Swenrekcah

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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

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

What kind of response is this?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

> But every good deed gets harshly punished

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