Flic

@desmosthenes but to go back to the first point - if they want to have a company in the US they will do it whether or not they’re resident. Can’t very easily employ thousands of Cayman Islanders in your billion dollar business. A Way would be found. But by structuring the business in such a way as to avoid whatever restrictions there are, there would at least be a small reduction in their cut. And a small reduction in billions is not insignificant. Plus… One fewer tax haven reduces options.

@desmosthenes they also buy food and drink from your local town, rather than designer limited editions from Paris.

@desmosthenes a lot of it is more likely to go into the Cayman Islands or investing in media they can control or buying politicians. Give $1b to one man or $20 each to 50 million people - bet you more money makes it into your local economy the second way.

@desmosthenes @technocrit why does that matter if they’re not contributing anyway. But also https://taxjustice.net/press/millionaire-exodus-did-not-occur-study-reveals/

@CmdrShepard49 @dukemirage If ten people want to store or listen to the same original album at the same time then the creator gets to sell ten copies. Then they might hand them on, but ten copies are still out there. Maybe an eleventh person wants one but they’re all in use - they’re going to have to go back to the creator and buy a new one. If someone pirates one copy and gives it to nine people for them all to have at the same time then the creator only sells one copy, forever.

@BananaTrifleViolin @dukemirage a huge proportion of the stuff people watch on Netflix/listen to on Spotify is really old media you could get second hand on CD/DVD for pennies. I mean how much is a Friends box set going for nowadays

@anomnom @UnderpantsWeevil through a good guy, with a gun.

@sugar_in_your_tea @BarneyPiccolo especially in a language as widely used as English with regional nuance that an NLP could never distinguish. When I say “quite” is it an American “quite” or a British “quite”? Same for “rather”? What does it mean if we’re tabling this thing in the agenda? When/for how long is something happening, momentarily? Neither the speaker nor the program will have a clue how these things are being interpreted, and likely will not even realise there are differences.

@FreedomAdvocate no citizens have been deported *because they are seeing judges*. https://web.archive.org/web/20250418013839/https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/17/us/lopez-gomez-citizen-detained-ice-florida/index.html

@FreedomAdvocate if I were law enforcement I probably could establish whether you had a driver’s licence, but who’s making me do it? If I tried to put you in jail for driving without a licence, even though you had a licence that I didn’t check, what’s your recourse?

@FreedomAdvocate What’s the process to make sure those get checked before you get punished for being there? I say “you” on purpose - if I said “freedom advocate is here illegally! Take them!” and they believed me and threw you in the back of a van, what would you expect to happen at that point? Who would you speak to? How? How would you make sure they did what needed to be done to establish *your* legality? How would you make them check your papers?

@MutilationWave @chronicledmonocle fun fact: old printers didn’t have it in their font sets so they used to use a Y which is why “Ye” exists as an old-fashioned “the”

@FreedomAdvocate @IzzyJ because you can’t establish whether they’re in the country illegally without a fair trial.

@_core @RestrictedAccount like watching the modern American equivalent of the British right-wing press in action. The Daily Mail was openly fascist until WWII started. Say what you want people to think while it’s profitable, but if the worm turns, find a new opinion…
It’s a good thing. He’s not as bright as he thinks and has few morals to speak of, but he’s a good bellwether.

@TheGrandNagus @Cosmonauticus i can see a very dull future of filling in individual details for all minor-brand/non-US/homemade items in your fridge because the fridge doesn’t have the details in its catalogue. Or the company changes the size but leaves the branding intact (hi, shrinkflation) so the fridge gets confused…

@TheGrandNagus @Cosmonauticus how would a smart fridge know whether a box of something or a carton of something was full or empty? Weight-sensitive shelves? Would you have to show it everything you put in or took out to make sure it registered? Seems like a faff.