EAs shocked to discover how billionaires make their money
EAs shocked to discover how billionaires make their money
Summary 1. I investigate the rates of criminal misconduct amongst people who have taken The Giving Pledge (roughly: ~200 [non-EA] billionaires who h…
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Often, things become crimes that get prosecuted when they are done by the wealthy vs. normal people. To be clear, the reason for this is that governments/prosecutors want money and there is a lot of money in going after Kjell Inge Røkke for an illegal boating license but there isn't for a father letting his 15-year old child drive in a parking lot. There's a lot of money going after a billionaire for tax evasion but not in someone having a side hustle where they make money under the table selling $50k worth of widgets per year.
lmao
I suppose I recommend people think something like "ok, how bad was this really" when they look at billionaire crimes.
double lmao. triple, even
The rates do seem subjectively very high. Way fewer than 10% of people I know have been convicted of financial crimes! But I wonder if founders and CEOs are being blamed for financial crimes that their companies commit, and approximately all successful companies commit financial crimes, defined broadly.
so... close...
"There’s a lot of money going after a billionaire for tax evasion but not in someone having a side hustle where they make money under the table selling $50k worth of widgets per year."
Lol and indeed lmao. "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic".
(...and who has a """side hustle""" with a $50k p.a turnover?! At that point it is no longer a side hustle)
"widgets" must be a euphemism for "opioids"
It’s a sign of how completely economically detached from reality these guys are. The annual turnover threshold here for mandatory VAT registration is around €35k, and a lot of small businesses don’t even reach that. Selling widgets and turning over €50k max would not be considered to be minor tax evasion..
To be clear, the reason for this is that governments/prosecutors want money and there is a lot of money
The signs of ur-libertarianism.
Governments can both print money at will and also want to take money from everybody because they cannot print money at will.
How pig-headed does this schmuck have to be, not to realize that if there is a "lot of money", that means the billionaire has committed a more serious crime? A billionaire who evades his (or her, but lbr most of these people are men) fair share of tax offloads that cost onto the public, who are much less able to afford either tax hikes or lost services.
You're right, it's a totally libertarian attitude.
Yeah there is a certain thing wrong with (right) libertarians, I have called it the inability to see exceptions to rules before (which leads to the weird logic about NAPs, and the dumb 'defending the undefendable' book and a lot of discussions with libertarians where they use some weird thing to claim that their logic holds because the other side beliefs a few things which, when taken to the extreme, are contradictory) but it is more than just that, this inability to see that a billionaire stealing millions once is a bigger crime than a few people doing a bit of shoplifting or drugs or whatever crime they think is equivalent to the billionaire is baffling.
I used to think this libertarian freedom thing was allright, and then I read libertarian books, and listened to libertarians argue. Not sure if Ben_West is a libertarian btw, im just going into an anti liberarian rant. (This all has not been helped by the fact that some libertarians I used to know turned hard far right a couple of years ago).
Oh man I learned about "Defending the Undefendable" last month. It's amazing to see the original source of all the stupidest arguments I've seen around the internet.
It is not only a pretty dumb book (loved by libertarian logicbros), but it also has for some reason a homophobic cartoon in it. It was really weird, and it came out of nowhere in the bit about stripmining (it also strawmans the anti-stripmining people). Content warning, but here it is. (I was so 'wtf' when I read this I made a screenshot of the cartoon when I read the book years ago, and now I'm thinking of this comment by David). Note it is a book from 1976, so that makes it even weirder in a way, you could say 'ha, the point was to upset people, he got you!' but this was before the aids crisis even, being a homophobe wasn't something that was that unpopular.
E: and forgot to mention, one of the funny things of the book is that he defends Ebenezer Scrooge, as being a penny pincer is good or something, but that wasn't the main point of a Christmas Carol, his misanthropy is way more a point that him being a miser, his lack of connection to the rest of humanity is the problem (and well him ranting about 'surplus population').
Oh, so that's where the punching someone when you see a yellow car/VW beetle thing comes from. Interesting to note that of all the customs to observe in a social encounter (such as "don't suddenly punch people for stupid reasons") Duncan chooses the convention mostly followed by tween boys for the purpose of annoying each other.
Anyway, I guess the book fails to defend the undefendable, then? Seems pretty obvious, to be honest.
No I was just ranting about that book and libertarians, I have no idea where the game comes from. And yeah Duncan picked a really bad example (just as the book does) to defend his points.
Oh I was referring to David's post. I was just surprised the punch bug thing was international.