Yoshida Kenko, Tsure-Zure Gusa
I just can’t make up my mind about this.
Is it the figment of an idealist monk’s imagination, the factual description of how things happened in Medieval Japan or a wise advice coming from a great teacher?
Archives for category: Frames of mind
The ‘Panama Papers’ rekindled the public interest in the subject of ‘what legitimate goal could anyone have in setting up a company in a fiscal paradise?’.
Taxes, stupid!
Actually it’s quite simple.
Let’s pretend you are an alien from the outer space who has a business idea backed up by enough capital and you want to put it in practice somewhere on Earth. Aren’t you going to shop around for the best environment you might find? So that your business would have optimal conditions to grow? And when the business ripens wouldn’t you want to be able to cash on it – and end up with as much money as possible?
Rather conflicting demands, isn’t it?
First you want an ‘operational base’ with relatively low costs but secure and full of whatever amenities your business might need in order to thrive. Next you’ll need fast access to a market where to sell your wares. Last but not least it would be important for you to incorporate your business in such a way/place that you’ll end up pay the least amount of tax, both while operating the business and after the cash out moment.
While all these are legitimate demands there are a right and a wrong way to meet them.
I’ll refrain myself to discussing exclusively about the tax part, the rest being relatively easy to balance.
In this respect you can choose to incorporate the business in the same place you have selected for your operational base and pay whatever taxes are due in that place, under the rationale that those taxes cover the cost of doing business there and are nothing but a compensation for benefiting from the conditions present there at the time. After all, when you have chosen a particular place as the home of your business you have entered into an informal arrangement with that place. It lets you make good use of whatever is there to be used – exactly the things that convinced you to select that particular place, and expects you to fulfill your side of the bargain. Provide enough compensation so that that place can continue to be a good place to conduct business and, if possible, improve itself. Pay the local taxes.
Or, equally legitimate, use two different places for each thing. Organize your operational base where it would work best and incorporate your business in a place where you’ll be able to pay as little tax as possible.
And here’s the catch. No matter where you incorporate your business you’ll still have to pay some taxes in the place you have chosen as your operational base.
Then why bother?!? you might legitimately ask.
Since this is not an accounting dissertation I’ll just tell you that there might be serious financial advantages in making this choice, not the least of them having to do with the cash out moment.
And this is the very point where some people get greedy. They try to avoid altogether the taxes tied to the ‘operational base’ – by employing various semi, or even completely i-legal stratagems, and by doing so completely transform the very nature of the entire operation.
From one of fiscal optimization to one of money laundering.
There are a lot of rationalizations for this course of action. From ‘the state is a thief that uses force in order to part me from the fruit of my efforts!’ to ‘why give it to the state since the money will be squandered by the inefficient government?’.
Now let’s please remember where we started from.
OK, you are not an ‘alien from the outer space’ but what’s stopping you from conducting your business where ever you want on the face of this Earth? (My bad, this question is not valid for exactly everybody, there still are countries that don’t allow for people, or capital, to exit freely, but I’m sure you get my drift)
Oh, you like it where you are but you hate paying taxes and/or you’re disgusted by the way the government handles its finances!
Then let me remind you of two things.
First, you probably live in a democracy. Speak up. Make your concerns known. Loudly. Make sure you are listened to. Vote wisely.
Secondly, you are probably fed up not only by the fact that in your country taxes are really high but also by how little you get back in return.
Well… that’s because there are so many people who do not pay their fair share and that your government has to take more from those who do pay in order to make the ends meet.
Savvy?
“Middle income or middle class?
OK, so even those who rely heavily on money as an indicator for who belongs to the middle class concede that there are other connotations to the concept.
Let’s consider the situation from a functionalist point of view. As in how the members of various social strata react to the day to day challenges of the normal life.
‘Day to day’ meaning not only ‘normal’ things – waking up and brushing your teeth – but also things that we wish will never happen, although all of us know they are ‘normal’ occurences. A car accident, a broken leg or even having three children in one go when you were praying for one.
Usually the wealthy take them in one stride, those belonging to the middle class manage to cope – sometimes welcoming some help from their friends, relatives or even insurance company, while the really poor almost certainly sink under the burden. But not always.
Sometimes even the wealthiests loose it when faced with adversities they were not accustomed with while some of the poorest find it in themselves to rise from the ashes.
Then how about setting a slightly different system of ‘classes’: the extremely resilient, the ‘middle class’ and the very fragile?
As a rule of thumb it’s true that a certain amount of wealth does miracles when some resilience is needed so, roughly, these two classifications look more or less the same, but, on a qualitative rather than quantitative level, we are speaking of two different things here.
When we are speaking of ‘money’ we are dealing mainly in ‘resources’ while when we’re speaking about resilience we have to take into account the attitude of the concerned individuals. It is true that the above mentioned attitude is, more often than not, heavily influenced by the affluence of the respective individuals but the function is hardly a direct one.
Based on these considerations – and on my personal experience of dealing with people, I’m going to propose the following synopsis.
The ‘resilient’ are those convinced they are able to cope, more or less on their own, with almost everything life can throw at them. Unfortunately some of them grow ‘spiritual callouses’, simply because they have never experienced any real hardships.
Or because they have over-compensated after dealing with those hardships, sometimes after succeeding to do so without receiving significant outside help.
The ‘fragile’ are those who, by lack of material resources, spiritual stamina or both, behave more like leafs driven by the wind than like masters of their own fate – as every human being should.
By now you’ve probably figured out that ‘my middle class’ is composed of individuals who have a certain degree of resilience but who, on the other hand, are perfectly aware that there are things on this world that they wouldn’t be able to face on their own.
In a sense, possession of money – or other resources, ‘encourages’ an individual to reveal his true nature.
If a person is naturally inclined to grow ‘callouses’ then being ‘insulated’ from the outside world by a thick wad of money will provide him with enough space to let those callouses grow but if his skin is ‘in the game’ then those callouses will be constantly shaven while interacting with his peers.
But if the stakes of the game are very meager – and the insulation provided to the players by their respective possessions is practically nonexistent, then instead of growing callouses most of the players will be rubbed raw during the intercourse. Mind you, neither the ‘stakes of the game’ nor the ‘individual possessions’ need to necessarily be of a strictly material nature.
In conclusion, the ‘callously resilient’ will tend to mind to their own – simply because their sensitivity towards the outside world is dampened by their callouses, the ‘fragile’ will tend to mind to their own raw wounds while those belonging to the ‘middle class’ will be the only ones really interested in maintaining the well being of the social organism. The one to which they ‘knowingly’ belong.
Because they are the only ones with enough time/energy/resources on their hands to consider the matter, the real interest to do so and the willingness to put some effort into this endeavour.
Just finished reading about the West as an object of hate.
Next in line is a book about the Orient as an object of study.
Bearing in mind the fact that the Occident is still very much hated by a significant number of people residing in the Eastern part of the World it seems that we, the Westerners, have been rather poor students of the Orient.
Or that some of us don’t give a damn about the long term consequences of their actions?
I’d say these are very wise words which constitute an excellent starting point.
Towards the end of their book Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit argue that “despite Christian fundamentalists speaking of a crusade, the West is not at war with Islam. In fact the fiercest battles will be fought inside the Islamic World.” (translation belongs to me, I have a Romanian version of the book)
How about us, in the West, helping the ‘right’ side in an innovative way?
By giving them an example.
By mending our own ways, before telling others to mend theirs!
I recently shared this meme, originally posted on FB by Black Atheists.
The broad spectrum of the commentaries made on this subject enticed me to elaborate on it.
There are people who blow people up under religious pretenses and people who blow people up under their own ‘rationale’.
This meme can be interpreted as God praising those who do not use his name when committing heinous crimes.
Who do not misinterpret religious teachings to fit their callously narrow goals.
Who do not make up self-serving nonsense simply because they have enough sleigh of mind and an audience who, for various reasons, is willing to believe anything that might provide some psychological comfort.
Who do not use religious pretexts when horribly mistreating others.
And don’t get me wrong. God doesn’t praise them for what they’re doing – there is nothing to be praised there.
He praises them for what they are not doing.
Using false pretenses, that is.
I’m not a huge fan of the EU but I have a mostly positive opinion about it.
This morning my stance on this matter was about to change, dramatically.
I had found in my email a link towards a newspaper article, in Romanian, which said ‘the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg had ordered that starting with March 1 2016 people in Europe are no longer allowed to baptize their under-aged children‘.
Hard to believe something like that, isn’t it?
Are you really sure about that?
Now try to read articles like this – which are reasonably ‘well’ written, using the right lingo and having enough details thrown in to make them sound credible – through the eyes of a guy already worried by the so much hipped ‘migrant invasion’. Who was already pissed off by the various rules and regulations handed over from Brussels and acquiesced by the local, and supposedly sovereign, governments without any fuss.
Most people do not have the exercise of doubting everything they read, specially if the message comes from somebody they trust – a friend, for instance, or if the site where they read it seems legit.
OK, a certain proportion of them – not all, will exert some discretion if money is involved. That’s why phishing has a limited, yet certain, impact.
But when a particular piece of information apparently confirms an already entrenched stereotype – the bossiness of the EU, for instance – quite a large number of readers will fall for it.
Yesterday evening I was reading a comment added by Nassim Nicholas Taleb on his own Facebook wall: “What social media finally did: destroy the press. It is more organic to get information from word-of-mouth, which it accelerated.”
Corroborate that comment with a quote from an excellent article published by the same guy on Wired.com: “I am not saying here that there is no information in big data. There is plenty of information. The problem — the central issue — is that the needle comes in an increasingly larger haystack.” (Nassim N. Taleb, Beware the Big Errors of ‘Big Data’, Wired.com, 08.02.2013) and things start to gain some perspective.
What we’re dealing here is the famous lack of symmetry that currently bothers the strategic planners who presumably shape the future of the humankind.
In the ‘good ole’ days’ – when we had writers, publishing houses (newspapers, magazines, you name it) and ‘specialized’ readers, things were a lot simpler.
The writers had a certain notoriety and most of them didn’t want to jeopardize it by publishing bullshit.
Publishing houses didn’t dare to publish bullshit – except for those that did it on purpose, because most of their readers would no longer have bought their papers.
The specialized readers – those who usually bought a certain kind of magazines or books – were able to recognize most bullshit when they saw it, simply because they had some experience in the fields that used to elicit their interest.
Bullshit was being pushed in those days too, for sure. But it was a specialized job, that had to be done carefully.
And in that era, for bullshit to be effective, you had to have very ‘favorable’ circumstances.
Communism didn’t take hold but in very poor countries and fascism only in war torn Italy, Germany and Spain.
Nowadays, “…any simpleminded partisan with a political ax to grind can find an online community of like-minded whack-jobs who’ll be happy to provide him with plenty of ideological ammunition (e.g., bogus stats, pre-fab arguments, etc.). Before long, what was once a more-or-less harmless, single-issue troll has morphed into something far more monstrous and formidable: a veritable Swiss-army knife of bullshit, a perfect storm of bad ideas, a walking Wikipedia of stupid.” (John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2016) )
And since it’s very hard to police the Internet – even harder if we are determined to preserve the ‘freedom of expression’, we are in a very delicate position.
Is there anything to be done about this? Considering that there will never be a real shortage of ‘simpleminded partisans with political axes to grind’?
I think there is.
I started this post by mentioning three related concepts.
Freedom, responsibility and discretion.
We should not tamper with Freedom. Basically this is everything we’ve got, our most precious achievement.
So, we are left with ‘responsibility’ and ‘discretion’.
How is it that most sites manage to stay on line?
They are either sponsored by somebody or they sell advertising space, right?
Who provides that money? Who buys those advertised products? Who spreads around the news about those sites?
Who reads those bullshit laden articles and swallow them hook, line and sinker, simply because some of the (seemingly legit) arguments presented there happen to be consistent with our previously held convictions?
So, if you wish that your kids will be able to live in a better world, stop distributing bullshit through social media, stop buying things advertised on bullshit peddling sites – or, even better, stop going there altogether, and, above all, learn your kids to think with their own heads.
Even if that means they’ll end up contradicting us. As long as they’ll do it in a respectful enough manner – the second most important thing we’ll have to teach them about, all will be OK.
Update. A friend of mine, thanks Lucian, has done some digging over the Internet and found out where all this has started from:
Modern England was shaped by a bunch of ‘French immigrants’ led by William II of Normandy. In the following centuries England and France fought each-other bitterly, in one instance for more than 100 years. Yet they ended up being best buddies, close enough to have fought, and won, two World Wars.
France and Germany started as the two wings of the Carolingian Empire. After it was divided in 835, France was the first to become a national state and, for a while, was Europe’s hegemon of sorts. During that period the French culture had influenced heavily the life of the entire German area. Take a walk through the Sanssouci palace in Potsdam and the Schonbrunn in Wien if you need any confirmation.
But none of this stopped a considerable number of French and German leaders from marshaling numerous armies that fought each-other bitterly, for various reasons.
In fact one could say that Europe itself was forged during those battles.
In this context, the Peace of Westphalia – that ended a 30 years long war, can be considered the seed of what we have now: a system of sovereign states that interact according to a set of practices that have been enshrined into international law.
But it seems that one war was not enough for the rulers that happened to gain precedence in both French and German speaking areas of Europe. So others followed. Culminating with the two World Wars that have involved almost the entire planet.
And what do we have now?
An European Union that has been built precisely in the spirit of the Franco-German Elysee Treaty signed in 1963?
So, could we say that Europe is the success story of so many nations, speaking different languages and having various cultural traditions, who have finally learned to live in peace?
Who have finally learned to silence the war-mongering among them?
Who have finally realized that they are “better off together than apart” and that what it takes for this to happen is “Mutual respect, no love, ……but a considerable amount of curiosity“?
Then how come we are not able to extend that wisdom, that literally soaked in blood body of knowledge, to cover the current events?
How can we not find in ourselves an effective way to help the so many people who are literally dying outside our closing gates?
Why is it that so many of us still pay any attention to those who teach us to ‘circle the wagons’ and to ‘leave behind those who didn’t make it’?
This tactic seldom worked, if ever.
As a young adult I understood that there was no real difference between Hitler and Stalin. It didn’t matter that one of them was considered to come from the left while the other was depicted (by the communists but not exclusively) as a paragon of the right. Both of them had in common the absolute disrespect for everybody else. Each of them was convinced that only their opinions mattered and that all others were absolute morons.
That was when I started to have an inkling about what ‘the elders’ wanted to convey to us, green-horns bucking under the communist rule – which was crippling Romania at that time, when whispering:
‘there isn’t much difference between USSR and America. Their leaders want to rule as much of the world as they can grab while the ordinary people, in both countries, don’t have a clue about what’s going on’.
As I’ve become older I’ve started to figure out that the real difference between various activism-s has nothing to do with the ‘hue’ displayed on their banners. All that counts is the intensity of the sentiment that fuels them and the manner in which the activists relate to the other participants in the game.
At first glance the very notion of ‘conservative activist’ would be an oxymoron, given the fact that (most of the) conservatives define themselves as defenders of the existing order.
Who simply react, within the boundaries of the law and using the tenets of the Constitution, to whatever follies the progressive ‘liberal activists’ are trying to bring upon our heads:
“Like the American people I have watched this process for a number of years, and I fear this empathy standards is another step down the road to a liberal activist, results-oriented and relativistic world where — laws lose their fixed meaning, unelected judges set policy; Americans are seen as members of separate groups rather than simply Americans, and where the constitutional limits on government power are ignored when politicians want to buy out private companies… Call it empathy, call it prejudice, but whatever it is, it is not law. In truth, it is more akin to politics. And politics has no place in the courtroom.” (Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), speaking at Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings)
As usual, practice trumps theory. Regardless of whatever the theory says – and some of the pundits pretend, everybody has an agenda and everybody who has an agenda is actually an activist.
Now that we’ve successfully climbed down to the practical level let’s see what’s the real meaning of Trump backing down from his trumped up stance on torture:
Hey, wait a minute! So he actually said that ‘we should go tougher than waterboarding’ and he still has such a strong following among the ‘law abiding defenders of the Constitution’?
Well, I’m afraid things are more complicated than that.
Here’s what he says about those who trust him:
“The people, my people, are so smart…
And you know what else? they say about my people? the polls?
They say I have the most loyal people! Did you ever see that?
Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
Well, if this isn’t ‘activism’ then I don’t know what else is.
But what kind of activism is it?
I’m not asking about where it should be placed in the political spectrum! I’m just wondering how are his proponents, Trump’s people, going to relate with their fellow citizens?
Or with the rest of the world…
And what’s the true meaning of the conservative activists coming out of the closet and assuming such an active stance? So active, in fact, that – as I said before – it is now way outside the realms of typical conservative behavior.
The explanation – as I see it – has little to do with Trump itself and everything with the present situation of the American society as a whole.
First things first.
Trump is nothing but an opportunistic bug, the real problem being how come the American Conservatives have not seen him for what he is and have not thrown him out yet.
I’ll concentrate on this from now on.
The American Conservatives, and not only those ‘loyal’ to Trump, behave as if they have been under a two thronged siege.
‘ The liberals are destroying America from within, the enemies from the outside are growing stronger and stronger yet the American Political Establishment does nothing meaningful about any of these, not even the ‘entrenched’ conservative ‘figureheads’.’
This didn’t start yesterday.
“Whenever you get a group of people together who share certain basic assumptions, there’s a natural tendency for the group to gravitate toward the most uncompromising, extreme, strident, fundamentalist, hard-core positions. Social psychologists call this tendency group polarization. It happens on juries with some regularity. It explains why the Tea Party became so insane, so deeply out of touch with the needs and views of the average American voter. And it explains why the Bush Administration invaded Iraq without an exit strategy (they stopped inviting people who disagreed with their assumptions—people like Colin Powell—to the planning meetings).” (John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2016))
But because of the internet things have gotten even worse:
“These days, any simpleminded partisan with a political ax to grind can find an online community of like-minded whack-jobs who’ll be happy to provide him with plenty of ideological ammunition (e.g., bogus stats, pre-fab arguments, etc.).” John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2016)
“Worse” not because of the ease with which these communities can grow but because too many of the members of these communities tend to give in to the apparent comfort and safety of single-mindedness.
Arguments are no longer able to penetrate the boundaries of this kind of communities.
Walls are erected to keep the odd man out. Then defended fiercely.
And this is why any attempt to cross those walls, be it aggressively or even in good faith, is too often perceived as a mortal threat by those within.
This is the mechanism through which the likes of Hitler and Stalin have managed to dominate for so long their hapless followers, by convincing them that all outsiders, all aliens, are conspiring to destroy ‘Das Vaterland’.
Fortunately the Internet works both ways. It’s true that the members of those communities can chose not to read anything else but the ideas promoted by their insiders but, just as easily, any of them can find out everything that ‘the others’ have to say about the matter.
But what if things are not (yet) as bleak as some of the media venues present them to be?
Not that all the media wants to scare the shit out of us or that all of them are politically biased. No. This happens simply because all of them want to make better ratings and because very few of them understand that ‘he who saws the wind will reap the whirlwind’. (Well, some of them might actually do it on purpose and that’s exactly what activism means but my post is more about those who let themselves be sucked into the whirlwind than about the tempest sowers).
A very short search of the Internet produced two extremely interesting ‘snapshots’.
The first, that the CPAC straw poll placed Trump no higher than the third place, should not surprise us very much. After all most of the participants are either GOP officials or young wannabees and for them Trump is akin to a ragging bull.
The second, though, is rather mind boggling.
Gallup, daily tracking
Four out of the six still running candidates nomination are perceived more or less unfavorably by the American public?
So what is this? A contest for ‘the least un-liked presidential candidate’ title? (The answer to this question might also explain why Trump has backed down on torture. He figured out that that was too much, even for him. And for ‘his people’.)
We couldn’t blame this on ‘activism’, as such – the remaining two candidates are also ‘active’, but shouldn’t we be asking ourselves about what kind of activism deserves our encouragement?
In any way, shape or form?
Well, before answering this we must consider another issue.
What brought us to the present situation, where both sides of the Political Establishment – and not only in America – are acting as if they want to tear everything apart instead of doing their best to make it all work together?
Later Edit
‘Conservative activism’ hasn’t been invented yesterday.
Nor by Trump’s supporters!
nicichiarasa 