Hacker News: Swenrekcah

New comment by Swenrekcah in "The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024"

Swenrekcah — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:45:20 +0000

This is firstly not a response to the value extraction issue.

Secondly, you don’t need to explain this here. Rather read up better, because this theory requires a fair market which fails when some participants can avoid taxes.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024"

Swenrekcah — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:08:11 +0000

The dangerous ideology is that giving money and power to corporations is any better than the government.

The government in a free democracy is ultimately controlled by the people, is supposed to (and usually does) work for the people, to protect the environment where that is necessary, protect people from being exploited by too powerful corporations, etc.

None of this is socialism, this is in fact the system that made the US great in the years after WW2.

Also I am neither Australian nor socialist.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024"

Swenrekcah — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:01:45 +0000

I honestly don’t understand how you believe this to be a reasonable response. It does sound like a bad faith argument, an attempt at ad hominem.

When an entity operates in an area but optimises the financial structures in such a way as to siphon all the profits out to another area, that is extracting value that used to remain in the area.

That service or goods are provided has no bearing on the matter.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024"

Swenrekcah — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:56:04 +0000

Pandering to the corporations is just a race to the bottom. There was recently a real and respectable attempt to address this with a global minimum tax of 15% but that has been stalled, at least the last I heard of it.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024"

Swenrekcah — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 11:06:21 +0000

> I like how discussion of taxes turned everyone into a fierce defender of profit maximization. Nothing about adding back to the community, paying decent wages, etc.

You are fundamentally missing the issue. What most of these multinationals do is to extract value from the places they operate but then move all the profit (in the books) to another tax jurisdiction, thereby not contributing to the community where they operate. Furthermore this undercuts local businesses, further impoverishing the area.

Global commerce and cooperation unlocks some truly great opportunities but the finance people can really bring ruin if allowed free reign.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024"

Swenrekcah — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 11:00:07 +0000

The worst part is that local competitors can’t use structuring like this to evade/avoid taxes, so eventually they go out of business.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war"

Swenrekcah — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 20:41:46 +0000

A very cursory investigation suggests the Iran war has cost the US approximately 100 billion dollars. About half in hardware and half in increased costs for citizens.

These costs are continuing since there is no end in sight and it seems the US is running out of some of the equipment it has used.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise"

Swenrekcah — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:34:57 +0000

Such professional therapy should probably be administered privately and during the course of a regular workday.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Danish Pension Blacklists SpaceX over 'Catastrophic Governance'"

Swenrekcah — Sat, 30 May 2026 13:08:36 +0000

Railing against virtue signalling of some people is the preferred virtue signalling for some other people.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down"

Swenrekcah — Sun, 10 May 2026 18:32:43 +0000

What kind of response is this?

Why haven’t you fixed healthcare or all the potholes in your town?

New comment by Swenrekcah in "US launches new strikes on Iran"

Swenrekcah — Thu, 07 May 2026 23:09:14 +0000

I agree Iran must be hard to negotiate with but they haven’t even tried. Obama’s nuclear deal took years of work and involved multiple countries. When Vance didn’t get his way in a single meeting he quit?

Also maybe Trump doesn’t want chaos but I doubt he runs the show so much at this point.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "US launches new strikes on Iran"

Swenrekcah — Thu, 07 May 2026 22:56:16 +0000

They simply want chaos. This distracts from their corruption and authoritarian actions, it enables grift and market manipulation, it worsens conditions in other western countries which benefits them, oil price being high benefits their friend Putin, the list is long and grim.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Tracking when Trump chickens out"

Swenrekcah — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:16:09 +0000

Trump did not get where he is through negotiations or business success. In fact his business success was very limited until he got to political power.

He got where he is by being one of the earliest influencers and “reality” TV show host.

His bank credit was toast everywhere except at Deutche Bank which has been exposed as being a conduit for Russian money laundering.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Tracking when Trump chickens out"

Swenrekcah — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:09:48 +0000

Do you usually start negotiations by publicly deriding your counterparty and state absurd demands?

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Israel escalates attacks on medics in Lebanon with deadly 'quadruple tap'"

Swenrekcah — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 22:54:32 +0000

> But every good deed gets harshly punished

Can you name some of the instances you’re thinking of?

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit"

Swenrekcah — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:48:24 +0000

Two people see an opportunity to make money. One of them recognizes the venture would harm the people involved and decides not to. The other either does not see the harm (so not a genius) or simply doesn't care (sociopath?). That person does the thing and makes the money.

That person is either some level of naive, some level of evil, but certainly not an evil genius.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Hormuz Minesweeper – Are you tired of winning?"

Swenrekcah — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 12:07:21 +0000

I don’t see it as making fun of the situation per se, rather the people responsible for it.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Rack-mount hydroponics"

Swenrekcah — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 08:51:57 +0000

If you look closely enough, everything is government supported. However farming is explicitly government subsidised everywhere.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "Without America to rely on, EU gearing up to be a global power in its own right"

Swenrekcah — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 22:46:40 +0000

It seemed like it was the past, but it might become so again. Europe will never trust the US for defence again, which means it has to build up all defence capabilities internally. This will take many many years, but it seems almost inevitable now that it will happen.

When enough time has passed with Europe self sufficient in defence, there might arise cases where US and Europe has a conflict of interest that results in an armed conflict. Perhaps at first via proxy states depending on the type of conflict.

New comment by Swenrekcah in "DOGE Track"

Swenrekcah — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 15:26:32 +0000

This much is true, like most things coming from Trump this move mainly benefited Russia and China while actively harming US interests.