Hacker News Reader

Comment by djschnei | Hacker News Reader

Was mostly a sarcastic question ;)

This pattern can be seen everywhere...

1) politicians regulate an industry with the best intentions

2) industry becomes a safe haven for "the big fish" that can pay to play

3) Rinse and repeat for a while, creating bigger and bigger barriers to entry into the marketplace. Politicians are happy, mega banks are happy.

4) Megabank inevitably does something reprehensible

5) politicians slap them with some fines. Fake remorse ensues...

6) go back to step 1

View on HN

This a good analysis. It sums everything up without the bullshit.

The only thing I would correct in your "Financial Corruption Process Map" is the step after #3:

  3.5  "big fish" start buying up politicians and lobbying firms to legalize more and more "bad behavior"


  4.    Megabank acts legally to do something "reprehensible" since they lobbied to legalize it.


  4.5   financial collapse. scandal...then the hand wringing begins by walking corpses in Washington.

I would agree with these additions. This is basically the crony capitalism playbook.

Stop paying taxes.

Well, taxes go towards some stuff I appreciate... plus I would probably be thrown in jail. So not sure that is a solution :p

Conscientious objection to taxation should be a thing though.

It is: it's called "renouncing your citizenship and moving to Somalia". Go ahead!

Oh, you meant to say that you want to be able to object to taxation but still freeload on all the benefits. Sorry, no.

I object to most of the roughly 50% of my income that is taken from me and can't say I've ever been called a freeloader... That's an interesting point of view you have there; "either don't be a US citizen or never complain about tax policy".

"Conscientious objection" to taxes means you wouldn't pay taxes, it doesn't mean you just complain about it. You can't do that and stay a US Citizen and not go to jail.

I guess I just don't care enough to ruin my life over it. It's a pretty interesting thing to think about, actually. To think that a bloody revolution was sparked over much less than what we put up with today... It's almost like Stockholm Syndrome.

That revolution was fought because there was no representation in the body that levied the taxes. We do have representation in the body that levies taxes now.

Tell that to the people of Washington DC! (No voting congresspeople)

I recently read that if you live in puerto rico full time for a tax year, you don't have to pay federal income tax, or something like that.

Apparently a lot of bitcoin people are considering the move. Move there for a year, sell your bitcoin, move back or something like that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com