Call it what you want to. There are a few hundred xero employees (kiwis) supporting families, the economy, adding to the technical chops of NZ, ..., because of Theil's investment.
Do you have reason to believe Thiel was the last/only person willing to make that investment?
Edit: To be clear: point is, yes, investment is valuable, but it doesn't necessarily follow that there's no company or employment but-for his investment.
That's so f* up!
Money can buy you everything. Even a citizenship. The NZ-gov should asked themselves why a close Trump supporter and VC is looking for a safe haven outside of the US. Will this person really add value to the society? Or will he build a massive mansion with a wall around it and an airport?
Latvian citizenship at 35.000€ with no residency requirements looks like a steal, considering that you would be allowed to live anywhere in the EU, if I'm not misinterpreting.
The government can receive money from this guy with no added costs, as it is unlikely that Thiel poses a threat to NZ or its citizens. Even if he builds a mansion or something that's still a net positive that would be irresponsible not to take advantage of. (assuming the funds are not lost to corruption)
Can granting Thiel citizenship create problems in the future, in terms of kickstarting negative trends? That's a possibility but it seems like a nebulous and remote one.
If buying citizenships was illegal, the pressures that causing citizenship purchases would not go away. They would just become an incentive to more corruption.
I don't have a source but I remember a panel discussion when Page came up with the idea to build a floating city in international waters. This way they could overcome the governmental regulations that slow down innovation, taxes etc.
I can't help but think about Toronto as a testing ground for that. Add facebooks flying internet drones plus some space X space infrastructure. Sounds pretty cool to me.
How do taxes slow down innovation–considering all R&D costs can be deducted, and taxes only apply to profits?
And which regulations, specifically, are holding back innovation at Google? Would their floating city allow me (to use one of your examples) to conduct rocket launches in my backyard?
I'm not from the US and the discussion was mostly about regulations from the states but what I got from it was:
- foreign skilled workforce is from their perspective still to hard to employ (and the Muslim Ban could be an good example for that)
- think about the massive amount of money that Apple has offshore because it's to expensive to bring it back to the US! Put that investment into R&D and the effect would be tremendous.
- I don't know how high the cost for using the public infrastructure is in the US but building it from ground up and managing it by yourself might be cheaper (I assume thats what the Toronto project is all about).
- do some research on costs for positions like "Governmental Relations Manager". google made some bad experiences in China with that
I don't eat meat not to solve any sustainability problems. I don't eat meat because of how the meat industry is treating the animals and the nature
(By the way, most soy and grain is produced to feat our animals). I can give you a lot of examples for the planned economized genocide on other races than humans. But people, like the author of this text, don't want to hear arguments or examples like that. They don't buy at the local market, they buy the cheapest meat at the supermarkets and care about their wallets more than they care about others. We totally lost the connection to the lives of the animals we eat. Additionally I don't eat meat because 80% of our antibiotics is produced to feat it to animals. Just Google MRSA and find out how much your government is doing about that issue. Some scientist, here in germany, call the resistance against antibiotics an equal threat to the mankind like nuclear weapons. This issue brings meat consumption and therefore the meat industry in a total different perspective.
That's not what this post is about (why people shouldn't eat meat). It's about the claim that vegetarian diets are better for the environment, which they are, but not to the extent that they'll solve our sustainable agriculture challenges. Please take your soapboxing to a place where it's on topic.
Please there is no call for being mean like this. I personally found this comment to be interesting and relevant. I also think it is relevant to the larger discussion of which this article is a part.
How is calling out people for highjacking discussions that are remotely about their personal convictions to preach about those convictions 'mean'? If anything, this site should police such behavior more - what we have now is half of the posts arguing a straw man because they see a keyword in the title and feel they need to defend their ideological positions. The OP is about how vegetarianism won't lead to sustainable food supply - and the GP answers 'you should become vegetarian because poor animals'. Fine, but in the context of this threat pure noise. Look, I'm not saying I can always restrain myself to stay on topic in every post I type; I'd be happy to have those posts summarily deleted too if that meant the signal to noise ratio in the comments would increase.
