BREAKING-LEAK:Identities+emails of rich hiding cash offshore $32trillion's worth

[notme]

When the names are finally released it will be fascinating to see all the (champagne) socialists on there.  No doubt the lefties will make up the bulk of the list, but "capitalism" will get the rap.
...

Would not surprise me.  Most of the highly intelligent people I know are pretty left-wing, and it is easier to get ahead if one is bright.  Most of the right wingers I know are dolts who are in debt up to their eyebrows.  OTOH, lots of silver-spoon kids grow up to be right-wingers also and they may account for the bulk of the capital.
Now left-wing wealthy folks are probably less inclined to be tax cheats, but there will certainly be many exceptions to the rule.

That's funny, the wealthy and intelligent people that I know are either right-wing or libertarian and those with the least money, state-dependent are usually more left-wing. Some of them are middle class, but none of the wealthy people that I know or have met personally are left-wing (those left-wingers who earned the money due to cronyism, nepotism or corruption which is not a rare occurence in my country are not counted here).

Sounds to me like you are both making gross generalizations.

[XXthetimeisnowXX]

This is good because it'll throw some cold water on the blazing flame of press that has been on bitcoin.

We need to cool down for awhile.

I quite agree with this statement!!! i like the growth but maybe just a dollar a day avrage with a couple of swings up and a few swings down and a few small bursts. this rocket will run out of fuel and or crash and burn with way to long to regain.

right now having a good rep and not "that currency that went from nothing to a thousand to nothing in a year? ya i dont want any art of that".


I do want it to definitely grow.

a happy medium.

[tvbcof]

If Assange is behind this, it could well be his get-out-of-jail-free card.  It makes me again wonder what might be in 'insurance.aes256'

To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if there was nothing or not much in there but it was only announced to scare some people.

If I were Assange, and had a fair amount of material to work with, what that file would contain would be some goodies and whole bunch of other encrypted files with interesting sounding names.  Also, of course, some dead-man code which would progressively release passwords until the pain stopped.  The pain for Assange, that is.

[World]

World need new redistribution of wealth a peaceful ways.

[mobodick]

When the names are finally released it will be fascinating to see all the (champagne) socialists on there.  No doubt the lefties will make up the bulk of the list, but "capitalism" will get the rap.
...

Would not surprise me.  Most of the highly intelligent people I know are pretty left-wing, and it is easier to get ahead if one is bright.  Most of the right wingers I know are dolts who are in debt up to their eyebrows.  OTOH, lots of silver-spoon kids grow up to be right-wingers also and they may account for the bulk of the capital.
Now left-wing wealthy folks are probably less inclined to be tax cheats, but there will certainly be many exceptions to the rule.

That's funny, the wealthy and intelligent people that I know are either right-wing or libertarian and those with the least money, state-dependent are usually more left-wing. Some of them are middle class, but none of the wealthy people that I know or have met personally are left-wing (those left-wingers who earned the money due to cronyism, nepotism or corruption which is not a rare occurence in my country are not counted here).

Sounds to me like you are both making gross generalizations.

The whole left-right dichotomy is broken if you ask me.

[Piper67]

When the names are finally released it will be fascinating to see all the (champagne) socialists on there.  No doubt the lefties will make up the bulk of the list, but "capitalism" will get the rap.
...

Would not surprise me.  Most of the highly intelligent people I know are pretty left-wing, and it is easier to get ahead if one is bright.  Most of the right wingers I know are dolts who are in debt up to their eyebrows.  OTOH, lots of silver-spoon kids grow up to be right-wingers also and they may account for the bulk of the capital.
Now left-wing wealthy folks are probably less inclined to be tax cheats, but there will certainly be many exceptions to the rule.

That's funny, the wealthy and intelligent people that I know are either right-wing or libertarian and those with the least money, state-dependent are usually more left-wing. Some of them are middle class, but none of the wealthy people that I know or have met personally are left-wing (those left-wingers who earned the money due to cronyism, nepotism or corruption which is not a rare occurence in my country are not counted here).

Sounds to me like you are both making gross generalizations.

The whole left-right dichotomy is broken if you ask me.

Left-right stopped meaning anything about 20 years ago.

[notme]

When the names are finally released it will be fascinating to see all the (champagne) socialists on there.  No doubt the lefties will make up the bulk of the list, but "capitalism" will get the rap.
...

Would not surprise me.  Most of the highly intelligent people I know are pretty left-wing, and it is easier to get ahead if one is bright.  Most of the right wingers I know are dolts who are in debt up to their eyebrows.  OTOH, lots of silver-spoon kids grow up to be right-wingers also and they may account for the bulk of the capital.
Now left-wing wealthy folks are probably less inclined to be tax cheats, but there will certainly be many exceptions to the rule.

That's funny, the wealthy and intelligent people that I know are either right-wing or libertarian and those with the least money, state-dependent are usually more left-wing. Some of them are middle class, but none of the wealthy people that I know or have met personally are left-wing (those left-wingers who earned the money due to cronyism, nepotism or corruption which is not a rare occurence in my country are not counted here).

Sounds to me like you are both making gross generalizations.

The whole left-right dichotomy is broken if you ask me.

Yep.  People tell themselves X group are horrible people, then every time they see a horrible person they say, oh, he must belong to group X.

[axus]

I'm not saying seizure of funds is right, but neither is tax evasion

Tax evasion is absolutely morally justified. What is not justified, is theft.

People are justified in doing what they can to avoid wanton theft of their property by violent gangs calling themselves government. The fact that a group of people around you have voted for you to surrender your property is not moral justification for the taking of that property.

The funny part is, a huge part of offshore secret wealth IS the result of wanton theft.

[tvbcof]

World need new redistribution of wealth a peaceful ways.

That is actually a big selling point of crypto-currencies to me.  When the GINI gets to high in a PM or fiat backed monetary system, out come the pitchforks and riot police.  Often enough literally.  In a free market crypto-currency system, out comes a more appealing codebase.  Or at least that is one way I could see things playing out.

edit:  And 'riot police' are often upgraded to 'death squads' as the situation requires.  Of course 'it couldn't happen here'...

[mobodick]

I'm not saying seizure of funds is right, but neither is tax evasion

Tax evasion is absolutely morally justified. What is not justified, is theft.

People are justified in doing what they can to avoid wanton theft of their property by violent gangs calling themselves government. The fact that a group of people around you have voted for you to surrender your property is not moral justification for the taking of that property.

If said group of people made it possible for you to acquire said property then you owe them. If your capital requires some part of society to exist then you owe society for giving you that possibility.
By participating and profiting in society and economy you accept the obligations.

[Kazu]

I'm not saying seizure of funds is right, but neither is tax evasion

Tax evasion is absolutely morally justified. What is not justified, is theft.

People are justified in doing what they can to avoid wanton theft of their property by violent gangs calling themselves government. The fact that a group of people around you have voted for you to surrender your property is not moral justification for the taking of that property.

If said group of people made it possible for you to acquire said property then you owe them. If your capital requires some part of society to exist then you owe society for giving you that possibility.
By participating and profiting in society and economy you accept the obligations.

And why exactly is 'government' a synonym for 'society'?
I fail to understand how its logical that government is able to extract what is essentially rent for participating in society. I mean, its one thing to pay your money into a commune or government to pay for roads & bridge or the like, as well as a few essential services & regulatory bodies. Its something completely different when you are paying huge portions of your money to the government and their budget ends up looking like this:
http://www.federalbudget.com/

[Qoheleth]

If said group of people made it possible for you to acquire said property then you owe them. If your capital requires some part of society to exist then you owe society for giving you that possibility.
By participating and profiting in society and economy you accept the obligations.

I'm not saying I disagree with you.

But here's a question: if you don't like the rules of the society in which you live, what's your recourse? Move to another society? That presumes that there's another preextant nation which better suits your tastes, and even then, immigration laws, language barriers, and the sheer cost of moving from place to place make that a difficult and painful process, for an uncertain result. Try to change the laws of the country you're in? If you don't have money or fame to force the issue, you need the charisma to get enough people to agree with you that the initiative starts being noticeable and influential at the societal scale (and that's assuming the democratic apparatus works as advertised). Find a few like-minded people and found your own society? Right now, for a country to exist it needs land, and unless you want to live between Egypt and Syria, or have the collective capital to pile up rocks into an island, it's all spoken for.

I like the social contract idea - it makes me feel better about some of my other opinions. But a contract is only valid if everyone involved is a willing signatory. If you aren't willing to consent to the contract... shouldn't the society have an escape hatch?

[DataPlumber]

So, does anybody know where the 32 trillion came from?

It's people.  Federal Reserve Notes is people.

For the record, at least one person LOL'ed (literally!) at your Soylent Green reference

[SgtSpike]

That's... intense.

[mobodick]

I'm not saying seizure of funds is right, but neither is tax evasion

Tax evasion is absolutely morally justified. What is not justified, is theft.

People are justified in doing what they can to avoid wanton theft of their property by violent gangs calling themselves government. The fact that a group of people around you have voted for you to surrender your property is not moral justification for the taking of that property.

If said group of people made it possible for you to acquire said property then you owe them. If your capital requires some part of society to exist then you owe society for giving you that possibility.
By participating and profiting in society and economy you accept the obligations.

And why exactly is 'government' a synonym for 'society'?
I fail to understand how its logical that government is able to extract what is essentially rent for participating in society. I mean, its one thing to pay your money into a commune or government to pay for roads & bridge or the like, as well as a few essential services & regulatory bodies. Its something completely different when you are paying huge portions of your money to the government and their budget ends up looking like this:
http://www.federalbudget.com/

The role of government is to create and protect institutions that make our society work. It's like an operating system and to run it you need energy. So we need to pay tax.
If you think your government does it wrong you should change your government or move to where you think it is done right. For one, start voting for sane people.

[tvbcof]

The role of government is to create and protect institutions that make our society work. It's like an operating system and to run it you need energy. So we need to pay tax.
If you think your government does it wrong you should change your government or move to where you think it is done right. For one, start voting for sane people.

I would actually be in favor of giving Libertarians some useless shit-hole part of the country (e.g., LA, or better yet some part of Florida so the stench isn't so obnoxious and nuclear fallout from their melted down power plants has a chance to settle given the prevailing wind patterns) and have them move there and do their own thing.  If they want back in to a functional society, they have to come back broke and sign a statement promising never to bitch about reasonable taxes rates and regulations again.

[Luckybit]

This is what ONE trillion dollars looks like, imagine 32 of these:

The US economy is a 10 trillion dollar economy. These guys had more money hidden than the entire US economy government and all operating for 3 years+. All those conspiracy theories about who rules the world? When you have enough money to buy the USA then it fuels the theories. We don't know they all work together or they are related or not, and that is why the conspiracy theories don't make much sense.

[Luckybit]

When the names are finally released it will be fascinating to see all the (champagne) socialists on there.  No doubt the lefties will make up the bulk of the list, but "capitalism" will get the rap.
...

Would not surprise me.  Most of the highly intelligent people I know are pretty left-wing, and it is easier to get ahead if one is bright.  Most of the right wingers I know are dolts who are in debt up to their eyebrows.  OTOH, lots of silver-spoon kids grow up to be right-wingers also and they may account for the bulk of the capital.

Now left-wing wealthy folks are probably less inclined to be tax cheats, but there will certainly be many exceptions to the rule.

If Assange is behind this, it could well be his get-out-of-jail-free card.  It makes me again wonder what might be in 'insurance.aes256'

If Assange knows, they know.

[Luckybit]

When the names are finally released it will be fascinating to see all the (champagne) socialists on there.  No doubt the lefties will make up the bulk of the list, but "capitalism" will get the rap.
...

Would not surprise me.  Most of the highly intelligent people I know are pretty left-wing, and it is easier to get ahead if one is bright.  Most of the right wingers I know are dolts who are in debt up to their eyebrows.  OTOH, lots of silver-spoon kids grow up to be right-wingers also and they may account for the bulk of the capital.

Now left-wing wealthy folks are probably less inclined to be tax cheats, but there will certainly be many exceptions to the rule.

If Assange is behind this, it could well be his get-out-of-jail-free card.  It makes me again wonder what might be in 'insurance.aes256'

Artful, tvbcof.   

And I wonder if this might have been sparked - or even perhaps be a part of - Assange's insurance.  We've all learned quite a bit in the past few years about how - and especially how not - to release massively damaging information to the public.  It's a very interesting event.

What do these tax cheats have to do with Assange or Wikileaks? How exactly is it saving the world to expose the tax cheats? It helps the IRS and the police but it's not gonna save the world.

[Fiyasko]

Oh GOODIE!, The rich people might get TAXED finally!