We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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A bit of a no-brainer question, I suppose. An outstanding article in The Times of London today by Michael Gove demolishes the haughty conceits of European Commissioner Chris Patten. Patten, some may recall, was the UK’s final Governor of Hong Kong, who carries the dubious honour of being the man who handed that fine capitalist piece of the planet to the Chinese Communist Party. Patten’s beef with the recent “Axis of Evil” speech by President Bush is that it was, er, frightfully “simplistic”, definitely the mark of a vulgar west Texan and definitely not the sort of thing one would hear at an Oxford dining table or a Brussels drawing room.
The important thing, he implies, is to be “sophisticated”. You know, like the French. Patten also questions whether the governments of Iraq, Iran and North Korea can be characterised as “evil”. For a Roman Catholic, it seems a bit rum that this man has such trouble with the concept. I wonder if Patten has the remotest idea of how arrogant he and his like sound to our cousins across the big pond? Hopefully this is another blow to America’s unwise support for the EU as an institution. If Patten helps show the EU mindset for what it is, then I guess we should be kind of grateful.
I realise I have already written once about this ludicrous EU plan to compel even foreign companies who want to deliver goods and services on-line to people within the EU to collect VAT on digital goods and services from their customers and pass it on to the EU.
But how do they propose to force people to register for Value Added Tax if they are in, say, India or Croatia or Ukraine? What possible motivations could an off-shore company have for collecting taxes on behalf of the European Union? How are they going to prove they have even delivered the ‘taxable’ digital goods? Even if the vendor in is a country willing to cooperate with the EU tax authorities, they can just use disposable third-party re-sellers (i.e. “Acme Sprockets Resale Limited of Bangladesh”). How stupid are these people? At least I have an answer to that last question…
The sterile environment I refer to is the mind of Jaroslaw Kalinowski, the leader of the Polish Peasants Party, junior partner in the ruling centre-left coalition currently de-structuring Poland’s economy. Yet much to my delight he is calling for the complete abolition of the EU agricultural subsidies that suck up 80% of the EU’s stolen budget.
Naturally this is not because these barely reformed socialists have suddenly become converts to real world economics but because they are starting to realise that they are going to be wiped out by subsidized Western EU agriculture and if the primitive and inefficient Polish farmers cannot get the same subsidies, they it is better to eliminate them for everyone in order to level the playing field where far lower Polish labour costs can off-set the large and highly mechanised Western European farms advantages even without subsidies.
Of course as that is such a utterly rational course of action, there is no chance whatsoever that the EU will adopt it. If not even the USA can bring itself to treat farmers like everyone else I suppose the whole world is doomed to eventually vanish under a mountain of unwanted food that is paradoxically over-produced and yet over-priced to the consumer. Madness.
The splendid European Union is going to demand people selling over the Internet add EU Value Added Tax (VAT) on to item delivered digitally in Europe.
Solution:
- Register several companies off-shore with different names
- Each company separately sets up to take credit card
- transactions
in different countries
- Sell your product without collecting VAT from outside EU (and outside USA as well for best protection)
- Do not hide what you are doing…use it as a marketing plus
- Set up several servers & shells so if EU tries to shut you down you can be back up in minutes in another country
- You make money and EU kleptocracy does not. Double Plus Good.
Oh! But this is not clever tax avoidance, this is breaking law!
I don’t live in the EU though I do sometimes do business there. I recommend not breaking the law where your severs are but as for EU law? Yes, break it every time and as often as possible. Don’t cooperate with your own repression and for goodness sake don’t help fund it for other people. Remember: what a business person can do across a border in minutes, hours, days can take a lawyer weeks, months, years to do across the same borders if you choose your borders well.
Of course I am just speaking theoretically 
[Thanks to Medvjedica for link]
My considerable thanks to Iain Murray for bringing to our attention this crass bit of wealth-destroying codswallop courtesy of our enemies, the Eurocrats.
Ever more wedded to discredited enviro-mental ideology, the EU has now passed laws forcing all EU motor vehicle manufacturers to pick up the tab for the recovery and recycling of old vehicles and has drafted a raft of pettyfogging regulations that they have to comply with in the process.
Thus they have not only delivered a legislative hammer-blow to the fruitful and wholly organic (in the best sense of the word) car-recycling industry but heaped a wholly unnecessary cost burden onto industry and, therefore, European consumers. Oh, and we ain’t seen nothing yet.
“Where will it end? Not content with cars and fridges, the EU has now moved on to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, covering televisions, toasters and the like. The concept of ownership is thus undermined, property rights are violated, industry is put at a competitive disadvantage and – to top it all – illegal dumping is encouraged”
Do these people have the first inkling of how an economy actually works? Are they cretinous or malevolent or both? Do we have to rely on a kindly asteroid for salvation?
The European ‘Kommisariat’ is deeply concerned about Europe’s lack of progress in the field of biotechnology
Apparently, Europe is light years behind the USA in development and commercial application (snigger). The solution? A brand new ‘Policy Initiative’ (read ‘Five-Year Plan’) which will involve all of Europe’s biotech companies being made answerable to the suits in the European Commission for the ‘Great Leap Forward’ which is now required of them and the Commission, for its part, will ‘assist’ by means of various ‘initiatives and proposals as appropriate’
Having been ordered to compete with the USA one wonders what fate awaits European bio-engineers should they fail? Exile in Siberia? I wonder if the European Commissioners have stopped for even a second to ask themselves why companies in the USA are so far ahead? Probably not. The idea that central plans don’t work is unknown to the Eurocrats; the reality that innovation and enterprise are smothered by ‘initiatives and policies’ is offensive to them. It is as if the Soviet Union is still the blueprint for them (while being an object lesson for everybody else)
Anyway, the American biotech companies shouldn’t bother losing any sleep. If this is the way that their European counterparts are going to be forced to play their hand, then the existing gap will only grow wider
I am quite convinced that the only law that will never, ever be broken is the law of ‘Unintended Consequences’
Who ever imagined that the Thai 10-Baht coin would be indistinguishable from the 2-Euro coin?
Be wary when shopping for European prostitutes: they may be ‘ladyboys’
Or should I say higher tax future. Head of the European Central Bank, Dutchman Wim Duisenberg has said that the new Euro currency will lead to tax harmonisation in the long run. Of course I don’t think anyone thinks that means taxes will move down to the lowest common denominator given the French and German remarks about ‘unfair tax competition’. No, we are talking about the whole EU moving up to the confiscatory levels of the highest.
This is of course a 100% political, rather than economic, matter. Taxes are the amount of money confiscated by the state and that is decided by political, not economic, processes. Yet still people maintain the fiction that the European Central Bank is not a politically motivated entity. What economic factors are going to drive taxes to the same levels because the EU now has a common currency?
Now correct me if I am wrong but I thought the entire USA used the US Dollar. Tell me, are the total taxes in New Mexico, Carolina and New York all ‘harmonised’? No, I didn’t think so.
But some animals are more equal than others
Europe is getting old
It’s all about cause and effect and as yea sow so shall yea reap. Europe’s post-war social model has always been a euphamism for high taxes, a bloated public sector and rigid, protectionist policies. The long-term effect is that children have been, quite literally, priced out of the average family budget
As a result, Europe’s elites are sitting on a volcano. The present levels of welfare and pensions are simply unsustainable and whilst there is much hot air about reforming the fact is that Europe’s politicians dare not break the promises they have made to their people. Change now will just be too painful. Yet, the only way to sustain the current systems would be by the influx of vast numbers of young immigrants. With national socialists already on the march throughout much of Europe, that’s going to be like throwing a match into a tinderbox
Yet there is not single purblind European politician who will not fall over themselves to declare their unswerving support for the social model. It is almost the equivalent of the US Pledge of Allegiance which is ironic given their hostility to the US and it’s dynamic, less-fettered capitalism that threatens to pull the plug on their collective life-support machine
Europe is swinging to the Right according to this article in the EU Observer.
In 1997 only three of the fifteen EU countries had Conservative governments. Now the figure is seven and the Portuguese are expected to elect a Conservative government this year.
However, expect no material changes. European ‘Conservatives’ (Christian Democrats) are not informed by classical liberal values and therefore tend to be, at best, centrist and, at worst, indistinguishable from the Social Democrats they replace.
How appropriate that, with the end of January almost upon us, and so many are struggling to complete their tax returns, we get a little lift from the EU Commission who have hinted that they may relieve of this onerous duty. Instead, it is suggested that, in future, we simply remit our hard-earned direct to Brussels
What I like is the assertion that this new idea appears in a confidential letter sent by EU Commissioner, Michaele Schreyer, to her fellow EU Commissioners. Yes, the letter was so confidential that it has been splashed all over the front page of the EU Observer. As if we have been treated to a tantalising glimpse of the goings-on behind the Chocolate Curtain
Nothing of the sort. This is an administrative trick. The decision by the EU to tax direct has already been made and this little pantomime is to test public and media response. The European equivalent of running it up the flagpole and seeing if anybody salutes (or balks)
But what matter really? Balk away. Its on the cards regardless
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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