4 ms·

* What's this Freudian obsession with tax-avoiding libertarians? * How exactly do you avoid paying taxes on something that's free?

• pjscott 13y ago
  I don't think that this, or Google's balloon project, are supposed to be free. Cheap, sure -- they have competitors on the ground. But for something like this to stay aloft, they'll need to charge enough money to at least have a plausible chance of recovering their operating expenses at some point.
  • throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
    The author claims they would be free at a couple points in the article. On re-reading, that's precisely one of his complaints: providing a free service deprives governments of tax revenue. "Carriers, some of them foreign but some of them local, have been in many of these markets for years, providing for a fee services that companies such as Google and Facebook now want to provide for free. And they are big local employers (in Ghana, I was told Vodafone was the largest private employer), as well as taxpayers. [...] Essentially, these companies are trying to reap the reward of encouraging more people to use their services, such as WhatsApp, without doing the messy work that carriers and handset makers such as Nokia and Samsung do; that is, actually setting up businesses on the ground, paying taxes that help fund development and social services, employing and training that nation’s citizens, not to mention building real relationships."
    • pjscott 13y ago
      Then let me amend my statement: I have not heard any mention of this being free from a credible source. And yes, I've looked.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]