rm2889

Taxing unrealized capital gains? So someone like Bezos who's annual increase in wealth is in the form of amazon stock, would have to sell that stock to actually have the liquid cash to pay for this tax? Come tax season wouldn't it lead to a bunch of founders having to flood the stock market with their stock, hence a large decrease in the stock price and consequently lower taxable amount? Hence a self defeating tax?

Then there's the inflation question. If CPI is 3%, and my capital gains amounts to 6% of my portfolio, my real increase in wealth is only 3%. But I pay tax on 6%?

I'm curious, why was this flagged?

This is quite interesting. There is a certain very small percentage of the world's population that is immune to the HIV virus. These people's T-cells have the CD4 receptor, but not the CCR5 receptor. The HIV virus needs both these receptors to successfully affect the host's cells. The absence of the CCR5 receptor still allows the person's T cells to function normally, so if this works, it can pave the way to creating offspring who are immune to HIV

Under normal circumstances retaliatory tariffs may be important, but I think because of the relatively asymmetric nature of US-China trade (the US's massive trade deficit to China), I'm definitely more interested in how the tariffs are affecting the Chinese manufacturers and American consumers. But yes a more complete analysis should look at both sides.

Link to Hacker News post when Demonetization was announced - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12900965

Are you familiar with c diff? Placebo's don't work. It's dangerous to have placebo controlled trials with this disease. The current standard of care is a course of very strong antibiotics which still leave > 25% chance of recurrence. These antibiotics are most often used as a control group in c diff infections.

In general, placebo controlled trials are usually conducted for diseases which don't have an effective standard of care, or for conditions which aren't serious enough to be considered life threatening. For more serious diseases where a standard of care exists (standard of care is usually scientifically discovered but validated by placebo controlled trials), you conduct trials and compare the performance of the new drug/therapy with the existing standard of care as the control group.

> Also, I'd rather prefer my tax money be spent on farm loan waivers than be stashed away hidden from the Government under a carpet or in a foreign bank, if that's the comparison you want.

Those aren't the only two alternatives. How about you lower the tax rate and create incentives so that the farmers actually pay back the loans. Right now, farmers take loans with the assumption that they'll be waived, and the cycle continues. I'm not shooting on the farmers here, I'm just saying that farmers, like bureaucrats, like businessmen, are human. If they're incentivized to game a system, they will. For once it'd be great if my tax money could be better spent on other things that would actually benefit the country (strong defense, capable law and order through an effective police and judiciary, etc.) rather than indirectly buying votes for the current political party in power (farm loan waivers etc.). Hell given the binary option of farm loan waivers vs stashing my cash abroad, most businesses will still stash it in real estate, abroad, etc.

> Are you suggesting that you should keep significant amounts of your money hidden from the Government because you think they might unduly target you because of your wealth and views?

No. Even after tax legitimate money is at risk if its just a number stored in a "secure" database somewhere. Whoever has ultimate control over that database has power over you. With cash, gold, you can carry them with you and anonymously pay for goods/services without compromising on your privacy. I was merely pointing out one limitation with a completely central digital payment platform.

> I don't see the connection between a hiring freeze in bureaucracy and demonetization

Ok who is on the receiving end of bribes? The bureaucrats/politicians. Demonetization was supposed to hit the tax evaders (usually bribe givers) and the bureaucrats (bribe takers). Maybe they both were seemingly hurt with demonetization as they both had cash stashed. But since the bureaucracy still exists (and has become more powerful eg - http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/the-taxman-now-has-mor...), there is no incentive for the bribe takers to stop taking bribes. Tell me this new bill won't be abused and misused. Looking at the history of laws being abused in India, I'd bet that it will be

I'm not sure. Historically, Indian governments have been most undeserving of our taxes simply because they've misspent it and/or misdirected it to achieve their own means (corruption, buying votes etc). Saying "yes but this government is different" also doesn't hold water when you look at the massive farm loan waivers that were just granted, and more waivers are on their way. How do you think the waivers were funded? Through our hard-earned tax money. Who do you think the debtors will now vote for in the next election cycle? The current ruling political party ofcourse.

Finally, there are a lot of disadvantages for being on a completely centralized digital payment platform from an individual liberty point of view. Imagine that a significant portion of your net worth is just a number stored in a "secure database" which falls under the jurisdiction of some government. Now image that you vocally disagree with the government's policies enough for the government to start taking notice. It becomes very very easy for the government to shut you up - all they have to do is strongarm the bank to freeze that number. Its not as hypothetical as it sounds as the Indian government has done this before.

A large portion of black money was deemed to be held up by the bureaucracy - bribes paid by private individuals and corporations to government employees and politicians. Had demonetization been done along with a hiring freeze (and subsequent trimming down) of the bureaucracy, I'd have been more certain that the motives behind demonetization were to root out corruption. However, the bureaucracy is now larger and more powerful than ever under this government. Thus, the incentives to seek bribes still exits because of this power imbalance between the powerful bureaucrats and relatively week individuals.

After I discovered Pandora back in 2010, I haven't looked back. While it lacks ability to play a song on demand, where it truly outshines are its recommendations. Maybe its the nature of their recommendation algorithm - they call it the music genome project; a content based recommendation ending using very finely refined categorizations as opposed to the methodologies most other recommenders follow - a mix of collaborative filtering and content-based, but not as detailed on creating categories that a song can fall into.

I know I'm sounding like such a fanboy but I discovered some of my favorite bands and artists after hearing them first through Pandora's recommendations. I've often heard songs I liked at random places, shazammed them, and created a channel on Pandora, which has led to some really good artists that I would've never heard through other media. So for music discovery, Pandora is where its at. I really hope this company sticks around.

> The cutoff was not given by me

Yet you used that data point to call the move a categorical success.

> But you are again trying to tie an economic move like demonetization with something inherently negative

No, I'm not trying to tie anything. I'm just trying to make you understand the fallacy that might have inadvertently crept into your reasoning (happens to the best of us!) Also I'm not comparing demonetization to pollution, I'm comparing the policy of demonetization to the policy response against pollution. Or to make it even simpler, I'm comparing the government policy to curb corruption to government policy to curb pollution, or the government policy to prevent deaths during the partition. Just because one policy response led to more deaths than another, doesn't mean that the former response wasn't as flawed as the latter. Especially since there are so many differences between the initial conditions that existed during the partition and the conditions that exist today. I will repeat here that simply saying that "less people were affected yet more people died during partition in contrast to demonetization where more people are affected but less people died" is an incomplete argument. Apples and oranges my friend.

> You are in the realm of speculation here

Unfortunately not. Will this data ever be publicly available? No. Did a black market exist? Most definitely.

> Are you actually comparing Nazi ideology with upholding the Constitution of India?

What if I don't agree with some of the articles of the constitution? Can I exercise my free speech rights to criticize the said articles without being charged with sedition? Can I express those free speech rights by not standing up for the national anthem and not be charged for an offence? Unfortunately not. I am being instructed by legislation to sit or stand or perform some other body movement to uphold the legitimacy of a document, or an ideology, which I may or may not agree with. That was true for the Nazi salute as well. There are very very subtle points that deal with things like burning the national flag and not "respecting" the national anthem. I urge you to check out the first amendment of the american constition and US supreme court rulings regarding their national anthem and national flag and what constitutes disrespect and what constitutes a criminal offence. Its fascinating stuff. The Indian constitution and the our Supreme court have a long way to go!

Anyway, time to get on with my life. Do definitely read up on the First amendment and try comparing that with the free speech as guaranteed by the Indian constitution. Its a good perspective to have.

> "Why is it "morbid"? Did you call out the OP for associating the death of a 100 people due to an economic move like demonetization morbid?"

I call it morbid because "not enough people died hence its a success" is a bad argument. What is your cutoff for the number of people to have died for it to have become a failure? How do you arrive at that cutoff?

> "The displacement of people during the Partition was of a small percentage of the entire populace. Yet it was not managed properly at all"

Yes a relatively smaller percentage than demonetization (but not small by any means). Furthermore, less people were affected by partition but the impact to those affected was much higher. In demonetization, more people were affected but the average impact to those affected was much lower. They might even be the same area under the curve in terms of suffering. But how do we quantify that? Simply saying that "less people were affected yet more people died during partition in contrast to demonetization where more people are affected but less people died" is an incomplete argument. More people are affected by the poor air quality of New Delhi but less people die because of it than the partition, does that mean that the air quality measures that the government has taken (banning unleaded fuel etc.) is a success?

> "And most of those converting their cash were caught and the rest are still being caught. Did you fail to read the news?"

Survivorship bias. You only hear of the ones that got caught. There are so many that got away scot-free.

Also, do you always believe or agree with what the Supreme court says or recommends? How do you feel about the mandatory standing for the national anthem before any movie? Should that be something that the state should enforce? Hitler made it mandatory for civilians to perform the Nazi salute towards him.

Your metric for success seems to be "not enough people died relative to previous such moves, hence its a success", which is rather morbid.

Also your point about "major move that directly affected the entire country but did not end in large scale riots" is vague in its definition of "major move". During the partition, people were forced to leave their homes, belongings, ALL material wealth in the name of religion/politics/whatever and move to a different location in fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Does demonetization compare to this?

During demonetization, among other things, all the honest Indian had to do was wait in long queues to exchange cash (which is not convenient by all means - its very very harrowing), and the dishonest Indian figured out how to convert their cash to the new currency through the black market.

We can debate about the pros and (many many more) cons about demonetization, but thats another topic. Overall, India today is very different from the India 70 years ago when the partition took place, so I disagree with your comparison as well as your metric for success.

My sentiment's the same. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13012700

Unless the government cleans up its act, people will keep trying to store their wealth in other mediums and will avoid paying taxes. I question the premise that all untaxed money is evil based on the past performance of any Central/State/City/Municipal government in India. The nature of the Indian bureaucracy is such that it induces massive waste of tax payers' money at every stage of Government. For a tax payer from a game theoretic perspective, there is a rational basis for hoarding untaxed assets since to get things done in the bureaucracy, people need to bribe officials in cash or kind anyway. I wonder how people here feel about this thread after observing two weeks of the war against black money. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12902817

This was flagged within 1 min of posting. Good job at trying to promote intellectual diversity Hacker News.

https://twitter.com/rm2889/status/796966398366912512

Brilliant. We need to introduce more Indians to the ideas of individual liberty and conservatism as it exists in the United States. By that I mean personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, individual liberty. The governments in India at every level (starts from municipality all the way to the Center) have been so deep rooted in their corruption that its imperative people understand there are alternates to Big Government.

Hmm as much as I'd like to agree with you, don't think its necessarily spurious on the facts.

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

From another perspective, the Rs 1000 note was demonetized in 1978 as well to curb unaccounted money. More than 30 years later, we've had to do it again because the underlying problem wasn't solved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_1000-rupee_note

Maybe this time it'll work. Time will tell.

While this sounds great on face value, I doubt this'll solve the root of the problem. Why did we have so much black money in India? Coz people didn't want to pay taxes. Why didn't people want to pay taxes? Because they got nothing in return. Governments (esp Indian) have been historically self serving and power hungry. Tax money is usually either lost by PSUs loaning to the Mallyas of the world or other corrupt bullshit (overpaying for public infra, raw materials - contracts going to the highest briber etc.)

So unless that changes (more difficult than logistically declaring pieces of paper illegal), maybe people will start hoarding other stores of value in the future and figure out other ways to evade taxes. Am I being too cynical?

All those trees. Sniff.

Who was it? Maybe we can shame them to action via twitter, etc. Or at least make them aware that this isn't cool

Nassim Taleb has been very vocal against GMOs. Here's a summary of his beliefs.

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FictionAndFacts3.pdf

Carbon footprint and particulate matter are two different issues. The US has an enormous carbon footprint, but the air quality in the US is much better than India's. This also includes densely populated places like Manhattan. Increase in PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and SO2 directly affects and damages the lungs of healthy individuals. Yes the US has a carbon footprint problem, and yes they're atleast trying to solve it. But their citizens aren't choking. People in New Delhi are. Stop trying to conflate the two issues. Long term climate change != particulate matter in the air we breathe, though they're both important.

Zerohedge merely copy-pasted the original article from gallup http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/195680/invisible-amer...

Here's some counter narrative to this article based on data out of gallup http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-20/we-havent-seen-grea...

I live in India and despite some improvements, the level of antibiotic abuse here is shocking. They're available over the counter and people self-medicate with antibiotics all the time. The attitude is, "if my sore throat doesn't go away in a couple of days, its time to take antibiotics. No point in going to the doc coz they'll prescribe antibiotics too and this way I save money."

People self-medicating on antibiotics end up taking an incomplete dose without fully understanding the implications. This has lead to the rise of superbugs like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Delhi_metallo-beta-lactama...

Can someone explain this to an encryption dummy? The 'customer' the CEO is talking about, who chose to not encrypt traffic from cloudfare back to the origin is the PirateBay? So airtel could be sniffing all the unencrypted packets going from cloudfare to other cloudfare customers if the content is stored in cloudfare's india data centers?

If debt is trading at pennies on the dollar, and I owe someone 5k, what's stopping me from borrowing 50 or 100 bucks from a friend (if I dont have it) and buying back my debt? Do you need to buy in bulk?

Here's an idea - aggregate debt at pennies on the dollar and sell it back to the debtor at twice the amount it'll still be pennies on the dollar and you'll make a nice profit.

> But it’s difficult to agree wholeheartedly with Zuckerberg’s mission in India when he’s apparently willing to make such a misleading, fallacy-ridden argument in an attempt to win more Indian supporters and discredit his opponents.

Unfortunately this is a winning strategy politicians follow in India to garner support. Its getting better with education and the Internet, but it still works to some extent.