm leaning towards the idea that while governments are legitimate (groups of people pooling resources to achieve communal goals with some degree of compromise) most citizens are not legitimate (for lack of a better word). I was born in the US so I get all these rights, benefits, and obligations with no choice. From that viewpoint are immigrants the only "true" citizens of a nation because they actively choose to be a part of it?
> From that viewpoint are immigrants the only "true" citizens of a nation because they actively choose to be a part of it?
The criteria for citizenship have varied a lot over time, and usually have to do with the economic or identity system of the country.
For example , when the US was an agrarian society, African slaves could not be citizens, because doing so would undermine the economic system underpinned by slavery.
Today, some middle eastern countries have religious requirements for immigrants to become citizens.
The modern concept of a citizen (vs a subject) is itself only a few hundred years old.
So I'm not sure if there is a "true" definition of a citizen, in any morally defensible way.
This is because in a democratic state there is no corruption, only state interests. Unless of course Trump is the president - then it the other way around!
Well, this guy was killed after exposing a massive conspiracy and even the official story is that he was assassinated - albeit by small time random crooks. Conversely, Seth Rich hasn't been shown to be involved in anything that might motivate someone to have him killed. The only evidence that he was involved in something, that I'm aware of, is a cryptic comment from Asange.
Surely it's good to be skeptical, but being so skeptical that you draw incorrect equivalences between Russia and the US may be taking things too far.
Found murdered with gunshot wound to the back. Police claimed it was robbery yet his wallet, cellphone, creditcards, and laptop weren't taken.
> The only evidence that he was involved in something, that I'm aware of, is a cryptic comment from Asange.
Well, that and basic commonsense. If it wasn't Seth Rich who leaked the e-mails, who was it? It's far more plausible that it was Seth Rich than the russia boogeyman thrown out by the media (without evidence, mind you).
US Intelligence as well as several independent cyber security firms concluded the DNC e-mails were leaked after an attack by Guccifer 2.0. This was followed up by several indictments issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller which would have to be tried in a federal courtroom were they ever to occur.
That seems to be a fair bit of evidence. Is everything a conspiracy now?
It’s quite clear Russia meddled in the 2016 elections, and they’ll probably do it again in 2020 (if they didn’t already do it again in 2018).
US intelligence never examined the physical server, the cyber security firm was a client of the DNC, intel community simply accepted the findings without verification.
Do you have a source? Here’s just one my sources[1]. According to most of stuff I’ve read the Dutch hacked Cozy Bear and were able to see they were hacking the DNC and State Department in real time.
Much better Dutch article here[2]. It even mentions Muller.
> But on one occasion (...) Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company. (...) Working off the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow.
> It's far more plausible that it was Seth Rich than the russia boogeyman thrown out by the media (without evidence, mind you).
Well, plus the giant multi-year investigation into it by multiple intelligence agencies which all came to the same conclusion. They even published some reports, maybe you read one of them? Also indicted a lot of people.
> FSB representatives served on the board of at least one of banks that wired billions out of Russia as did Igor Putin, Putin’s cousin. He was a manager and executive board member in the Russian Land Bank. This bank wired more than $9.7 billion to Moldindconbank in Moldova, most of which went on to Trasta Komercbanka and from there on to the world.
So, how this is considered to be corruption if money are moved to somewhere? Isn't it what every government is doing, including various US funds helping all kinds of crooks abroad?
> Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process returns the money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.
there's plenty more if you want to know how these crooks use shady schemes to steal from russian citizens and move it semi-legally out of russia to have nice places to retire to
of course if the only evidence you will accept is putin himself bringing you incriminating documents with his signatures - i got nothing to offer.
Is there a name for the phenomenon (eg. Poe's Law) where people leave comments on random world politics topics that basically consist of "but America..."?
You can count on it on every single negative geopolitical story on most sites. Sad to see it on HN.
>Is there a name for the phenomenon (eg. Poe's Law) where people leave comments on random world politics topics that basically consist of "but America..."?
The point is to say that there are things Americans can do to help this situation. Holding politicians accountable to corruption going on in our backyard can help. Being aware that corruption in the U.S. has effects all around the world is all...
100 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadUncover the theft of millions will get you a big promotion.
Uncover the theft of billions by corrupt state actors and international crime syndicates is only ever going to get you dead.
Perhaps I have a different mindset, but if I had been looking into this, I think I would have stopped digging as soon as I got a hint of how deep this rabbit hole actually was. Risk vs Reward.
Its a huge risk, but the rewards for removing such a big chunk of corruption is huge. So I guess you're right, it is more of a mindset thing.
This person is dead. We can thus deduce the reward is death. While that is a big reward, it's not one most people want.
I am not saying go out and get yourself killed, just that I can see the reasons some people do try to get this info out.
You're mixing reward with outcome. The outcome is that the person was murdered. That's something entirely different from a reward.
Basically, it's the next level of "do unto others". To determine whether your action is right or wrong, ask yourself what would happen to society if every person performed that action as a matter of habit.
In small children "theory of mind" develops, the child supposes that perhaps this experience they're having, whatever that is, is also an experience the other people who look like them are having. And this theory works well, you can make useful predictions with it. Because Daddy is like you, and you like apple drink better than pond water, you can surmise correctly that Daddy will prefer the apple drink over the pond water too. Being smacked in the face (e.g. by your own unco-ordinated limbs) hurts, and so it's not a surprise that Daddy doesn't like a smack in the face either.
But the explanatory power of theory of mind is limited if you stop there. I don't like Peanut Butter. But it turns out that other people _do_ like Peanut Butter, their minds are similar but not identical. If I see some bread with Peanut Butter spread on it, to me that bread is ruined, but to someone else that's a delicious snack.
I don't want to marry. So for me a Categorical Imperative forbidding marriage is no problem. But it's clear to me that other people value marriage and so, against my better judgement, it should continue to be permitted. Some people feel marriage should be restricted, that couples ought to be of opposite biological sex, or the same skin colour, or of child-bearing age, or whatever other constraint. I have no dog in that fight but it's simplest if we're to allow something I have no need for, to assume that everybody will avail themselves of this custom only if they value it, and so it may as well be open to everyone until we see some clear evidence of ill-effects.
Billionaires are our kings. Jeff Bezos' wealth is 3 times the GDP of North Kora, which has a standing army of over a million people. They are more wealthy than a number of independent states. Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were threatened? When a peasant threatens his power, he doesn't even need to do that: a single assassin is enough. Replace Bezos (who I doubt would order a hit but you never know) with a Russian oligarch (who absolutely would order a hit) and you have your explanation.
If he had covertly planned ahead and already had his mercenary army in place maybe. (though maybe he'll have the secret code for all the drones....)
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/el-chapo-son-operati...
The difference in what's basically a warlord who already has loyal troops to command, controls territory, and assets that can't be easily seized and Jeff Bezos is too much to make a comparison remotely useful.
The comparison of his total net worth to the North Korea's yearly GDP and army size is irrelevant.
If he even tried to raise an army to resist the will of the US government, they would seize his assets so fast his head would spin.
That's not to say money doesn't buy political influence, but it's a much subtler kind of influence.
NK may not have that much worth in USD, but it occupies territory and has military force to back its claim, and that military is motivated by things other than USD numbers on computers somewhere.
In abstract, from the numbers sense (dollars), sure, your argument stands that test.
However, it does not stand the common sense test: what are said contractors going to do once the gig is over? Part of mil contracting is keeping yourself in the good graces of the sugar-daddy government to keep the funds rolling into the future when needs arise. Oh yeah, and also avoid going to prison (for reference, see Blackwater / US Contractor indemnification in Iraq).
Mind you, calling someone a hero cost you next to nothing in utility so I think the choice is a no brainier.
I would like to live in the former, but you have to face reality: we do not live in such a society, we live in one where heroes like him will only be murdered, and no one will really care as it'll be forgotten quickly.
People who expose corruption don't always live to see the day their efforts make a difference. But the bad guys don't always win either.
People who express their homosexuality in Russia face repercussions. Someone who opposes racism such as black face in The Netherlands gets repercussions. Someone who leaks a video of war crimes faces repercussions. Expressing your support for these people likely has repercussions as well. They might not be opaque, but think about something as being put on a list (hello Tor Tails) or being bullied as two examples of repercussions.
I mean, murder is just one. There's one thing worse than murdering me, btw. Murdering my offspring, my child. In North Korea they got that one covered. Your whole family will suffer if/when you (attempted to) fled/flee. In our more civilized societies the repercussions are (much) less severe, but I don't believe there are none.
Also a friendly reminder that, for instance, Edward Snowden is hiding in Russia of all places from a possible death penalty.
Capital punishment for an ultimataly selfless act, motivated by his moral code and love for a country that very much would like to see him gone for good.
Galileo comes to mind as someone persecuted during their time but later considered a hero. There's no shortage of other examples.
So we're giving the benefit of the doubt to members of the most notoriously cut throat agency in the American government now?
Selflessness just gets you walked over. Being good is both an individual positive for the hero and a collective gain for the people.
A scene in a A Bridge Too Far (ww2) shows an implementation of it. A soldier has a near-dead friend in his arms that he knows is alive, he dodged live rounds to keep his friend from a group of Germans in a forest clearing. He arrives at a MASH style base camp and seeks treatment from a doctor. The doctor is overworked and prejudges the friend to be dead, indicating that he should be left with the row of dead soldiers he was unable to save. The soldier demands treatment and when it is repeatedly rejected he pulls a gun on the doctor, threatening to kill him. The doctor eventually relents, treats the friend finding him alive. The soldier puts away his gun and capitulates to the punishment incoming to him for breaking the rules, the doctor reports him to the MP and manufactures a slap-on-the-wrist for the soldier. The doctor after having been exposed to near death and allowed the soldier to remain apart of the social system asks him "would you have shot me?". The soldier pauses and silently salutes.
That story would never have happened if it were not for the hero's ability to survive in a hostile environment and achieve his goal of returning alive with his friend, courage or not. The friend would never have lived if the doctor had not risked being vulnerable to having another death on his hands because of an arrogant soldier.
They both gave that friend a chance at creating something of enduring value from successful missions in the future and an everyday life for the friend himself.
Or maybe find a way of making the news public under anonimity, which brings us to the importance of being able/allowed to do so when necessary.
As far as whether they could figure out how to target Koslov personally, that requires more info than we have. The nature of any complicated scheme is that, while yes, information is compartmentalized, doing it at all requires a lot more "regular people" than you expect. Leaders alone can't effect a criminal conspiracy.
At the end of the day, someone like, say, a mid-level foreign affairs analyst probably saw this stuff and could have blown the whistle too.
I know I'm making this a lot easier than it really is...
care to try that argument again, taking into account how time works?
If, being aware of everything that's happening around us, you still choose to represent reality as "ridiculous conspiracy theorizing", then you're either in a cult, or a dedicated troll, neither of which I'm interested in wasting my time debating.
[0] https://9to5google.com/2018/12/11/numbers-sundar-pichais-tes...
> The Mueller report contains new information about how the Russian government hacked documents and emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-clinton-arizona-ha...
> The Russian military intelligence unit known by its initials GRU targeted U.S. state election offices as well as U.S. makers of voting machines, according to Mueller’s report.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/whitehouse/barrs-conclusion-no...
I think doing anything you can to avoid paying taxes without getting yourself into trouble is a moral obligation.
I wouldn't want to pay any less in taxes if it meant taking any of that away, but I would happily pitch in more if each additional krona would do as much or more than the one before it.
In that situation, you know your tax money is >90% spend just to enrich somebody, probably also helping mafia, you would have a different perspective.
I don't claim I have a solution. I don't. I left my east/central European home that is nowhere as bad as failed state of Russia, but even with that corruption is still pretty bad, a-holes stealing from everybody are often well known, sometimes proper celebrities laughing off their supercars. I know I don't want to raise my kids in such a society, no matter how close to my heart it is and how easy life I had back home with my qualifications and savings. I know I wouldn't change anything back home and just be frustrated or apathetic, just like all my peers that stayed at home. Or I would get a sniper rifle and take those corrupt people down, without much remorse (actually I am very surprised not a single unbalanced person ever done that, anywhere). So, I moved and don't plan to come back in productive age.
of course effective taxation systems always have implicit requirement of no or low corruption. what's the point of imagining the thing you're saying?
imagine a giant asteroid hit your home - how is anything you're doing in your life relevant?
I don't think people in the west understand how dysfunctional society can be if corruption is everywhere.
If somebody from Sweden states how he is happy about being taxed because he/she sees the results, thats great. It doesn't mean anything for place like Russia where you simply don't see much coming back to you from state, but you very clearly see how some corrupt / well connected / mafia are getting back most of it.
Lol. No you do not like paying taxes; that's your Stockholm syndrome or sunk cost fallacy (variant of it) talking. It's not free; it's crazy expensive and goes to a lot of crazy and/or evil b.s. you have no interest in or control over.
I was born in Norway, but left the country because of high taxes and govt imposed fees and "regulations". I now only pay simple 15% fixed no matter how much I earn (corp + dividend setup) and have private health insurance++. This enabled me to start a family and buy a house after years of struggle, confusion (forskuddsskatt?? wtf.) and trouble (security and fire course needed to start a simple IT freelance business?? wtf.) back home. My baby girl was born at a private hospital here; very reasonable and good.
After 2.5 - 3 years I'm making 6 figures now and growing fast. Back in Norway I was miserable, passive and would still have been miserable if I thought "taxes are good for me". I'm not alone with this: https://www.tv2.no/v/1517820/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EF39ZP-7Fo ..this wonderful, resourceful woman left for Bali after decades of harassment from the govt with their "nice" services. No thanks; I don't need any of it.
This is a bald assertion and there are a tremendous amount of confounding factors.
Globally, the fastest growing GDPs are associated with some of the weakest economies (Lybia, in 2018, for what it's worth).
GDP growth is highly dependent on present GDP/capita (e.g., average income) levels. If you're starting high, you'll have little growth.
Within a given country, given fiscal stimulus during recessions, you'll see increased government spending as a share of GDP precisely when GDP is lowest. Not because high government spending as a share of GDP causes reduced growth, but because it is a direct response to that growth.
If you'd want to make a supportable claim, you'd have to account for at least these, and quite probably other factors.
The countries with stable, high per-capita, and generally growing GDP have not only a large share of government spending as a share of GDP, but numerous other factors: stable institutions, low corruption, generally a membership within the NATO or a similar alliance (ASEAN, ANZAC), which translates to protected trade routes and access to global oil shipments (a huge factor in GDP), and more.
Which may account for some of the reception shown to answers to complex problems which are clear, simple, and wrong.
Stable, high per-capita, and slowly growing GDP countries with high gov spending: most other first world countries
Just google "impact of government spending on economic growth", you'll get lots of hits.
This is the formula for the GDP:
GDP = C + I + G + (Ex - Im)
Consumption + Investment + Gov. Spending + (Exports - Imports)
Every dollar spent by the government is a dollar added to the GDP, which is the primary measure of economic growth.
Just because the government does something, does not mean it's bad or good. Generally, governments create a lot of value, and the surpluses not measured in GDP can be immense.
Consider if the government didn't build any roads - everything was toll-based - it'd be a mess, and a huge strategic drag on the GDP.
Because there's not 'market oriented' way to measure what government does (well, no easy way). what we do is just count 'a dollar spend = a dollar GDP'. In the private side we measure Consumption.
So what this means is that if the government borrows and spends billions on 'whatever' - the economy literally grows by the dollar amount they spent. Assuming that 'whatever' is value creating in some way, it can be a good thing which is why Keynesian theory types suggest that the government should indeed do that during economic downturns in the private sector.
Obviously, the big problem is that it's really hard to 'value' what the government does, but it's not black magic either. There are ways to do it, it's just hard.
Would you feel the same way in that case?
The criteria for citizenship have varied a lot over time, and usually have to do with the economic or identity system of the country.
For example , when the US was an agrarian society, African slaves could not be citizens, because doing so would undermine the economic system underpinned by slavery.
Today, some middle eastern countries have religious requirements for immigrants to become citizens.
The modern concept of a citizen (vs a subject) is itself only a few hundred years old.
So I'm not sure if there is a "true" definition of a citizen, in any morally defensible way.
Surely it's good to be skeptical, but being so skeptical that you draw incorrect equivalences between Russia and the US may be taking things too far.
> The only evidence that he was involved in something, that I'm aware of, is a cryptic comment from Asange.
Well, that and basic commonsense. If it wasn't Seth Rich who leaked the e-mails, who was it? It's far more plausible that it was Seth Rich than the russia boogeyman thrown out by the media (without evidence, mind you).
That seems to be a fair bit of evidence. Is everything a conspiracy now?
It’s quite clear Russia meddled in the 2016 elections, and they’ll probably do it again in 2020 (if they didn’t already do it again in 2018).
Much better Dutch article here[2]. It even mentions Muller.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch...
[2] https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/dutch-agencies-provide-...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-lone-dnc-hacker-gucc...
seems like intel community did plenty of their own investigations into this.
Well, plus the giant multi-year investigation into it by multiple intelligence agencies which all came to the same conclusion. They even published some reports, maybe you read one of them? Also indicted a lot of people.
can't explain something, picks favorite conspiracy theory to explain it. makes sense.
"Andrei Kozlov was gunned down in 2006, weeks after trying to shutter the world’s biggest money-laundering scam"
to this
"—one reportedly used by Putin’s family and the FSB." ?
> FSB representatives served on the board of at least one of banks that wired billions out of Russia as did Igor Putin, Putin’s cousin. He was a manager and executive board member in the Russian Land Bank. This bank wired more than $9.7 billion to Moldindconbank in Moldova, most of which went on to Trasta Komercbanka and from there on to the world.
> Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process returns the money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.
1) has been moved 'illegally' (which authority is responsible)
2) linked to Putin's family personally
3) linked to the 'uncovered' scheme
This is what I call jumping between the facts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvAdZigHlhk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXYQbgvzxdM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g
there's plenty more if you want to know how these crooks use shady schemes to steal from russian citizens and move it semi-legally out of russia to have nice places to retire to
of course if the only evidence you will accept is putin himself bringing you incriminating documents with his signatures - i got nothing to offer.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kle...
You can count on it on every single negative geopolitical story on most sites. Sad to see it on HN.
So let's name it after you, and call it .. Chance's Law...?
Yeah, isn't it called "pot... kettle"?