Understanding 'Moneyland' — the offshore world of the super-rich
Many of the world's problems — from declining public services to corruption — can be explained in two words: offshore wealth. That's according to investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, who is working to unravel the intricate global web of money and power. To try and de-mystify the idea, Bullough came up with his own word: Moneyland. "I invented 'Moneyland' to try and get my own head around this problem, basically," he says.
[...] One of the greatest stumbling blocks in addressing the issues around offshore tax havens, Bullough says, is that the very term is relatively ambiguous and generally difficult to conceptualise. "'Offshore' isn't a place, it's not the British Virgin Islands or Hong Kong or whatever," he says. "'Offshore' just means not here; elsewhere. It's a legal construct that essentially means something can hide without being anywhere in particular."
To try and de-mystify the idea, Bullough came up with his own word: Moneyland. "I invented 'Moneyland' to try and get my own head around this problem, basically," he says. Moneyland — also the name of Bullough's book on the issue — makes up roughly 10 per cent of the world's wealth, he says. "If you look at its economy, it is the third biggest economy in the world after America and China, it's absolutely massive." Bullough declares London to be the likely capital of Moneyland, followed closely by New York. According to Oxfam, the top three-and-a-half dozen people in the world this year owns the same amount of stuff as the bottom 3.5 billion people in the world.
How far does the Gini curve have to bend before something snaps?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jelizondo on Monday October 15 2018, @05:35PM (7 children)
I know of a case, an example of many, of how offshore money keeps moving around the world. Some years ago, Mexico passed a law regulating companies with headquarters in “fiscal paradises” (i.e. countries with low or no taxation for foreign companies).
Immediately, the offshore companies established an LLC in some friendly jurisdiction in the US (Delaware or Texas, two favorites) and became the “front” of the offshore company.
Technically the LLC is not headquartered in a “fiscal paradise” and thus is exempt from the law.
I know of several Spanish companies “headquartered” in Ireland or Holland, doing business in Mexico through a U.S. LLC. Pay taxes in Mexico? Pay taxes in the US? Pay taxes in Spain? Nope, nope and nope. Pay taxes in Holland? Hell no, they are a foreign company.
Of course, the EU is going after the taxes owed by Google, Microsoft and other big names, but there are literally thousands of such companies moving billions of dollars around, paying no taxes in any jurisdiction. And of course, they’ll move to Belize, U.S. Virgin Islands, Singapore or wherever they can avoid the taxman.
Now the kicker, ordinary folks can’t afford the accountants and lawyers needed to knit this web of companies, so must pay taxes while the richest pay little to none.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday October 15 2018, @06:18PM (5 children)
"Offshore' just means not here; elsewhere."
Cloud banking.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 15 2018, @06:48PM (4 children)
More specifically, it means "Not wherever a tax collector is looking."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by bob_super on Monday October 15 2018, @07:33PM (3 children)
A lot of times, the tax collector is looking.
In most cases, there's just not much she can do, and in some cases, she's just learning the best tricks before going private.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @08:28PM (2 children)
And in other cases the tax collector is man.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @10:13PM
Dumbfuck MRA incel got triggered by the word 'she'!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday October 15 2018, @11:01PM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_OqPRhGVtVw [youtube.com]
Go to about 1:30
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @05:58PM
only sellouts, cowards and idiots pay income tax.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday October 15 2018, @05:37PM (25 children)
Who the fuck thinks Trump is anything but an artifact of increasingly terrible material conditions for most people plus stupid as fuck voters who can't see who actually caused their problems?
And if it were just the US, there's lots of excuses, but extremist political parties are rising everywhere. Either that or centrist shits like Macron, who continue pretending average wellbeing reflects overall wellbeing which created the situation in the first place, thus fueling the next radical extremist.
Because the rich are awful greedy fucks who no one holds to account, us regular people are gonna end up killing each other.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Monday October 15 2018, @05:42PM (23 children)
That's a shitty way of looking at it, and clearly untrue.
Many of the rich may indeed be awful greedy fucks - but so are many of the poor. Don't fall into the fallacy of the excluded middle.
There are two ditches to fall in and we encourage everyone to pick one. Either;
Be a 'progressive' who can't believe anyone with more money than him could possibly have gotten it without stealing it or;
be a 'conservative' who can't believe anyone with less money than him could possibly have any excuse besides their own laziness and poor decisions.
They're both wrong; deeply and tragically wrong.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Monday October 15 2018, @05:53PM (11 children)
It's irrelevant. The greedy non-rich person isn't hiding their money offshore, avoiding their contribution to the government services that help make our society work. The non-rich's I-really-want-money is focused on things like "how the hell am I going to pay my rent and eat and get medical care.
Now you are falling into the fallacy of the excluded middle.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @10:29PM (3 children)
There are very few rich people. Rounding to the nearest percentage, 0% of the population is rich. There are no rich people.
There are lots of poor people. The ones who are awful greedy fucks are actually making an impact through violence and destruction. A non-trivial percentage of the population (perhaps 5% to 15%) is breaking into cars, sneaking off with valuables from stores, threatening others with bodily injury to grab wallets, etc.
These people matter. Non-existent people don't matter.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Tuesday October 16 2018, @12:12AM (1 child)
When those "non-existent" people hold much of the available wealth, and their greed prevents that wealth from working within the system, it turns out they do matter. A lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:09PM
Wealth is not as diversely owned as people think. You can have 99% of the money supply but not 99% of wealth. If they were to try to use all of that money at once it would cause inflation.
The rich don't have as much wealth as you'd think. They just have more money.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimtee on Tuesday October 16 2018, @02:59AM
Depends on what percentage you use.
If you go by % of people who are rich*, you are right.
If you go by % of wealth owned by rich people, you are dead wrong.
*Let's define rich as having 1000 times the median wealth. I would bet serious money that the 0% of people who are 'rich' own more than 80% of all wealth.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:03PM
Greedy non-rich people are sucking on the welfare teat.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday October 16 2018, @02:26AM (4 children)
And, in some cases, how am I going to get drugs and party the night away...
as another already pointed out, there are a LOT more poor people, and some of them do indeed misbehave in ways that cost us all quite dearly.
"Now you are falling into the fallacy of the excluded middle."
How do you figure that?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:47PM (3 children)
You said:
This is a false dichotomy; which is the same fallacy [wikipedia.org]. Why? Because there are quite a few more than two "ditches" to fall into. There's the "everyone who is rich got it legitimately" one, the "everyone who is poor is there by no fault of their own" one, the "those people are sinners and deserve what they get" one, the "they use drugs so I don't have to care about them" one, the "they are a member of my clique/club so they can do no wrong" one, the "they aren't a member of my clique so they can do no right" one, the "it's okay to say anything at all about those people" one, and so forth, on for a long list of cultural and social failures.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday October 16 2018, @05:57PM (2 children)
Yes, it's a false dichotomy, *as I pointed out* by calling it /the fallacy of the excluded middle/. As you then pointed out, the terms are essentially synonymous.
"There's the "everyone who is rich got it legitimately" one, the "everyone who is poor is there by no fault of their own" one, the "those people are sinners and deserve what they get" one, the "they use drugs so I don't have to care about them" one, the "they are a member of my clique/club so they can do no wrong" one, the "they aren't a member of my clique so they can do no right" one, the "it's okay to say anything at all about those people" one, and so forth, on for a long list of cultural and social failures."
Absolutely. There are many distinct positions if you really look at people, though you seem to be quoting some that are particularly difficult to take seriously. But watch the media, watch politics, you'll see how those get roughly sorted out into teams as if it were recess at elementary school. Red and blue, roughly as I described, however many finer distinctions actually get lumped together under the umbrella. Watch how "we" as a culture encourage everyone to pick a ditch and then dig in, growing only more extreme (and thus more intractably opposed to the ditch on the other side) as time goes on.
Because if the "we" of the correct color don't dig in better, don't fight harder, don't push harder... well we're all going to be oppressed by the folks of the wrong color, the wrong opinions, and that would be absolutely awful! The harder we fight, the more reason we have to fight, the more unthinkable civil peace becomes.
This is all a distraction from real problems, but at the same time it becomes a very real, and very huge, problem itself.
The alternative; in a liberal democracy, the power of the central state is supposed to be quite limited, so that it's not an existential crisis to see people of the wrong color elected. They can do little harm and we can wait for the next election. If they exceed their constitutional power, they're arrested, impeached, and the system continues on more or less undisturbed. That's how it's supposed to happen.
The problem; over time, the limitations on the state, both legal and customary, have been deeply eroded. In practice, the Federal government that was really just supposed to handle a few things that no one else could do effectively, can do virtually anything the party in power wants to do - and get away with it. The courts have compliantly invented powers out of thin air, or by such ruses as feigning the inability to comprehend the commerce clause and so on, so that very few legal barriers remain. And even more ominously, in terms of custom, of culture, of the line where violations would spark mass outrage - well a great many people don't believe there should be any limitations at all anymore. Anything can be justified, if you can construct just the right 'facts' and avoid hard questioning. And many people these days, people of both colors, seem to take it for granted that the state should be able to do anything that's justified in their mind. The ends justify the means. And we give ourselves over to this divisive, tribal sort of thinking, where anything that makes the other party weaker is /ipso facto/ good, no matter what damage it does to the body as a whole.
That this thinking is dangerously wrong is something previous generations have learned at great cost. I'm afraid we're about to learn it yet again.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday October 16 2018, @06:28PM (1 child)
No. You specifically said, in a declarative mode:
...and there aren't. There are more. You didn't say "it is false to presume that there are two ditches to fall into", you said "there are two ditches to fall in."
My point was, and remains, that your declaration was false.
If you meant to say something else, that's fine, just say so. But go back and read your own words: that's what you wrote.
Further, your point WRT the excluded middle was:
...one which I agree with, as far as it goes (but not with the implication that this is even close to equally bad.) But it's not the point you made afterwards which I responded to with the assertion that you had presented same type of fallacy, which was a claim that there were "two ditches to fall in", and those ditches were not that the poor and rich were greedy, but rather that they were progressive and conservative extremist mindsets.
Your original post reads to me as if it were trying (and definitely failing) to cast that poor people were greedy and so this was comparable to rich people being greedy; clearly, this is disingenuous right out the door (and that's why I called you on it) as the obvious and toxically excessive greed of the rich is far more consequential than the arguably necessary greed of most of the poor who are just trying to make it to the next goalpost, which is always near — all too near.
Do you understand where I'm coming from now?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday October 17 2018, @04:29AM
I said that immediately after warning the reader to avoid the fallacy of the excluded middle. Having given that advice, I proceeded to give another example of that fallacy. I'm sorry if my style is above your reading level, perhaps you would prefer those of RealDonaldTrump.
"...and there aren't. There are more."
And why would you expect statements labeled as fallacious to be literally true? Or to put it another say, yeah, and?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @06:05PM
"to the government services that help make our society work"
lmao! yeah right. wake the fuck up!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday October 15 2018, @05:59PM
The middle fucking sucks, and is how we got here.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Monday October 15 2018, @06:23PM (3 children)
Looks like you fell into a trap as well. There are plenty of progressives and other more left leaning people who have a much more nuanced understanding. They know there is a trend for the very wealthy not coming about their wealth honestly.
Most recognize that there are also greedy poor people, but also recognize that their contribution to the current problem is minuscule, just like their current net worth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @07:31PM (2 children)
But we gotta virtue signal and keep the class war going!!!
Virtue signalling, not just for hair dying liberals.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @07:48PM (1 child)
It seemed for a while that the class war might be over. However, the 60s happened, and all was not well, so certain people decided to begin the disinformation campaign of a new class war with the Kerner Commission report. Few months later in June, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Finally, in August, there was that fateful Democratic National Convention.
The working class has been in denial that they are under assault ever since.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:06PM
Yup. Propaganda is a helluva thing. I still have hopes that the internet will help us fix things, but until people realize that centralized control is the problem we won't get any solutions. The only way a private corporation can fix this is by creating a decentralized network with a central backbone of servers. It would need to be censorship proof and encrypted.
I think we'll get there pretty soon, and then online reputations will be developed where (hopefully) skilled investigators will be the new aggregators along with algorithmic aggregators. Trust will be earned instead of assumed. Ok, that is an optimistic outlook but it is possible.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 15 2018, @07:50PM (3 children)
I'm as progressive as they come, and I don't believe *everybody* richer than me stole it. For example, most doctors, top-firm lawyers, superstar athletes, and the top actors are quite a bit richer than me, and they earned much of that by doing highly skilled work with the sweat of their own brow.
That's not how people end up super-rich though.
Compare, say, LeBron James (who is definitely rich, but not a billionaire) to Steve Ballmer (who's among the richest people in the world). To get the kind of money LeBron has he has to come up with $6200 every waking hour of his adult life, whereas for Ballmer you're looking at $220,000 every waking hour of his adult life. Which means that Ballmer's rate is about 40 times LeBron's. All available evidence is that LeBron worked and continues to work his butt off, and is at or at least near the top of a highly demanding and highly demanded profession. Meanwhile, Ballmer did not do a good job of being CEO of Microsoft (just look at the stock price - it's done a lot better both before and after Ballmer was in charge). Based on that, it's reasonable to conclude there's a reason that Ballmer is worth 40 LeBron's that has nothing to do with either merit or effort or skill.
And the reason is staring you right in the face: LeBron got his money mostly from the work he does, by stepping out onto the court and playing professional basketball. By contrast, Ballmer got his money mostly from the work that other people did, from Tim Patterson to all the worker-bee developers to the army of company lawyers to the Chinese teenagers assembling XBoxes. And while Ballmer wasn't exactly "stealing", I think it's fair to question whether rewarding him as much as he was for the work that other people did is the most efficient system humans could come up with.
Of course, another big chunk of the super-rich simply inherited the money as well. Again, this doesn't seem like the most efficient system we could come up with: The work that the Waltons could have done had they not inherited a life of leisure were lost, and the resources used to sustain the Waltons' lives of leisure could have been allocated to other potentially more useful activities.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:13PM (2 children)
Totally accurate.
I think the reason CEOs get such massive payouts is due to the criminal-capitalist corporate ethics. They are the ones that get the rope around their necks if something goes wrong, and with the sheer number of shitty things these massive corporations do it becomes a serious liability. So, pay them insane amounts to compromise ethics and wear a giant target 24/7.
We need a functional UN and that will require it to have the dominant military force on the planet. Hahahahaha, yeaaah, that'll happen any day now!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:17PM
But they don't. They get golden parachutes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @06:08PM
yeah, so they can rape and sex worker traffic with global impunity! yay!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @11:57PM (1 child)
> Many of the rich may indeed be awful greedy fucks - but so are many of the poor.
And some of the poor (and not so poor) are in the cash economy, not paying taxes the old fashioned way by not reporting income. Any idea how much money is "off the books" in USA? This https://www.npr.org/2013/03/26/175361658/trillions-earned-under-table-as-more-work-off-radar [npr.org] from ~5 years ago suggests that the shadow economy is $2 Trillion/year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @02:01PM
So I'm not going to care about how little the poor pay in taxes.
Some might say it's fine for companies to avoid taxes if they can but to me there does seem to be some dishonesty involved if a company can publicly claim it made X billions to shareholders, creditors, etc; buy stuff with some of the billions but turn around and tell the tax departments around the world that it made practically zero.
If you or I tried to do the same thing we'd probably be in prison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @01:50AM
Not me.
Bow explain to me what does a guy on record for 35 years as speaking against offshoring have to do with this story, other than being the only solution regular people habe to the fucking priblem of "free" trade.
Yes the term "free" is used most ironically by assholes who came up with the idea.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 15 2018, @06:45PM (8 children)
What's been made abundantly clear to the super-rich is that most governments will not subject them to the same laws and customs that control everyone else. And why not? These folks have learned that governments need their support, and thus their support for the laws and the concept of government is completely optional, effectively forming a new worldwide aristocracy. And thanks to the rules about inheritance, this aristocracy is hereditary, not-infrequently made up of the idiot children of very ruthless people.
We dumped hereditary aristocracy a long time ago for a reason.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday October 15 2018, @07:27PM (3 children)
For the last 229 years, most of the powerful have learnt to let enough crumbs fall off the table to help keep their privileges and necks intact.
We are reaching another high point of discontent, and the move to misdirect the anger is still working (spearheaded by one of the privileged, can't blame him for thinking it's a genius move). A bit more wage growth is required to buy the peace, since gas is going up and we haven't launched the next war yet.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @07:33PM (2 children)
I am gonna go buy stock in Grey Poupon, you just know the rich taste better with it.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @08:07PM (1 child)
But what if you get rich that way?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:15PM
Hey, I eat all-organic so I bet I taste better than all of them! I'm no hypocrite, but I'll eat my extremities first so I don't die before enjoying myself. Will need a little help after my hands go.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday October 15 2018, @07:46PM (3 children)
The revolutions of 1848 began because of just these problems. (At least partly)
In many parts of Europe the very wealthy Church paid no taxes, neither did the very wealthy aristocracy. People decided they had had enough and revolted. Although the revolutions failed, change did happen.
I would hate to see something like that happen again, but if the wealthy exercise their power unwisely it just might.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:25PM (2 children)
We are already quite far into the tipping point. We need drastic changes NOW or it will happen. With all the technological progress it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
When even highly paid workers can barely achieve middle class status you know there is a real problem. The hordes of poor who are saddled with college debt and disenfranchised by the idea that college == good job, well, they are already pissed off. The shady election tactics, outright election thefts, and generally immoral actions of the last 18 years have really sunk in. People are no longer as naive and trusting as they once were. In short the seams are popping but I doubt shit stains like Kavanaugh are going to change their tactics. They won't suddenly gain an appreciation for society and doing the right thing, they are just greedy bastards.
So, maybe this November will bring some actual change or it won't. If the Dems / 3rd parties get a lot of seats they sure as hell better work their ASSES off to fix as many problems as they can. If the voters actually come out with the hope of turning the country around but the politicos still play the same old games? Well I'm pretty sure it'll get bad real quick. The US is based off the idea of Democracy, if that ideal falls through (actually it already has) we are in for a major identity crisis. Might take a few more years of things getting worse so that enough people viscerally comprehend the problems, but the population is already at the tipping point.
So conservatives of SN, will you continue to fall for the propaganda about the "evil liberals" or will you choose to face reality and work together to toss out the evil fuckers playing us all for chumps?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 16 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)
You set your cutoff date too late there. Clinton, Bush, and Reagan all bear some of the blame for the current state of things:
- Ronald Reagan was the guy who accepted wholeheartedly the idea that rich people shouldn't have to pay taxes, and more generally abandoned the idea that had been in place since the 1940's that the economic policies of the US should be aimed at promoting the general welfare of American citizens and instead went for "if it's good for rich people, that's good enough". The 1980's quickly turned into the era of financial flim-flam, culminating in the S&L crash that began rolling in 1986. This also busted the relative balanced books of the US federal budget, which was the first step in Grover Norquist's plan to make the US federal government so small it could be drowned in a bathtub. Say what you will about Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and Dwight Eisenhower, but none of them set as their goal as president to make the government not function properly. Other fun stuff that the Reagan administration did included selling chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein (ostensibly to be used against the Iranians, but actually used against the Kurds), and selling all kinds of other weapons to Iran (ostensibly to be used against the Iraqis) and using the proceeds to fund death squads in Central America. Also worth mentioning is his firing of striking air traffic controllers as part of an overall trend of busting unions to the point where unions lost about 1/3 of their membership.
- George H.W. Bush continued the bad parts of Reagan's policies, and was also the guy that sent the US to war in order to protect his own personal financial interests in Saudi Arabia.
- Bill Clinton's role was to sell out the Democratic Party and abandon their opposition to all that stuff Reagan and Bush had done in exchange for massive campaign donations from major corporations. Then he followed that up with his push for "free trade" deals, where basically multinational corporations can do whatever they want and governments have to do their bidding (as an example of this, countries have been forced under these deals to scrap cigarette warning label laws), and of course also had the side effect of completely busting most of what was left of the American unions. He basically created the model that Democrats have been following ever since: Talk about equal rights for LGBT, racial minorities, women, etc but don't actually do anything to try to enforce it. And any movement towards improvements to the economic situation of working people (a.k.a. the vast majority of the country) gets denounced as unrealistic socialism. Before Clinton came along, it was the Republicans calling the left-wing folks pinkos, after Clinton came along that was now also the view of the supposedly left-wing Democrats too.
Everything George W Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump did were merely logical extensions of what those guys did. For instance, most of George W Bush's people were Reagan people doing what they had wanted to do back in 1990. Most of Barack Obama's people were Clinton's people, and Obama stated in an interview that the president he admired most was Reagan. And as for Trump, Trump is exactly what you get when you actually believe the rhetoric of the Reagan administration, complete with the "burn the government to the ground" mentality.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @06:07PM
Every politician in history shares some of the blame for putting us where we are. 2000 was a big tipping point when the election was stolen from Al Gore and everyone went "guess that is the system at work!" and then 2001 shot us off into cowardly and angry dystopia-land where the government took a LOT more power and no one blinked because "thoughts and prayers" and "bogeymen everywhere!"
I stand by the last 18 years being the colossal fuckup of note. Even saint obama let this fucked up system keep rolling, I guess the simple fact is that we are a country dependent on the war machine and even the best intentioned leader will have a hard time pushing back against such momentum. Well, at least until the populace gets tired of the endless life of war.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @07:58PM (1 child)
The only proper way to handle them is to ignore them or kill them. You will not change them.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:29PM
Nah, not that many of them are actual psychopaths. People frequently turn shitty when they get disproportionate wealth and power. There is no need to change anyone, simply vote out the baddies and hold the new politicians to specific campaign promises that curb corruption. Corporations have become more powerful than the government, this is a massive problem. They need to be broken down into multiple separate localized entities.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15 2018, @09:36PM
I think my grandmother was murdered for around $100,000, by her own daughter - my mother.
When people will lie, steal, and kill each other over petty amounts like $100K, what will they do for larger amounts?
I was just writing to bar associations, this morning ...
===== snip =====
Dear Bar Association LRS personnel,
I am seeking the services of a competent, diligent and patient lawyer.
My grandmother, Mary Horvath, lived at 112 Washington Terrace, there, in Bridgeport, for over half a century.
My mother, alas, was not a dutiful daughter and, effectively, abandoned her grandparents, moving west and never coming back. We all know this is a huge problem, there, on the East Coast.
I was an occasional visitor - and so when my grandparents locked themselves out of the house on New Year's Eve, in late 1999, just before the millenium, I was the one they requested to fly out, from the West Coast, to rescue them.
When I returned to the West Coast I began pressuring my mother to come east with me, to visit her parents, and to help them in their last years. My mother, herself, was, at this time, retired, and not lacking in funds.
(At this point I should add that, although I did not know it at the time, I now believe that my mother was tentatively diagnosed with early stage dementia, and that my older brother was appointed as her conservator. This information was concealed from me by both parties.)
It took eight months, but, finally, in August, 2000, my mother and I visited Bridgeport.
While we were there, my mother and my grandmother had a huge fight, in Hungarian. I asked my grandfather what they were arguing about, and he said, "The will."
(From this conversation, I infer that there was a legitimate will in existence, at that time.)
At this point, my grandmother, perhaps hearing me ask, switched into English and said, to my mother, "But you have so much, and he has so little!" ... then they switched back into Hungarian.
I thought, at the time, that my grandmother was referring to her son, from her FIRST marriage, who lived in Hungary, and whom my mother and grandmother had traveled to Europe, to meet, a few years before (just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I think).
The next day, my mother persuaded me to distract grandmother upstairs for fifteen minutes while she "did something" downstairs. She had done the same for me, a few days before, when we had replaced an inoperable microwave oven in the kitchen, and so I did not think anything of it.
We then left, a few days later, and returned to the West Coast.
Six weeks later I was called by Bridgeport police, who, with the fire department, had broken in to rescue my grandfather, and had found my grandmother, dead, on the floor, in the hall, with indications that she'd been lying there for three days.
Less than 72 hours later I was in Bridgeport, with my mother.
In the kitchen was a safe that I had not even known existed. It was sitting on the table, I think. Open. Empty. It was the first thing I saw that didn't belong. I'd never seen it before. I took a photograph. It was the first of hundreds of photographs I took, documenting the state of affairs that I found, and worked to correct, there, at 112 Washington Terrace.
The police thought it was a burglary gone bad, at first, but were unable to find any doors unlocked. Everything was secure. They were forced to the conclusion that whatever happened, had only involved Grandmother.
I interpreted the empty safe as a message. But I didn't know what it meant or whom it was intended for.
My mother set me to work cleaning the house and looking for the will.
We never found the will. I spent six months looking for it - six months I was never compensated for, I add.
When we returned to San Francisco, my mother evicted me from both the residence on the East Coast and the residence on the West Coast.
The San Francisco eviction ended up being heard before the Presiding Judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. I did not reference events on the East Coast because I did not understand their relevance, myself, yet.
During the hearing it was claimed that my mother had lied to her own lawyer by not disclosing to her lawyer that it was her son that he was evicting - make of that what you will.
My older brother, the conservator, declined to involve himself. I would argue that this was retaliation for old grudges rather than diligent exercise of his duties but because he and his actions lie outside of your jurisdiction I would prefer to confine this discussion to the actions of my mother.
It took me over fifteen years to understand what happened - for excellent and documented reasons that I am happy to go into, separately ... but I now believe that my mother stole my grandmother's will from the safe, using the safe combination that my grandmother had given her, against emergencies - the safe that she, my mother, knew existed, in the kitchen, concealed in the pantry, covered by a sheet - so as to insure that she, my mother, would inherit ... she, and no one else.
If this is a true analysis, then my grandmother's death was a form of murder, insofar as my mother caused my grandmother's death; and it is in everyone's interest to see the record corrected.
My grandmother's death was not an accident.
She did not die of old age.
She was killed.
By her own daughter.
For money.
In passing, I would like to point out that evidence suggests that my mother, and her lawyer, concealed the existence of her own older brother from the probate court, as well as the true cause of her mother's death.
I would like to engage the service of a lawyer to evaluate revisiting the death of my grandmother, with an eye towards providing more evidence to the court, perhaps leading to a different conclusion.
If we do not document these sorts of boundary cases and enforce the law then we will only see an increase in this sort of behavior; and, indeed, unless I am terribly mistaken, we already do.
And who speaks for my grandmother? Her own daughter abandoned her. Her other grandsons abandoned her. I am the only one who seems to care about the truth.
There is no statute of limitations on murder. Unfortunately, my mother, herself, is also deceased. But that should not stop us from determining what did NOT happen.
Please advise me on what I should do next.