raptix

top objectivists?

top objectivists? so there's like, a hierarchy or something?

Thanks for the links GreedyCapitalist and for all your replies.

How do you see the business cycle, how do you view the financial markets, is the business cycle simply a manifestation of money supply alterations? Tightening, contracting, etc? Or something more/different? I think its interesting because I'm yet to come to a macroeconomic conclusion of 'what really is the nature of the business cycle'. Of course this comes out of being someone who likes trading and intermarket analysis is my favorite topic. Furthermore to expand: What do you think of the business cycle? Do you entirely comprehend it? Do you profit from it? Do you change your life around it? Any other thoughts on Economics/Finance?

You can see from alot of the Economics Eastern Europe has adopted, that you can persuade an Atheist through rhetoric much easier than a Theist. I'm trying to remember my geography though, Czech Republic isn't really that "Eastern" its kind of middle of Europe. *Googles for a map.

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm nuff said.

I say I don't agree alot and with women it's good with every time, it's just the men that can tend to challenge me, well that's from my experience.

We all have to deal with irrational people, so what methods or advice do you have to further your own self-interests? For example, every individual in my family gains their morality from society, I for now, have to live with them, yes I do have a choice, yet it'll mean to move out and pay rent elsewhere which will slow my progress on other more important matters, so this subject has little weight on my interests in terms of significance. I don't comment on any issue they ask me to opine on, or offer my real views and simply say I don't know enough about it, I'm not evading reality because I know just how they are philosophically (position wise) and how they'd react to my unpopular views (that is: with great antagonism). To me such antagonism can create hostility or by itself close walls between them doing me favors, or trading me values that they otherwise would. Hostility is not a value gained in my situation, these are people who'd reply to my ideas with "you're too extreme" "you're arogant" "you need to be open minded", etc. So I've made the choice to live with others. That's how I deal with them, they're obviously not Objectivists. What do you do? Offer your stories, tell us even if you're very explicitly Objectivist and have gotten into massive debates, even if others will frown at you, share such stories (ie: wife kiccking you out). I think alot of us need food for thought on this issue, wherever we can get it from, dealing with others who are irrational is a learning curve that, in our lifetime, has no end -- and most importantly its almost an imperative we pretty much can't avoid.

If she's of any value to you, give her a piekoff taped introduction to Objectivism (this is streamable for free from the Ayn Rand institutes website), he's persuasive, emphasis, rhetoric, art, it's all beautiful. "things are what they are, ayyyy is ayyyy" repeat after me "things are what they are, ayyyy is ayyyy" I find emphasis on articulating your Objectivist metaphysics through rhetoric eventually changes peoples minds about God (rather than replying to their nonsense) -- the only hard part is getting them to listen to you.

If I were a Canadian businessman I'd rather buyback my companies stock and only provide a tiny bit of my product into the market, long term, the big bucks are on their way.

Very very well articulated. Food for thought, I learn't something, thank you for the trigger analogy. In regards to my interests in Vanuatu, I'm trying to find out as much as possible about safe and secure offshore money handling, do you have any practical advice as to how I'd achieve complete verification and assurance that 'what I'm doing won't ring alarm bells'? For example, if you were looking to do business in Vanuatu, play the Financial markets, have the broker deposit funds to XYZ corp in Vanuatu, move the funds from that account to Australia, have it not ring alarm bells, etc, where would you look for complete assurance so that you feel safe to do such transfers? Would you waste your life reading 10,000 pages of some random tax code? Specifically, what would you look at/any tips?

I'll just like to add my own Tax Avoidance ways, which will materialize either this or next financial year, depending on my readyness to trade the Financial Markets with real cash. Although I do not know much about claiming assistance out of the welfare system, I have done lots of research on the feasibility of Incorporating a company offshore rather than initially trading as an Individual, incurring Individual income taxes and CGT. Just a 2 hour flight off the East coast of Australia where I live (Brisbane) the Pacific island of Vanuatu has: * No personal income taxes * No corporate income taxes * No capital gains taxes * No withholding taxes * No estate or death duties * No exchange treaties * No exchange control * Extensive confidentiality provisions * Full international banking, insurance and other professional services * Excellent communications It costs roughly $800-$1000 to incorporate an International company in Vanuatu. It is illegal in Vanuatu to give foreign law enforcement account information, furthermore the only real tax a tourist is subjected to is a VAT (sales kind of tax) of around 10%: I'm yet to discover whether foreigners can claim this tax back if they've got permanent residency/solid visa (I personally don't worry about this which ever way it goes). If you do business in Vanuatu your corporation will be taxed, however a foreigner doing business offshore is subjected to virtually no taxes. I'm doing further research into fund transfers into Australia (offshore credit card and under $10,000 bank transfers into Australia [so AUSTRAC (anti-money-laundering) doesn't notice]) and whether we've got wealth taxes/any side effects of my legalized money laundering. I like Vanuatu alot, and when I'm rich I'll look at Bermuda. I'm going to holiday there to find all this out, as the flights only something like US$500 return and all the hotels are cheap, not to mention if I ever buy/hack my residency (as it becomes a technicality) the property prices there are cheap, USD$250,000 for a 2 bedroom shack with 1 hectare of awesome beachside land, US$100,000 for a two bedroom brick house with a view akin to that of sitting on the North side of Sydney harbor (just in Vanuatu) in the middle of the capital. Right now my demo trading (being paper trading on the FX market for months now) yields 20% losses and 90% wins a month by average, not to mention the amount of leverage available through an FX brokers credit lines when I trade real currency -- so my future looks bright (and I'm looking forward to visiting Vanuatu). I've spoken to an accountant over (before I thought about doing things offshore) whether the expenses would be greater or lesser if I were to begin a trading company run it at a loss (and do some legal tricks so I eventually end up paying less tax, like differing tax payments, running my life through the business, paying myself very little, etc) in contrast to trading Individually -- he said in Australia the expenses outweigh the benefits opining "especially since I'm $120 an hour, ahaha" -- and I left after 5minutes of discussion and no consultation fee

So you understand the nature of government, inflation, the fed, and a few other variables: yet you stare in wonder at fellow Objectivists who have implemented their plans to avoid tax when they opine "when my books balance I end up paying minimal taxes, almost zero'. When I hear another person say something like that I think "I wonder how he did it" and I presume some others reading this may also be in this camp. The purpose of this thread is to help Enlighten myself (primarily) and others (secondarily, as this information is exoteric and not a confidential session between me and an Objectivist financial planner) as to the methods people use to claim their stolen funds back from the system legally as well as provide information pertaining to avoiding tax in the first place. You will benefit from participation in this thread in that other similar minded people will probably explain how they avoid tax, and possibly post a method you've never thought of, and then you could use that method to piss off your government This is about minimizing tax, our goal is the closest to $0 in taxes as we can get, this thread is not about consuming more than one produces. At 18 years of age I personally have little knowledge of the available monetary claims from the welfare state whilst employed (in my case through Australias centralized jobless claim/welfare agency 'centerlink') -- I've never been unemployed and probably never will be, my understanding is that its generally only legitimate (from the governments perspective) to claim benefits, as in monetary assitance; when you're unemployed, such as a jobless claim. I hear some Objectivists citing that they receive Rent Assistance and have setup shelf companies in which they make sure they get payed just below X (a poverty line?) from that company so as an individual they are able to claim benefits (rent assitance and others I personally don't know of..) thus receiving more income, and having the business (who they are the only employees) pay for trips overseas etc (under the guise of liasoning etc) these people are getting the government back for expropriating their produce (that just happens to be in the form of the company, rather than individual net worth). Most countries have this individual>company tax avoidance setup and I consider most modern welfare states as similar, I'm Australian, and you could be sure most of the tips an American would give me (such as instructing me on how to obtain rent assistance whilst employed) applies to me (as we have rent assistance as well). What I'm trying to convey is that in explaining how you, as an Objectivist, try to get as much of that stolen money back, be mindful to point out a welfare benefit you get in your country and know doesn't exist in another countries system, other than that -- everythings quite similar -- the methods of avoiding tax (and getting your stolen money back) are virtually the same. As you can see I only know of Rent Assitance, this really demonstrates my lack of knowledge, hopefully once this discussion gets moving I'll know of many ways to receive monetary benefits from the welfare system. I also have an off topic question for anyone willing to quote and give their answer. Say you earn $20,000 (in X country) in a Financial year, and since the beginning of the financial year (say you earnt $500 the first week) the Government was taking $60~ or whatever the figure was every week from your pay. So on the last day of the Financial year your last payslip says Net Deductions for Year "$2,500" (this is how much you've paid in in taxes). Yet after you do your Tax Return you only end up paying $100 in taxes and $2,400 is returned to you. What about the loss of buying power during the financial year? What about the extra float the government has in real money terms when they have thousands of your dollars? My Off-topic Question is this: Assuming it was the first year you've ever payed taxes, when you consume (claiming money back) are you consuming more than you produce if you utilize/claim $2,500 in any form of welfare or should you only be consuming $100?

I suppose you can say Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones are 25 years apart. When you're younger though. 1/15th of your life is a bigger piece of your life than 1/20th. They have a saying here in Australia. Your age, take 7. 18 - 7 = 11 Yuck. But if I were 25 - 7 = 18 I guess I can see abit of sense in it (as girls tend to like much older men here). Consider the 1/15th and 1/20th example. Wasn't Nathaniel Brandon half Ayn Rands age when they did it? Having your partner be 1/2 your age is very different than 3/4ths (15 years to 20) from the perspective of the 'older person' and if they even evaluate these fractions including other factors before they contemplate a relationship. If the Aussie Blokey "your age take 7" is close to the truth for most people the girl I marry is probably 11....yuck... #edit: Here, it's very common for blokey males here to say "is she more than 7 years younger than you?" "yes" "then don't go near it"

I don't like the Fifth Amendments Double Jeopardy implications.

I should of bought that DVD, instead I'm getting a Democracy vs Socialism debate from Peter Schwartz imported from AynRandBookstore (I live in Australia) -- I thought it was an Internet copy (streaming) just like the 33hr introduction to Objectivism course I bought -- yet when they e-mailed me to ask me to verify my billing address I just said "yeah send it to X" in hindsight, I wish I got the Westpoint DVD, the DIM hypothesis set & the America at War series. It just turns out that this period was either during or just after Abraham Lincoln took control of the money supply and made sure there was no fractional reserve banking, he created the Greenback, which contrary to the terms popular use, does not exist today, it was a 100% full reserve centralized note for the people, the coin created by government, without a central bank, taking the control away from moneychangers and back to the people, however crappy this seems (as a free banking system to me is ideally the privately decentralized issuance of notes pegged to gold by banks) -- I think the greenback essentially was freer than a central banking system -- it seems every president who sets out to destroy the bank gets asssassinated; and if I remember correctly the man who shot lincoln said he was bought by european central bankers.

19th century Chicago Mercantilism was the first thing that comes to my mind as the Free-est Era. As well as immigration to NYC, and the nature of contractual labor in the greater New York metropolitan area in the 19th century. At the moment I'd like to just go on a tangent. The Republic of Chile's reversion from Socialism to its embracing of many more aspects of Free Market Economics in contrast to how far other countries go in terms of trade liberalization. Offshore Tax Havens. Cayman Islands Monaco Bermuda Vanuatu ( it's illegal in Vanuatu to give foreign law enforcement account details, hehe ) and Permanent Tourism. -- wikipedia Some may argue we're in the freest era, in that individuals are able to, through permanent tourism, obtain more freedom than ever before in human history. It depends how you look at I guess, certainly you have to 'earn' such freedom (ie: have alot of money) but it still holds that in contrast to other ages, the freedom of the permanent tourist outruns that of any one in any era. Only in the last fifty years have people really been able to become a PT. Just thought I'd introduce some stuff I find interesting that agrees with the topic, its going on a tangent abit but, I always find discussions about freedom interesting, especially when you look at different nations, their laws, and at different points of time in history. #edit: using abit of introspect I brought up PT and Chile incorrectly, as when discussing "The Most Free Era" its usually implied that we're already speaking a country, where by default due to its nature, you have more freedom.

I've read this thread, but don't understand why the topic is "The Declaration of Existence" -- can somebody explain this to me?

I personally think that the closer a nuclear reactor is to a city, the better, now this may sound counter-productive, but you've got doors, buildings, windows and other things to run to. Furthermore, even though safety is number one priority even in a rural reactor, the safety and warning systems are more rigourous and effective as a possible meltdown is of nightmare scenario to a big city -- and further steps are taken to ensure utter safety. I'm not sure if my thesis matches up with real science, but even if I was dying of radiation poisoning and didn't know it, I'd rather be happy sitting behind a locked door on the 34th floor feeling reassured rather than speeding down on an open freeway exposed to the elements and panicking to get out of my town.

Some bricks are Gold bricks, but I understand your analogy, it's common sense.

I'm not going to waste any of my life on a retort, but am simply going to recommend that the spokesperson for Sweden read Atlas Shrugged, hopefully one day I will gain value from this in the form of trade, possibly a can of Swedish Snus.