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I apologise if you aren't American and I'm simply making sweeping generalisations innacurately, but this seems to be a very common response I see from Americans

I apologise if you aren't American and I'm simply making sweeping generalisations innacurately, but this seems to be a very common response I see from Americans - the idea that in any situation there are only two responses ... do it or do nothing. In actual fact, the UK government is quite at liberty to: a) Take them to court, b) STFU or anything else in between, including c) Start a debate about it. I've seen the same line of argument a lot in debates around personal data used by companies, too: the idea that people should either a) accept whatever a company wants to do, or b) not use their services. It seems weird to me to imagine that people or governments are somehow no longer at liberty to complain and use peer pressure to get what they want as well as to use other routes.

OGinparadise 13y ago
Peer pressure in this case is useless. Google, more or less, is bound by law not to pay taxes that can be avoided. Say Google handed UK a check for $100 million in 'extra' taxes. is that enough? Why not pay $500 million?
KMag 13y ago
In this case, perhaps there are a couple of factors. First, for many Americans, it's very against their sense of fairness to apply unwritten rules, especially after the fact. I'm not sure about other places, but the U.S. has a long history of unwritten conventions being applied unevenly to the detriment of less powerful groups within society. The U.S. also has had to deal a fair amount with multiple cultures living near each other in a single society, and the convention has become that unless cultural expectations become codified in the laws by which we have all (by proxy) agreed to live by, it's very rude to try to force your cultural norms on someone's behavior without at least campaigning to get those norms codified in law so they are uniformly applied. To many Americans, there's the sneaking suspicion that standards are being unequally applied if someone is being to be asked to go beyond what the law requires if there isn't simultaneously a strong push to codify these unwritten expectations in law. The second factor is perhaps the American cultural bias towards individualism, distrust of government, "go big or go home", and a tendency to view theory as only a means to an end (application). "Why theorize about what should be done if your aim is not to change the laws that govern all of us?" Most Americans don't view governments as worthy recipients (or good stewards) of voluntary donations, and view any non-mandatory taxes paid as donations.

OGinparadise 13y ago

Peer pressure in this case is useless. Google, more or less, is bound by law not to pay taxes that can be avoided. Say Google handed UK a check for $100 million in 'extra' taxes. is that enough? Why not pay $500 million?

KMag 13y ago

In this case, perhaps there are a couple of factors. First, for many Americans, it's very against their sense of fairness to apply unwritten rules, especially after the fact. I'm not sure about other places, but the U.S. has a long history of unwritten conventions being applied unevenly to the detriment of less powerful groups within society. The U.S. also has had to deal a fair amount with multiple cultures living near each other in a single society, and the convention has become that unless cultural expectations become codified in the laws by which we have all (by proxy) agreed to live by, it's very rude to try to force your cultural norms on someone's behavior without at least campaigning to get those norms codified in law so they are uniformly applied. To many Americans, there's the sneaking suspicion that standards are being unequally applied if someone is being to be asked to go beyond what the law requires if there isn't simultaneously a strong push to codify these unwritten expectations in law. The second factor is perhaps the American cultural bias towards individualism, distrust of government, "go big or go home", and a tendency to view theory as only a means to an end (application). "Why theorize about what should be done if your aim is not to change the laws that govern all of us?" Most Americans don't view governments as worthy recipients (or good stewards) of voluntary donations, and view any non-mandatory taxes paid as donations.