Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

Solution (for big corp)?

Mega is big enough to buy entire islands, and be its own country. A corporate country. One with a very specific constitution, enshrining rights, but also?

No corporate taxes.

If done right, you could lure away Western judges, police, and more as they retire. Or retire early. You could lure them away not with high salaries, but with shorter work days, AI assistance, and with it being a tropical paradise.

Compared to the billions Meta would pay in taxes annually, this endeavour would be far cheaper. And citizens would still pay taxes, of course.

Now imagine if Google, Musk Corps, Meta, and others all created a consortium to do just this, and, to build and fund the initial island.

I agree, not fully plausible. But... these guys can do a lot of interesting things, and I think if it was truly a tropical paradise, and land and housing was cheap and aplenty, lots might be interested in moving there.

Certainly, hiring the "glue" of society would be easy. I know so many people who retire to third world nations, but anyhow...

Yes, holes but, maybe something to ponder.

Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations?

edit:

As I've said elsewhere, it's -20C outside my door, so a tropical paradise with cheap housing and flying cars, and AGI and beaches and free coconuts may be masking my thoughts a bit.

So downvote me, as you are. It burns, but by god it's -20C outside so that's just fine.

(warms hands over burning post)

This is basically describing the Cayman Islands. Or, to lesser extents, UAE or Malta (e.g. https://taxjustice.net/2026/02/24/malta-the-eus-secret-tax-s...).

The problem with this warm Galt Gulch idea is that someone has to do the actual work, and if the top level government is just a corrupt sinecure designed to shield the corporation from actually paying taxes, then nothing works properly. Comfortable island living is also surprisingly expensive, you have to import everything.

Operating a military, maintaining positive diplomatic relations with other countries, and keeping your workforce pacified might be more expensive than you think.

Not to mention that a lot of people prefer to live in a democracy instead of a giant company town, unless you compensate them really, really, well, and even then, well-heeled people are notorious for starting revolutions.

This would not work. Investors are still based in actual countries. Jurisdictions will also always have the ability to tax a % of revenue at source / where it was generated and not on profit rolled up through spvs to a couple low tax havens ;)

> Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations?

because they dont need to do that. They can already obtain what they want with smaller tax havens that have already established trade/tax treaties, have existing facilities, infrastructures, etc.

This whole article is about "not anymore that way". So now we need a new way. A way where it isn't -20C this morning outside my door, OK?

Because they know for some problems it's easier to pay for the service than take the CapEx.

> Mega is big enough to buy entire islands, and be its own country. A corporate country. One with a very specific constitution, enshrining rights, but also?

It's a charming thought. But it can't possibly survive the brute reality that the world is full of people with guns, planes, drones, boats/ships, missiles, etc., who feel entitled to call the shots, and sometimes to take whatever they can from whomever they can.

One question is: does the US wants to keep its big tech leader ship or not? Thankfully for the US the EU is nowhere in tech (biggest market cap is SAP and it's tiny compared to the US giants). But China is becoming big and quickly.

RAM makers are going to feel the heat from China soon. Batteries makers. China is eating the world with its EVs. Drones, etc.

If you're not nice with your corporations, they incorporate elsewhere: that's why the EU is nowhere in tech. Insane taxes since forever and a very strong anti-entrepreneurship mindset (in the EU you're a loser if you tried and fail, for example).

Companies like Meta, Google, MSFT, Apple, etc. should receive medals and thanks from the US government for the insane amount of money they syphon of the other countries and the wealth they create for the US.

Some countries are understanding this: in the UAE for example Dubai is now the world's busiest airport in the world for international passenger traffic. Some countries really fucked up big times to allow this to happen. Dubai is also now a very important hub for commodities trading. And diamonds: Antwerpen/Anvers (Belgium) used to be the city where the most diamonds exchanged hands, now it's... Dubai.

There is such a thing as competition between nation states and at some point entrepreneurs simply pick the best place to launch their businesses. And having the IRS using "tactics" to say that Meta owes them tens of billions does not send a nice message to people wondering in which country it's best to incorporate.

I now live in the country with the 2nd or 3rd highest GDP per capita in the world and that requires a mindset where businesses are welcome, entrepreneurs are welcome and the IRS doesn't feel like they're out there to get you at any cost.

And I'm here because I voted with my feet, my wealth and the future wealth I was going to create.

There is being hospitable to startups, and there is being hospitable to massive corporate giants.

Turns out there is a big difference in what “hospitable” actually means in these two cases. Although the tech giants don’t want people to think so. They work hard to keep up their “scrappy” underdog patinas.

I am not for punishing any organization for being successful, or for being big. But actual neutral tax parity, for the middle class up, would be good. The rich have so many tax-not-neutral alternate ways to do the same thing, but with lower or no taxes, it is ridiculous.

Progressive taxation isn’t effective for the most part. And when it is, the high disparity in application is its own kind of unfairness.

But inescapable neutral tax treatment would remove so many high paying financial, legal and lobbying jobs. Who would subsidize political careers if we eliminated that work, and cut of those perverse incentives? Not a likely scenario.

Everything in correct. But one omission there is politics. People occupy nations and don't all have the same interest. Those (felt, or actually) left aside, not benefiting enough from the macro growth speak and act in their interest.

The people in the E.U arguably are more successful at getting their demands met. They typically are less fooled by the "American dream", they see Zuckerberg and the others for what they are, a tiny number of lucky, or privileged, sometimes just very gifted unicorns, the extreme majority won't make it so they want social welfare, this tax.

The IRS going after big corp may simply be the result of this MAGA movement, which underneath really is just a popular uprise for the little guy to get a slice of the lie.

Of course the current head of state is a master manipulator so this news may just be fluff to make his electorate happy

> If you're not nice with your corporations, they incorporate elsewhere

> China

China has capital controls and can still have billionaires "disappeared" (Jack Ma). And yet its industrial strategy seems to be working.

Oh no! Heaven forbid nations around the world tax mega corporations and lead to a more balanced way of living

> If you're not nice with your corporations, they incorporate elsewhere: that's why the EU is nowhere in tech. Insane taxes since forever and a very strong anti-entrepreneurship mindset (in the EU you're a loser if you tried and fail, for example).

No, the reason the EU is "nowhere" in tech is comparative advantage: While the US built up Silicon Valley, the EU went for other things that play into Europe's strengths rather than weaknesses (language barrier is a real thing, the EU has 24 official languages).

If you compare the largest EU/US companies in nominal USD, even before considering the size differences of the economies[1], the gap is there, but it's not huge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_E...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_t...

The very top of the US chart? Walmart, and the reason the EU can't support something like Walmart is that the market preferences are too diverse between regions. For a fun weird example, Germany has two different Aldi's, and their international expansion is disjoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aldi_branches_in_Europe_(...

But Europe has Volkswagen, which is within spitting distance of the sum of the two highest revenue US automobile companies[3], something which works fine because cars are almost the same across the economic region (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Countries_driving_on_the_...).

Third on the US list? UnitedHealth Group, which doesn't make sense in Europe because of all the nationalised healthcare.

But yeah, the reason tech isn't the core identity of Europe's largest corporations is just comparative advantage, which in turn is I think mostly due to Europe having internal language barriers holding that back in ways that don't apply to other sectors.

[1] by which measure the US economy is (32 US)/(21 EU + 4 UK + 1 CH [2]) = 32/26 = 1.231 times the size, therefore those numbers naturally should be expected 23% higher in the USA than Europe anyway.

[2] I'd count the UK and Switzerland for this kind of discussion, but feel free to adjust accordingly if you don't. Russia's also "in Europe" and on that list, but I don't think you meant to include it, and you can skip whichever nations you want when comparing those lists.

[3] and proportionally more in comparison to the size of the economy as per [1]

> Corporate towns have existed, why not corporate nations?

Will those nations survive Maduragate? Won't in essence it make easier to deal with if they aren't under souvereign law, only international?

What exactly is "Maduragate"?

Self-response: I'm suspecting a mispelling of "Madurogate", referring to the US's abduction of the president of a sovereign state.

Snow Crash's Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities.

Also a Torment Nexus.

Sounds easier to just buy a few congressmen and a circuit judge or two.

Listen my friend. It's -20C outside my house, so I'll kindly ask you to allow this fantasy to continue unabated in my mind, OK? A tech haven, filled with flying cars, and AGI, and warm sandy beaches, and...

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