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I often think about ways of disrupting businesses which rely on shady deals/regulatory capture/other anticompetitive measures. I just as often decide that it’s

I often think about ways of disrupting businesses which rely on shady deals/regulatory capture/other anticompetitive measures. I just as often decide that it’s not worth it, since I don’t want my legs broken.

ehnto 6y ago
Look at that, the system works.
crossroadsguy 6y ago
On a hill station winter night me and few friends were on a remote old bungalow drunk and contemplating life, as it usually goes. One topic became specifically heated, partly because one of the participants was the son of a notoriously corrupt politician. He hated his father, except when it came to enjoy luxuries that was paid for by the father. The topic was - how to deter, scare the criminals? How to make it less viable for them to be corrupt and criminals? They often commit crimes of various nature including corruption in the hope that if not them their children, family would get to reap the benefits and they make financial arrangements so that even if they are indicted and properties seized, at least a decent part of the proceeds indeed goes to the family. We reached an impasse with loosely discussing that vigilante justice is the only way. But then the family, wife, kids didn't really directly participate in the crime so how and when to punish them? For not denouncing the proceeds that was earned from the corrupt and criminal means? I mean there's a law against aiding and abetting in crime. So would that not work here? Besides, even if we proceed with the vigilante justice, where to draw the line? Is everyone supposed to be picking up arms. That would be total revolution, anarchy in other words. Part of the discussion also included how criminals, politicians intimidate and harm weaker adversaries and if society collectively starts hitting back and hard at them where it hurts - their business, family members - it could deter them. How long can they provide security to them? How often? All it needs one successful target among many. Yes, they can keep the family in a steel cage. Good for them! But we did reach an agreement that they should not be left untouched. How exactly? That remained the question.
- didibus 6y ago
  I recently started to think that inheritance should just be all together eliminated. It is still a root of inequality, and promotes all kind of bad behavior. Your accomplishments, your money, not your kids. When you die, the assets should go back to the people equally. That way all children, no matter their parents, citizen of a country, should have equality in opportunity. In theory, children with rich parents will still have plenty of advantages, connections, know how, good education, etc. But they shouldn't inherit any assets or financials. Now how would that be managed in practice, no idea, and I haven't fully thought through everything here, but I'm just surprised this isn't an idea I hear more about, as it seems to me this is a huge source of inequality remaining in our society.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    What about gifts? Can people gift other people things? If we forbid gifts, because they're an obvious transfer of wealth, what about financial transactions that favour one party? Should it be legal for a rich parent to sell their car to their offspring for below market value? How much below market value? As you can see, none of this makes any sense to me. I believe people would get around whatever restrictions you put in place rather easily.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > If we forbid gifts, because they're an obvious transfer of wealth, what about financial transactions that favour one party? Should it be legal for a rich parent to sell their car to their offspring for below market value? How much below market value? In fact, this is already illegal, but there's no enforcement. (Enforcement would be challenging in any realistic scenario; it always is when every party to a transaction benefits from it.) According to the law, whenever you obtain anything from anyone (not just relatives) at a price below market value, you have to pay taxes on the difference.
      - cgriswald 6y ago
        In fact, neither of those is illegal. You’d have to be fairly wealthy and incredibly generous to actually trigger conditions needed to pay taxes on gifts. Aside from being able to give $15K per person per year (or twice that for married couples) you also get a lifetime gift-giving exemption of nearly $12 million for any gift giving over the annual amounts. You’re also allowed to sell your kid your car for $1. It’ll probably be counted as a gift of market value - $1. Your kid will probably be required to pay taxes on it as if he purchased it for market value. But it’s not illegal.
chrischen 6y ago
Worked for Uber/Lyft. The problem is whether or not you have more firepower than the incumbent.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
>>I just as often decide that it’s not worth it, since I don’t want my legs broken. Broken legs are still part of the warning phase. They see this as "theirs" and who they hell are you to cause them to lose $x Million a year? Any business or person would sue the hell out of you and try to ruin your life if you caused them millions in loses. The mafiosi are no different, with a slight twist, they skip the courts since they take too long ;).
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  What? Where I’m from, competitors routinely put others out of business by offering better products or pricing and you don’t get sued the hell out of.
gnopgnip 6y ago
Sunshine laws or the equivalent are the start. Without data on the problem it is easy for criminals to stay under the radar, or for the public to know if it is really a problem. A number of states have towing laws that require reporting any towed vehicle to the state within an hour. If a car is towed without being reported, in theory it is theft, or could lead to the business license or drivers license or insurance being revoked if enough people complain. And the second part is going after the money. The tow company can't legally charge anything if they didn't report the tow and follow the law. They can be sued for 3x the cost of the tow and any other out of pocket costs, and attorneys fees, so it is worth it for attorneys to take these cases on instead of small claims, and just a few of these to make this scheme more expensive than doing things the right way
- hansvm 6y ago
  > A number of states have towing laws that require reporting any towed vehicle to the state within an hour. This is a start but not near enough. In many states the tow company isn't required to take photos or produce any kind of proof that the car deserved to be towed. In my experience they just lie to the police about why they stole your car, and the police will vehemently argue that car theft is a civil matter and not a crime.
rl3 6y ago
>I often think about ways of disrupting businesses which rely on shady deals/regulatory capture/other anticompetitive measures. I just as often decide that it’s not worth it, since I don’t want my legs broken. Any smart organized crime is going to realize that directly intimidating startup founders with violence on American soil is a great way to a) get an overwhelming amount of federal heat on them and b) turn whatever it is they're doing into a scandal immediately.
- sneak 6y ago
  I think perhaps you overestimate the FBI’s willingness to do routine policework.
- getlawgdon 6y ago
  That's a beautiful, committed, and complete fantasy.
  - rl3 6y ago
    >That's a beautiful, committed, and complete fantasy. Nice drive-by zinger. Care to, I don't know—cite evidence to the contrary? Despite being Canada, the facts of the original article support my point of view: "Three separate police services – YRP, Toronto Police Service and Ontario Provincial Police – joined forces to launch Project Platinum to investigate the violence associated with the tow truck industry. They carried out a series of raids this past spring, which netted dozens of high-powered weapons and led to the arrests of 35 people who face almost 500 charges, including the attempted murder of Carr."
specialist 6y ago
I'd like a Good Government guidebook for citizens. List some general principles, some case studies, cites for further research. I tried to read some books on auditing and financial accounting. Way over my head. I need the ELI5 layperson versions. Am a recovering activist. So much (wasted) effort. I did learn two heuristics. #1 Talk About Quality "Fraud" is a convo full stop. Don't talk about fraud, theft, grift. Mistakes are indistinguishable from fraud. And combatting both has the same remedies. So only talk about quality, confidence, reducing errors, etc. Nice safe blame-free neutral 90/10 language that gets everyone on board and is less likely to trigger overt opposition. (Covert sabotage will continue, because the grifters won't be fooled by your Aw Schucks demeanor.) #2 Follow The Money Per quote from The Wire upthread. I learned from Bev Harris (Black Box Voting) that (mis)appropriations is a huge threat to election integrity. And in many places, that's the sheriff's office. They don't care about machines, voting, elections. For them it's just about the grift. Twenty years later, I still don't have a clue how to mitigate this. One half-baked notion was to advocate for solutions that both more in line with the public interest and had more potential for grift. Another is, since scandal is evergreen topic, is feed info to opposition. That didn't work at all against Bob Moses (The Power Broker), so probably not a great plan.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  "recovering activist" ... I wish you peace, and healing. Getting people to do something towards better governance requires they have some faith that such a thing is possible in the first place. Met a non-cynical Civics teacher lately? I liked to read people the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these Truths to be Self Evident..." but many disagreed with those words and never heard the rest.

ehnto 6y ago

Look at that, the system works.

crossroadsguy 6y ago

On a hill station winter night me and few friends were on a remote old bungalow drunk and contemplating life, as it usually goes. One topic became specifically heated, partly because one of the participants was the son of a notoriously corrupt politician. He hated his father, except when it came to enjoy luxuries that was paid for by the father. The topic was - how to deter, scare the criminals? How to make it less viable for them to be corrupt and criminals? They often commit crimes of various nature including corruption in the hope that if not them their children, family would get to reap the benefits and they make financial arrangements so that even if they are indicted and properties seized, at least a decent part of the proceeds indeed goes to the family. We reached an impasse with loosely discussing that vigilante justice is the only way. But then the family, wife, kids didn't really directly participate in the crime so how and when to punish them? For not denouncing the proceeds that was earned from the corrupt and criminal means? I mean there's a law against aiding and abetting in crime. So would that not work here? Besides, even if we proceed with the vigilante justice, where to draw the line? Is everyone supposed to be picking up arms. That would be total revolution, anarchy in other words. Part of the discussion also included how criminals, politicians intimidate and harm weaker adversaries and if society collectively starts hitting back and hard at them where it hurts - their business, family members - it could deter them. How long can they provide security to them? How often? All it needs one successful target among many. Yes, they can keep the family in a steel cage. Good for them! But we did reach an agreement that they should not be left untouched. How exactly? That remained the question.

didibus 6y ago
I recently started to think that inheritance should just be all together eliminated. It is still a root of inequality, and promotes all kind of bad behavior. Your accomplishments, your money, not your kids. When you die, the assets should go back to the people equally. That way all children, no matter their parents, citizen of a country, should have equality in opportunity. In theory, children with rich parents will still have plenty of advantages, connections, know how, good education, etc. But they shouldn't inherit any assets or financials. Now how would that be managed in practice, no idea, and I haven't fully thought through everything here, but I'm just surprised this isn't an idea I hear more about, as it seems to me this is a huge source of inequality remaining in our society.
- tasuki 6y ago
  What about gifts? Can people gift other people things? If we forbid gifts, because they're an obvious transfer of wealth, what about financial transactions that favour one party? Should it be legal for a rich parent to sell their car to their offspring for below market value? How much below market value? As you can see, none of this makes any sense to me. I believe people would get around whatever restrictions you put in place rather easily.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > If we forbid gifts, because they're an obvious transfer of wealth, what about financial transactions that favour one party? Should it be legal for a rich parent to sell their car to their offspring for below market value? How much below market value? In fact, this is already illegal, but there's no enforcement. (Enforcement would be challenging in any realistic scenario; it always is when every party to a transaction benefits from it.) According to the law, whenever you obtain anything from anyone (not just relatives) at a price below market value, you have to pay taxes on the difference.
    - cgriswald 6y ago
      In fact, neither of those is illegal. You’d have to be fairly wealthy and incredibly generous to actually trigger conditions needed to pay taxes on gifts. Aside from being able to give $15K per person per year (or twice that for married couples) you also get a lifetime gift-giving exemption of nearly $12 million for any gift giving over the annual amounts. You’re also allowed to sell your kid your car for $1. It’ll probably be counted as a gift of market value - $1. Your kid will probably be required to pay taxes on it as if he purchased it for market value. But it’s not illegal.

chrischen 6y ago

Worked for Uber/Lyft. The problem is whether or not you have more firepower than the incumbent.

onetimemanytime 6y ago

>>I just as often decide that it’s not worth it, since I don’t want my legs broken. Broken legs are still part of the warning phase. They see this as "theirs" and who they hell are you to cause them to lose $x Million a year? Any business or person would sue the hell out of you and try to ruin your life if you caused them millions in loses. The mafiosi are no different, with a slight twist, they skip the courts since they take too long ;).

lotsofpulp 6y ago
What? Where I’m from, competitors routinely put others out of business by offering better products or pricing and you don’t get sued the hell out of.

gnopgnip 6y ago

Sunshine laws or the equivalent are the start. Without data on the problem it is easy for criminals to stay under the radar, or for the public to know if it is really a problem. A number of states have towing laws that require reporting any towed vehicle to the state within an hour. If a car is towed without being reported, in theory it is theft, or could lead to the business license or drivers license or insurance being revoked if enough people complain. And the second part is going after the money. The tow company can't legally charge anything if they didn't report the tow and follow the law. They can be sued for 3x the cost of the tow and any other out of pocket costs, and attorneys fees, so it is worth it for attorneys to take these cases on instead of small claims, and just a few of these to make this scheme more expensive than doing things the right way

hansvm 6y ago
> A number of states have towing laws that require reporting any towed vehicle to the state within an hour. This is a start but not near enough. In many states the tow company isn't required to take photos or produce any kind of proof that the car deserved to be towed. In my experience they just lie to the police about why they stole your car, and the police will vehemently argue that car theft is a civil matter and not a crime.

rl3 6y ago

>I often think about ways of disrupting businesses which rely on shady deals/regulatory capture/other anticompetitive measures. I just as often decide that it’s not worth it, since I don’t want my legs broken. Any smart organized crime is going to realize that directly intimidating startup founders with violence on American soil is a great way to a) get an overwhelming amount of federal heat on them and b) turn whatever it is they're doing into a scandal immediately.

sneak 6y ago
I think perhaps you overestimate the FBI’s willingness to do routine policework.
getlawgdon 6y ago
That's a beautiful, committed, and complete fantasy.
- rl3 6y ago
  >That's a beautiful, committed, and complete fantasy. Nice drive-by zinger. Care to, I don't know—cite evidence to the contrary? Despite being Canada, the facts of the original article support my point of view: "Three separate police services – YRP, Toronto Police Service and Ontario Provincial Police – joined forces to launch Project Platinum to investigate the violence associated with the tow truck industry. They carried out a series of raids this past spring, which netted dozens of high-powered weapons and led to the arrests of 35 people who face almost 500 charges, including the attempted murder of Carr."

specialist 6y ago

I'd like a Good Government guidebook for citizens. List some general principles, some case studies, cites for further research. I tried to read some books on auditing and financial accounting. Way over my head. I need the ELI5 layperson versions. Am a recovering activist. So much (wasted) effort. I did learn two heuristics. #1 Talk About Quality "Fraud" is a convo full stop. Don't talk about fraud, theft, grift. Mistakes are indistinguishable from fraud. And combatting both has the same remedies. So only talk about quality, confidence, reducing errors, etc. Nice safe blame-free neutral 90/10 language that gets everyone on board and is less likely to trigger overt opposition. (Covert sabotage will continue, because the grifters won't be fooled by your Aw Schucks demeanor.) #2 Follow The Money Per quote from The Wire upthread. I learned from Bev Harris (Black Box Voting) that (mis)appropriations is a huge threat to election integrity. And in many places, that's the sheriff's office. They don't care about machines, voting, elections. For them it's just about the grift. Twenty years later, I still don't have a clue how to mitigate this. One half-baked notion was to advocate for solutions that both more in line with the public interest and had more potential for grift. Another is, since scandal is evergreen topic, is feed info to opposition. That didn't work at all against Bob Moses (The Power Broker), so probably not a great plan.

h2odragon 6y ago
"recovering activist" ... I wish you peace, and healing. Getting people to do something towards better governance requires they have some faith that such a thing is possible in the first place. Met a non-cynical Civics teacher lately? I liked to read people the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these Truths to be Self Evident..." but many disagreed with those words and never heard the rest.