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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"National governments are allowed to enforce laws outside their own borders, such as intellectual property and copyright."

I believe those are done through treaties.

I'm not sure how the federal government weighs in on this since they have the authority on interstate commerce, which this falls under.

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The states also signed laws, akin to treaties at the time, agreeing to allow other states to enforce certain domains of law within their jurisdiction. This is part of how the federation of the United States of America came into being.

Are these general or specific? I know some laws have been passed like a treaty between states, especially ones that border each other. The ones I know are very specific.

Not really, or not always. An example: The IRS taxes every US citizen on all income, regardless of where they live. They didn't go setup tax treaties with every country. If I'm a US citizen living in North Korea, I still have to file US taxes every year, despite the 2 countries essentially hating on each other for decades.

Sure, but that's devoid of the international enforcement mentioned. If your assets are in North Korea or a Swiss bank, then they can't force you to pay it. If your assets are in US accounts, then they could easily do so. I imagine there are other countries that we do have treaties with (or even if the bank has branches/business in the US so that the government doesn't make their life difficult) that would cooperate in freezing your international assets held in those countries too.

I agree, enforcement matters. My opinion: In the last 50+ years, it's been a very bad bet to be against the USA. They generally get whatever they want.

If that's right or not, is certainly debatable.

The way things are going these days, I would never move to a place that doesn’t have a current agreement with the United States and assume it’d stay that way.

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