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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

I already said that the pandemic would force the entire world to lean to the left in terms of politics. It's inevitable.

I'm very happy about that decision, but I'm not really confident it will lead to something. I'm also a bit cynic that it took a pandemic to make countries realize they need money.

I'm also waiting to see if government are really planning to fight against tax havens.

The problem is that it's impossible to protest against those small Island tax havens because they're just too far away. Maybe protesters could block flights or boats that go to those tax havens?

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If the tax havens are democratic (and most are) then government boycotts + divestment + sanctions could go a long way.

Imagine being a panama citizen, your government is hellbent on protecting foreign billionaires from paying taxes in their home country. Now the Panama Canal is seeing only 50% of the traffic with resulting job-loss, the national team is no longer allowed to play in Copa America, and your countrymen have to play under a different flag if they go to the Olympics. And all because of a government policy you don’t agree with.

You will probably factor that in when you decide who you will vote for in the next election.

Panama is probably the one country that could hold it out - retaliation on the Canal would escalate matters to a point where rich countries have to choose between a dangerous military occupation or sitting at the table with the local government.

But yes, isolation of countries like Bermuda and Cayman Islands could achieve a lot very quickly. To be brutally honest, the UK government could shut down most of them tomorrow, if they wanted to; but they have a few incentives to do only just enough to appear like they want to, without actually doing so (going from nefarious "their own moneyed citizens want to keep money flowing" to relatively innocent "they risk losing whatever little formal power they still have on former colonies that they can't directly occupy anymore").

I wonder how essential the Panama canal actually is. If the Panamanian government decided to play rough and use it as a threat, there are several alternatives for global shipping. Some could use the Suez canal instead with only a minor increase in shipping time. Others could use rail, and the worst affected could still go through the Magellan straight.

>I'm also a bit cynic that it took a pandemic to make countries realize they need money.

Money doesn't come from taxes. Maybe 'progressive' taxes should be low to none.

> I already said that the pandemic would force the entire world to lean to the left in terms of politics. It's inevitable.

Do you mean totalitarian, correct ?

Are you trolling?

Left as in liberal in the US, socialist in europe.

The US left has nothing to do with the historical classic liberalism. And no, I'm not trolling, let me know of any socialist system with hasn't turned totalitarian ?

Europe right now has all the characteristic of a totalitarian society, but only beneficiate from a relative prosperity so everybody is riding along. Give it 10 years of crisis and deflation and you'll see a lot more uprisings (yellow vests & alike) and associated "security" measure.

The US is on the edge, and arguably has been in a state of sporadic civil war for over a year now.

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