When's a van a van and when's it a car?

There's an element of scale; if you can afford lawyers to analyze and defend a loophole, go for it. If you can't afford lawyers then you're taking on significant risk.

Because there are interest groups much more powerful than some would-be billionaires with the latest *coin.

There are two main differences. First, they take it too far. They don’t put seats in a van and call it a car, they hook up an RC controller and say it’s a toy. Second, currency and security laws are more catch-all than imports. Import laws have to be specific and deal with physical objects. “There’s a tax on candles. Is this a candle?”. Securities laws, for example, already deal in the realm of abstractions. So, a cryptocurrency isn’t as novel as people often act.

Usually the person who comes up with the gimmick runs afoul of some existing law which applies to their situation. A lot of people incorrectly believe that a new technology immediately invalidates all previous legal precedent that applies to that field. You didn't lose your rights to free speech when the cell phone was invented, even though the framers of the constitution may not have been able to conceive the idea of cell phones. In the case of bitcoin, there are a ton of regulations involving securities and money transfers that exist and just because you came up with a new mechanism that doesn't mean those laws no longer apply.

In the case of tariff engineering people are using the laws on the books to force regulators to classify products based on what the regulatory authority itself has defined. They are following the rules, just maybe a bit more aggressively and in ways that the regulators had not expected. (hacking) At this point you have to change the rules if you want to prevent these unintended consequences, since you cannot impose a penalty based on language that doesn't exist and cannot selectively apply the law that does exist.

Maybe something to do with the fact that said gimmicks are expected to be used by an individual or small organisation with strictly limited resources. When Ford Motor Co. decides a Transit van is a "car" because it meets the legal definition of one, but the tax department wants to tax it as a van despite that, Ford's response will be "make me."

Courts aren't computer programs, but they aren't unconstrained either. The trick is to exploit - or create - constraints so that the court has no other choice but to let you have it your way.

Things like taking the seats out of the van are "exploits" in the same sense as infosec. They are developed by looking at the existing rules and carefully designing something that meets the letter of the rules but not the spirit.

Often the "hacker" solutions go the other way: come up with a thing, then come up with a convoluted non-obvious justification as to why the existing rules don't apply. This doesn't work nearly as well.

For example, the Bitcoin white paper doesn't mention the Howey test. It's not actually engineered to avoid securities law, it's just presumed that anonymity makes it unenforcable or irrelevant. Some of the more recent coins address that, FileCoin is possibly the best example of a "utility token" pretending not to be a security.

Ford spent untold amounts of money bringing the challenge to the Supreme Court. I think it’s fair to say most people can’t afford to argue their loop hole so forcefully.

On average saying you won’t win and the best advice is to not bother. Although I have seen cases of an average Joe winning. In all cases it took a ton of their time.

> Some incorrectly speculate it was used as an attempt to help classify the PS2 as a computer to achieve tax exempt status from certain EU taxes that apply to game consoles and not computers (It was the Yabasic included with EU units that was intended to do that).

And as long as you're down the rabbit hole, take a look at UK speed limits in relation to vans. Vans have a lower speed limit than cars, but "Car derived vans" are still considered cars and vice versa.

That gives you a strange situation where, if your vehicle is available in both a car and a van form factor, the speed limit applied to your vehicle is based not on weight, load capacity or number of passengers, but on which came first - if the car was first, the car speed limit applies to the van. If the van came first, the van speed limit applies to the car.

Yup, that's what I was coming over here to post about too—this is not a "novel approach" as the article alleges.

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2014/04/04/npf-beat-on-the-brat/

(has pictures!)

AKA (in the UK at least), The Trigger's Broom paradox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUl6PooveJE

I agree with the results of the majority in the empirical study.

An object that has had all of it's components gradually replaced or changed is still 'the' object that was started with as far as identity goes.

If the parts which were replaced are restored and re-assembled the same way as the original is, that too is 'the' object.

Yes, both or even maybe infinite clones/duplicates might exist at the same time. None of these are the initial object; that is lost to a moment in time.

I would conceptually draw the line at a new 'finished' object needing greater than 50% of it's conceptual measure to be comprised of an iteration of the named object to qualify as being of that object at any given time.

Once it classifies as that object by transitive properties the rest, even the new pieces, become of that object to at least some degree.

As a slightly different twist on the subject, IIRC all Hass avocados are from splicing a single tree on to others. Given the semantics I would say that while none of these is still the initial tree, "the" tree would still be the one who's roots are still original. This is both by having a unique part which was never lost from the initial instance and by being the chronologically oldest/initial instance and having an unbroken history of existence.

That day will occur about 6 months after we have a single world currency :-).

Here's a thought experiment that might explain it.

Imagine you are at some form of social gathering and someone starts going round with a jar collecting for a charity. Now, if you witness someone not putting any money into the jar you're not necessarily going to think bad of them. There could be lots of reasons why they are not donating in this instance and it's not mandatory. However, if you saw someone put their hand in and take out a fistful of money you would be outraged, because this person has stolen money that other people have donated to the charity - and most normal people will find such an act distasteful at the very least.

This is the same. It is the difference between someone not paying a tax and someone stealing tax that other people have paid.

Presumably the $250M factors in such costs.

There is probably some journalistic license being taken here; if the Ford Transit cost 20% more, it might not be competitive in the marketplace and they might sell considerably fewer.

It's 2.5 hours for one or 2 people to do the conversion, it's not like they run it through a factory for 2.5 hours.

For additional entertainment, you can look up the words lorry, artic, four-by-four / 4x4, people carrier, Chelsea tractor, estate car, caravan and campervan.

They'll often refer to US highways / freeways as "motorways" in news stories too, which always stands out to me.

In the case of OP the word "truck" means something different in the UK (we only use it for much larger articulated vehicles).