[ExI] Transhumanism and Politics

Randall Randall randall at randallsquared.com
Sun Jan 27 15:11:14 UTC 2008


On Jan 27, 2008, at 5:39 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> On 27/01/2008, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
>> Governments don't have any money except what they print out of thin
>> air or take out of your pocket.   And they waste the majority of
>> that.   I wish I was truly on my own here without hands in my  
>> purse or
>> the value of what is in my purse being decreased endlessly.   That
>> would be much better than what exists anywhere on earth.
>
> There are the countries which are considered tax havens, but often
> that is their only claim to fame. Why is that?

The premise is wrong.

For businesses not owned by citizens of them, the
US and the UK are effectively giant tax havens
themselves (consider the large number of the very
rich who live in London, but are not technically
resident there for tax purposes).

However, for countries which are tax havens *for*
businesses in the first world, there are a number
of reasons, some of which include:

Such countries usually have their own business law
for other things as well, and there are only a few
barristers licensed to practice law there (and by
"only a few", I mean relative to the market for
legal services), and barriers to entry into that
market.

Such countries usually are tax havens only for
businesses which don't do business in the country
itself (often termed IBCs), ruling out improvements
to the country itself funded by private industry
attracted there by low taxes.

Such countries usually are pressured to change
their laws to avoid benefiting US-based taxpayers
within a few years of being noticed, under the
guise of "fighting money laundering" and other
vaguely-noble-sounding rhetoric.  This means that
there's no reason to actually seek to move to an
offshore tax haven, because the politicians there
will find it convenient to sell you to the US or
EU for a few million dollars in aid.

--
Randall Randall <randall at randallsquared.com>
"If I can do it in Alabama, then I'm fairly certain you
  can get away with it anywhere." -- Dresden Codak






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