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> “I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate,” Schmidt told one interviewer

> “I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate,” Schmidt told one interviewer in 2012. “It’s called capitalism.” As much as I enjoy watching people dissemble while describing their true actions, there’s not really anyone naive enough to believe Schmidt didn’t actively create the rules google currently operates under, is there? Maybe he really was just a bystander in his company as it poured millions of dollars into lobbying the American government and he was powerless to stop them. Or maybe he though the lobbying did nothing and he thought wasting money was a good thing. Or he’s just lying and hopes people don’t acknowledge that there were maybe half a dozen people who had more power to shape the laws and regulations he operated under. But trying to just pass himself off as an uninvolved observer just rings thoroughly disingenuous.

chmod600 6y ago
That's a different line of reasoning, and it falls under the category of "regret the previous laws". The solution for the future is to try to harder to make good laws in the present rather than somehow retroactively change the past.
- sonotathrowaway 6y ago
  I don’t advocate for trying to retroactively pass laws, as that is just mob rule. But to be one of the most powerful lobbying efforts in the country (in 2017, the single largest), while simultaneously claiming to be a helpless observer inside said system is hard for me to take seriously. His response was a claim that his behavior is socially acceptable and not tax avoidance (and thus would continue), whereas I’m saying this behavior is tax avoidance and should be labeled as such, and he’s well aware of how unpopular his opinion is and how much he invests from stopping reforms that would align the legal definition closer to the layman’s conception of tax avoidance.

chmod600 6y ago

That's a different line of reasoning, and it falls under the category of "regret the previous laws". The solution for the future is to try to harder to make good laws in the present rather than somehow retroactively change the past.

sonotathrowaway 6y ago
I don’t advocate for trying to retroactively pass laws, as that is just mob rule. But to be one of the most powerful lobbying efforts in the country (in 2017, the single largest), while simultaneously claiming to be a helpless observer inside said system is hard for me to take seriously. His response was a claim that his behavior is socially acceptable and not tax avoidance (and thus would continue), whereas I’m saying this behavior is tax avoidance and should be labeled as such, and he’s well aware of how unpopular his opinion is and how much he invests from stopping reforms that would align the legal definition closer to the layman’s conception of tax avoidance.