Re:Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
by vintermann on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @06:44AM
(#21572150)
About arbitrary taxation, I understand that's how they handled it in ancient Athens. Some nobody would say something like "It's been a while since we taxed the Alcmaenids, I propose they pay for the next Panathanea festival".
Since that state was radically democratic, it may not have had the corrupting influence on the taxers as Smith suggests... but maybe it was a factor in the aristocrats allying with their rival Sparta to topple their own constitution.
Re:Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
by Nasrudith on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @10:41AM
(#21574032)
In Athen's case I don't think it technically counted as corruption in the "misappropriation" sense as the intended beneficiaries received it. Given the number of votes to "pillage and enslaved their neighbors" it would certainly count morally if not for the fact it was "the norm".
At that point the difference between bandits and city state military was essentially just diplomacy in terms of how their neighbors and survivors would react to somebody putting killing or enslaving them.
Re:Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
by squiggleblaz on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @05:15AM
(#21571798)
> Smith's preference was for a tax on land, which is difficult to move off-shore.
I like the idea of land tax, but I like that statement even more. (Land tax, on paper, seems like it would be such a good idea, and transaction taxes are nowadays so invasive, that it's incomprehensible to me why we don't have them.)
Re:Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
by dredmorbius on Tuesday November 19, 2019 @12:12PM
(#21575380)
Thanks. It just came to me :)
The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person. Where it is otherwise, every person subject to the tax is put more or less in the power of the tax-gathered, who can either aggravate the tax upon any obnoxious contributor, or extort, by the terror of such aggravation, some present or perquisite to himself. The uncertainty of taxation encourages the insolence and favours the corruption of an order of men who are naturally unpopular, even where they are neither insolent nor corrupt. The certainty of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, a matter of so great importance that a very considerable degree of inequality, it appears, I believe, from the experience of all nations, is not near so great an evil as a very small degree of uncertainty.
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 2, Part 2: Of Taxes.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/...
Smith's preference was for a tax on land, which is difficult to move off-shore.