Double-Encrypting Ransomware

This seems to be a new tactic:

Emsisoft has identified two distinct tactics. In the first, hackers encrypt data with ransomware A and then re-encrypt that data with ransomware B. The other path involves what Emsisoft calls a “side-by-side encryption” attack, in which attacks encrypt some of an organization’s systems with ransomware A and others with ransomware B. In that case, data is only encrypted once, but a victim would need both decryption keys to unlock everything. The researchers also note that in this side-by-side scenario, attackers take steps to make the two distinct strains of ransomware look as similar as possible, so it’s more difficult for incident responders to sort out what’s going on.

Tags: , , ,

Posted on May 21, 2021 at 8:50 AM • 53 Comments

Comments

Clive Robinson • May 21, 2021 10:48 AM

@ ALL,

Firstly, as crime is,driven by humans, it tends to follow an evolutionary pattern, so change was expected and has been seen several times with ransomware over the past year and a half,

1, Move from individuals to organisations.
2, Move to attacking organisations with individuals information such that exfiltration alows two attacks the basic ransomware on the orgqnisation then the doxing form of blackmail on individuals.

And a couple of other evolutionary changes as well.

What is not being obviously seen is the way money is being collected. In the past it was done by third parties acting on behalf of those that got their files encrypted so the payment was a “double tap of deniability” where you payed a recovery house who then payed the ransom on your behalf, pretending they had found some way to find the recovery key. Thus giving people their files back but with the deniabiliry of paying the ransom, which avoids certain jurisdictional legal issues.

This change suggests that the ransomware people want to “cut out the middle man” to get more of the money.

But there are also technical issues, you can rent rabsomware software, thus more than one attack group may pick on the same entity at or near the same time. Thus “toe-treading” might well have become an issue, thus there may be an element of arbitrage going on in the background.

As always “more details required” to be more specific on what is actially going on.

Zaphod • May 21, 2021 2:36 PM

Clive – I trust you are well. No recent mention of medical incidents in this forum, which I take as good news.

As an aside, I was wondering if your “middle name” is Pansophical?

Yours, as always.
Z.

Rj • May 21, 2021 2:49 PM

“…so it’s more difficult for incident responders to sort out what’s going on.”

If it was only encryption of your files, and not exfiltration, why sort anything out except how did the bums get in in the first place.

If you have backup, use it to recover. If you don’t, then you obviously don’t care about your data, so just format and re-install. You didn’t need that data anyway.

What’s this bug deal? Get your BACKUP and RESTORE working!

If you need real-time backup, say for a critical process (like industrial control, financial transactions,etc.) Then set up a use a proper robust database implementation with transaction locking and distributed storage, including journaling. The journal should be sequential and only appendable, not writable where it has already been written — like a tape drive.

JonKnowsNothing • May 21, 2021 3:12 PM

@Rj

  • They Do Not Know WHEN it happened
  • They Do Not Know the EXTENT of the damage
  • They DO Not Know how MANY systems are affected

Backup and Recovery are good places to start IF you have tested your recovery regularly on an independent mirror system that is not connected to anything and that can be wiped or junked should you find your data corrupted.

Recovery may not be possible for logistic reasons. One cannot run down to Wal$Mart and buy large mainframes, thousands of devices and put them in your trunk and haul back to the office.

Planes may or may not fly to the remote sites and your vaccine status might be in question. (1)

Real Time Backup is great until you hit Real Time Ransomware Encryption flowing right into your Real Time Backup Parallel System.

7x24x365 systems mean that huge swaths of data can be lost even with a decent backup just due to the length of time it takes to flush the corrupted system and restore all the files, test for integrity and follow a restart of business catastrophe recovery plan. Such plans are mostly intended for Natural Disasters not Criminal Actions.

===

1, The UK is not the only country with accepted vaccine list restrictions. Many do not accept the USA-3.

ht tps://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/21/novavax-volunteers-in-uk-threaten-to-quit-over-approval-delays

The Novavax coronavirus trial threatens to descend into chaos as exasperated volunteers say they will drop out because they cannot prove they are fully vaccinated on the NHS app, leaving them unable to travel

Anders • May 21, 2021 3:40 PM

@ALL

There’s perfect solution against ransomware – kill all cryptocurrency,
make it invaluable NOW. If there’s no anonymous way to get rich quick
via an extortion, those attacks just stop.

Yes there remains options for “payback” attacks like NotPetya was, but
those are minority.

Clive Robinson • May 21, 2021 4:06 PM

@ Zaphod,

I trust you are well. No recent mention of medical incidents in this forum, which I take as good news.

Kind of you to ask, I’m bumping along as I’m still required to be “guarding” so I’m not meeting people who can pass on nasties, but nor am I getting the excercise I crave, that can cause physiological issues to arise…

As for “Pansophical” being my middle name, no not realy. I’ve actually mentioned all of this in the past but…

I have a kind of sixth sense for things that are not right or as our host @Bruce has called it “thinking hinky” when you couple that to an interest in the history of how we moved from artisans through to science and engineering thus our industrial times you get to recognise patterns of “idiocy/stupidity” when looked at from the old maxims of “Those who fail to learn from history condem themselves to relive it” and “Learn by others mistakes, so you make less of your own”.

For some reason I do not understand and nobody I’ve asked has come up with a satisfactory answer to[1] is why ICT does not teach it’s history to those comming into the field of endevor. Worse stuff less than a decade old and well within living memory gets “forgoton”.

But when you dig down a little, very few attacks on ICT systems are actually new, many are centuries old. All that has happened is that people have taken old ways of doing crime and simply reused them but in the comparatively new environment of the ICT industry. Old cons are like fine wines, they generaly care not the age of the glass they are delivered in… Thus a knowledge of lockpicking I taught myself quite a while before I was ten led me into learning about other crimes and I saw the patterns of how they worked and failed before I became a teenager. It ment that at school I and a likeminded friend were doing things that whilst not crimes were not within the rules, but so inventively they usually just look bemused. Thus in my first job in a store, within days I’d worked out how their entire security system worked and how to avoid it inventively and also how to make it look like others… Such mind games are fun, but even when you can get away with them are not realy worth doing. As my father told me “If you are smart enough to carry out the perfect crime, you are smart enough to earn a lot more money honestly”. Also there is almost always going to be someone smarter or more knowledgable than you, or just probability will work against you some how what others chose to call “bad luck” does happen.

If you look at nearly everything I predict it has either happened before, or is a logical extrapolation from what has happened before. Coupled with yes a wide knowledge in technology[2] it’s all rather mundane when explained. But it’s neither nystical or magical anyone can get do it with both the right experience and the right education, which strangely does not appear to be available in “course form” so “self study” is how you aquire it currently…

Just remember it takes 10,000 to 20,000 hours to get a genuinely new skill to a reasonable level. However pick two skills that broadly complement and your time is better served.

Which is why I emphasise that if you realy want to learn any technical skill you must master,

1, The fundementals.
2, The relevant testing experience.

Something most employers do not want their staff learning on their dime, so Universities tend to avoid teaching them…

As I point out to people, if everything goes to plan you’ve not learnt anything from it, even though you might have honed your existing skills a little. When things go wrong you have an opportunity to find out why and thus be prepared in future.

[1] The front runner on “plausable” is that it will get in the way of profits in what is the ultimate race for the bottom market places that ICT represents.

[2] In some ways I got lucky and changed career directions multiple times from my hobbies that became demanded as skills[3]. I got into consumer computing when it was possible to know in breadth just about all that was going on, and I had depth in places I could link together and thus be a usefull asset. Part of that was a memory that could read three or four paperbacks, two or three technical books / manuals and upwards of three or four hundred data sheets etc every week, but importantly remember the important details to not just the document or the page but the paragraph and in quite a number of things individual key sentences. Which made me a very valuable resource to others who would just ask and be told what they needed to know.

[3] I do not advise people turning their hobbies into jobs, even though it can be highly profitable. For two reasons, firstly it takes away a hobby you need and turns it into a job, thus for your own saniry you need a new hobby. Secondly hobbies are ment to be enjoyed, jobs not so much, thus you can end up hating what once was a very enjoyable hobby.

QWERTY • May 21, 2021 4:24 PM

@ Clive Robinson

I do not advise people turning their hobbies into jobs, even though it can be highly profitable. For two reasons, firstly it takes away a hobby you need and turns it into a job, thus for your own saniry you need a new hobby. Secondly hobbies are ment to be enjoyed, jobs not so much, thus you can end up hating what once was a very enjoyable hobby.

Don’t change the way you do things as a hobby you love just because somebody offers you money — but hobbies do cost money for materials and supplies if nothing else.

A legitimate job provides a useful service to a company, business, or individual — if you’re miserable doing what they want to pay you to do, or if the employer is too manipulative that’s one thing — otherwise don’t turn down free money if there’s something positive you can do for it and continue to enjoy your hobbies, life, family, etc.

SpaceLifeForm • May 21, 2021 5:52 PM

@ Clive

Spot on.

1, Move from individuals to organisations.
2, Move to attacking organisations with individuals information such that exfiltration alows two attacks the basic ransomware on the orgqnisation then the doxing form of blackmail on individuals.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57197688

On its darknet website, it told the Health Service Executive (HSE), which runs Ireland’s healthcare system, that “we are providing the decryption tool for your network for free”.

“But you should understand that we will sell or publish a lot of private data if you will not connect us and try to resolve the situation.”

Clive Robinson • May 21, 2021 7:09 PM

@ Anders, ALL,

There’s perfect solution against ransomware – kill all cryptocurrency, make it invaluable NOW.

Sorry it is neither a perfect solution or even going to be remotely effective before you can make cryptocurrency worthless.

The reason is simple,

Money laundering is not a core activity of ransomware attackers

It’s just an auxiliary activity that is simply used to collect payment, thus any “value transfer” system can be used just as easily[1].

If people doubt that, remember cryptocurrency has been around for only a couple of decades, ransom has been collected for thousands if not tens of thousands of years one way or another and will continue to do so as long as those asking for ransom can have protection in some way.

So anything that has perceived value can be used to pay a ransom, cryptocurrency is just a modern way to transfer value, and as is becoming clear, it’s probably more traceable than the old fashioned physical tokens of piles of used bank notes, precious and semi-precious minerals and metals that have presumed value[2].

Just to be clear, current cryptocurrencies are seriously flawed in their design thus not realy a good way for the transfer of value for criminals. Will there be new cryptocurrencies or other value transfer systems that will replace them? Yes of course there will and like cryptocurrencies for a while criminals of all types will use them untill they two become usless for criminal activity.

And that’s the point, as long as there is some viable value transfer system criminals can use, then ransom demands and payments will continue far into the future. The ransomware attackers will care not a jot what the method is as long as the value transferes with sufficient profit at any given risk value.

[1] Whilst value transfer is the desired activity, there are in some cases secondary requirments such as non-tracability and anonymous value conversion, that many people mistakenly believe cryptocurrencies give. They don’t for various reasons, thus ransomware needs to be carried out from a protected jurisdiction, which is actually the problem that needs to be rectified.

[2] Remember about a hundred years ago aluminium metal was still a precious metal by it’s scarcity in metalic form… It was unknown two centuries ago and a third of a century later was first produced by an industrial process and within the following hundred years became the most produced no ferrous metal. It’s value changed accordingly during that time. Some metals are still effectively going through a similar process. But there are others such as plutonium that will probably remain worth more than their weight in gold. Whilst others are so scarce they have no known value because they have never been sold on an open market.

Anders • May 21, 2021 9:00 PM

@Clive

Ok, give me at least one “value transfer” that is comparable
with cryptocurrency and that takes over the cryptocurrency
position when effectively all cryptocurrency is killed and buried?

If there is any other “value transfer” means, why cybercriminals don’t
use them already now?

Sorry, i don’t any other.

“Cryptocurrency is one of the single enabling factors that allows cybercriminals to deploy a massive amount of ransomware across state and local agencies, said Christopher Krebs, former Department of Homeland Security official”

hxxps://www.rsaconference.com/library/blog/how-cryptocurrency-fuels-ransomware

Redditor • May 21, 2021 9:37 PM

@Anders
There’s perfect solution against ransomware – kill all cryptocurrency, make it invaluable NOW

And I who thought that NOW might be a good time to buy $DOGE:-) Although it has been losing a lot of value lately, just like the other cryptos.

Who knows what direction that value will go in the future, with China putting pressure on the exchanges and miners processing Bitcoin (cryptocurrencies seem to be rising and sinking in tandem).

The intrinsic value of cryptocurrencies is, after all, $0. The same as the intrinsic value of NFTs and some artwork (the kind that cannot be eaten or used as firewood). At least a tulip bulb is useful, even if no one wants to pay you anything for it, because you can plant it and grow a tulip. And maybe that initial tulip will eventually give you more than one tulip that you can then sell to recover your investment.

Just like artwork, cryptos are not as regulated as cash and are therefore more useful for money laundering than other forms of value.

Normal criminal would not typically give their bank account number and ask funds to be transferred to it. Nor would they ask for payment in the form of artwork from, say, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Such forms of “value” would be too clunky and/or too easy to track.

BOZO • May 21, 2021 11:03 PM

The way to kill cryptocurrencies is to make it illegal for the banking system to process payments involving such currencies.

This would force those currencies into their own universe where they would eventually die a slow death due to their practical uselessness.

Winter • May 22, 2021 4:42 AM

@BOZO
“The way to kill cryptocurrencies is to make it illegal for the banking system to process payments involving such currencies.”

Too late. They already did this, sort of, with FATF recommendation 16.
hxxps://www.sygna.io/blog/what-is-fatf-recommendation-16-for-vasps/

With VASPs’ adoption of the travel rule, cryptocurrencies will eventually likely be divided into 2 camps; namely “white” (clean and vetted) and “black” (unregulated) digital assets.

Clean assets will receive a clean bill of health from multiple AML and Know-Your-Client (KYC) checks, which will make them more fungible and valuable across both digital and traditional financial markets.

Non-compliant digital assets might be destined for the black market, where their value is likely to suffer due to concerns about their legality and resale value.

Clive Robinson • May 22, 2021 5:14 AM

@ Anders,

Ok, give me at least one “value transfer” that is comparable
with cryptocurrency and that takes over the cryptocurrency position when effectively all cryptocurrency is killed and buried?

History shows there are a great many value transfer systems that have advantages and disadvantages. Most cryptocurrencies have been designed by technical geeks to replace just one specific type of value transfer system “fiat money”. However as has been demonstrated most of those techno-geeks do not realy understand,

1, Humans.
2, Security.

Thus they built their systems with particular features one of which was to try and prevent forgery. Thus the “public ledger” which does not realy give either unforgability or for that matter anonymity of value transfer. So those who want either or both are discovering that those who do understand humans or security better than the techno-geeks, are realising that cryptocurrencies in their current forms are not realy of use to criminals. Esspecially those criminals who do actually think into the future, thus take great care about not leaving traces of their activities in an indelible form to come back and haunt them five, ten, twenty years down the road.

If you talk to those familiar with serious organised crime in Europe they tell you quite seriously of the invisable economic member of the EU, that would be the state with the highest GDP, and largest financial reserves and the biggest economy by far if it was officially recognised. That is the hidden economy of crime also sometimes called the “black economy”. The politicians, legislators, law enforcment agencies and many more know all about it, and they want that money for their own equally as questionable reasons.

So there are very many quite successful “financial vehicles” in place that actually offer more benifits than cryptocurrencies do to serious organised crime.

You need to look up what is called “Arabic Banking” which is not “Islamic Banking” though the two can be coincident.

Put simply before we had the relatively modern banking system we have today there was a finaning system for traders that was in effect a trust system. When you think about it trading is a two way process and without a value storage and transfer system basic commodity trading cannot exist. Based originally on the likes of gem stones and precious metals it was quickly found that a more fluid system was needed.

Thus “trust systems” developed amongst traders and money lenders and as little as word of mouth could be used to pass value on. Later as the need for these services grew they moved on to tokens of trust that had no direct value, such as “letters of introduction” that were in effect the first Identity Documents.

The old “word of mouth” systems still exist in many forms, especially where either strong tradition, crime, or other patronage system is involved. These systems keep no tracable records and whilst value moves around freely fiat money and the like does not, which makes tracing such networks and stopping them very very difficult.

Thus for crime to prosper and travel widely all it needs is a “trust system” that runs in parallel but mostly unseen to what most would consider the international banking system[1].

So if both you and I had reserves of liquid capitol we could set ourselves up as two ends of a “trust system”. People could pay in to you in a way you would accept, and via a covert communications channel you let me know who to alow to take out money from me and vice versa.

The fact we do not “keep books” and if we are careful to keep transactions balanced at both ends we in effect just take 10% or whatever off the top for doing little or nothing.

That is we in effect create local economic churn by keeping local monies in and out balanced but in the process stimulate local economic activity of which we take a petcentage. The fact we can also move value from one local economy to another even though widely seperated generally does not upset the local churn because it is not a one way but two way system. So what goes out at your end actually comes back in again with a time delay, likewise the same happens at my end and provided we keep the transfers balanced over time examining the local economies will not give you an indication that international value transfer has taken place other than it increases local churn at both ends of our trust path which could be due to any number of a great number of economic factors.

Such a trust path can be more formalized and yes very low visability covert communications systems such as couriers can be used. The couriers need not know what the messages are that they carry or that they are actually carrying a message.

That is the messages can be obfuscated in some manner and the courier can be entirely unknowing that they even are a courier (see some of the tricks used by those moving quantities of drugs around via mules that have been conned into it via trust).

The content of messages can be effectively hidden by many forms of cryptography which is a genie that is well and truely out of the bottle and can not now be put back. The presence of a message can be hidden in many ways just one of which is steganography, and I’ve previously described methods by which a near anonymous transfer of command and control messages can be achived via the likes of Googles cache etc.

Thus all the parts are out there if people just want to bolt them together and use them. That is the number of potential value transfer systems that can be built whilst not infinite are to large to reasonably enumerate.

But also remember that the number of parts out there are so broad in variety and numerous in nature you can neither regulate against them nor stop them in practice.

It’s why I keep pointing out,

“Technology is agnostic to use.”

And it is,

“Humans that decide what is good or bad, under any given point of view, at any given time.”

Which means,

“It’s the directing minds that decide the use of technology.”

Thus it is those your point of view currently says are bad, that you need to stop, not the technology they use.

Anyone who thinks stopping a technology will stop some evil they perceive does not understand either,

1, Humans.
2, Security.

Politicians and many techno-geeks realy do not understand either, it’s why the XKCD “five dollar wrench” cartoon and similar amuse. Also why we laugh at Australian and other politicians that make stupid claims about the laws of the State being superior to the laws of mathmatics, physics or nature, history shows them to be fools each and every time.

To wrap it all up there is a very old very true saying about humans,

“Where there is a will there is a way”

And trust me even if cryptocurrencies did not exist ransomware would be happening anyway, because it was happening in the ICT sector before cryptocurrencies were in use.

So ransomware in one form or another will remain in use even if cryptocurrencies go. Because ransoming is just to good a “business model” for those of little or no morals to not use as an effective means of control for status, power or wealth. Which is why “Ransoming” as an activity has been around for thousands of years one way or another and will be around one way or another as long as humans as we know them remain in existance.

[1] Smarter criminals have learnt the hard way over the years that “patronage systems” can be a double edge sword. Currently much of the ransomware business is avoiding upseting the old CCCP block of countries and Russia in particular. This suggests that they have in effect a “political protection system” in place with Russia. The problem with such political protection was demonstrated with the fall of East Germany and similar where “terrorists” that had been active in the 1960’s and 1970’s had gone into retirement. Their protection system was gone, and they were very very vulnerable, thus had to flee to other places such as the Middle East where they had to come out of retirement to “be usefull” to new masters who would protect them. If you want to put a spoke in the ransomware wheel of progress, then removing the protective patronage would be more effective in the short term than trying to stop “mathmatics”.

Winter • May 22, 2021 5:14 AM

Here is a more readable account of FAFT recommendation 16

hxxps://www.regulationasia.com/what-fatf-recommendation-16-means-for-the-crypto-industry

Clive Robinson • May 22, 2021 7:39 AM

@ Winter, BOZO, ALL,

What made me laugh from the “Regulation Asia” article you point to is,

“what the market needs is stability and a level playing field where real identities can be linked to illicit activities to stop market manipulators in their tracks.”

It’s a joke at best. There is no such thing as a “real identity” and even when people are daft enough to think they have come up with such a mythical device you come up against two problems,

1, Identity reuse.
2, Persons legal or natural.

The reuse can be by “identity theft” or “identity sale” etc the latter of which is easily done with “persons legal” such as companies and other trading entities.

I won’t go into details yet again but just make a point about what the real intent of FAFT 16 is, which is “asset forfiture by eminent domain”.

Or more biblically “Ceaser is a greedy b’stard” and wants more than his due… Basicallt due to the fact that the tax base is shrinking because of legislation greedy politicians put in place in the first place for a nice well stuffed brown envelope or it’s equivalent, they need to get ever increasing tax dollars to feed the same issuers of well stuffed envelopes that have an insatiable appitiete to aquire levey free assets to turn every one else into “rent payers”.

Thus you will increasingly see easily imposed large fines and asset seizure legislation for “new crimes” that are not even infringments currently. That is they will move from a tax based government to a fine based government, where the number of offenders will be defined by the taxation shortfall.

Winter • May 22, 2021 7:59 AM

@Clive
“There is no such thing as a “real identity” and even when people are daft enough to think they have come up with such a mythical device you come up against two problems,”

That is not the problem these rules are intended to solve.

They just want to make it easier to track down money laundering and track down criminals. These rules put the onus on the financial service providers. If they cannot deliver the identity of the money launderer or criminal, they get to pay up for the damages and fines.

The idea seems to be that the banks will be more careful with whom they do business or else go out of business.

That is simply the cryptocurrency version of the wire transfer world. Not perfect, but nothing is, just effective, or so they hope.

Winter • May 22, 2021 8:14 AM

@Clive
“That is they will move from a tax based government to a fine based government, where the number of offenders will be defined by the taxation shortfall.”

That is the scenario in a failing state where rich people, or people in general, are not paying taxes and government resorts to other sources of income to deliver the services their people feel entitled to. But cryptocurrencies are neither the cause nor the solution to that problem.

But as is mostly the case, when you look deeper, a people get the government they deserve.

JonKnowsNothing • May 22, 2021 10:46 AM

@Winter

re: when you look deeper, a people get the government they deserve.

For the vast majority of governments or rulers on the planet, the people have little or no say in what happens or how the government rules.

There are some countries that vote and many that do not. Voting by itself may or may not result in the “government that they deserve”.

It’s also quite common to have serious consequences should a person attempt to change “the government” in a way that is Not Authorized or any method that does not guarantee that the existing format continues.

  • Jan 6 in the USA, Myanmar, Israel and many others have violent outbreaks about the difference in government directives.
  • Attempting to install a Monarchy in the USA would be a serious offense, while removing the Monarchy in Scotland would find that to be an equally serious offense.

That “people get the government they deserve” is a rather shallow view of a much deeper issue. It conflates a moral judgement over something that is an economic system designed to yield wealth to a specific group of people, protect that wealth against seizures by others and maintain the defined hierarchy as long as possible.

People within any system may have the ability to change some things, but for the most part they do not. A good number of governments balance 50-50 between economic views and how national wealth should be apportioned. It has little to do with what people “deserve”.

Winter • May 22, 2021 11:47 AM

@JonKnowsNothing
“For the vast majority of governments or rulers on the planet, the people have little or no say in what happens or how the government rules.”

Power is people following orders. Only very few governments rule by brute force against a united populace. In all cases, there are internal rifts that divide the population in competing groups with governments simply doing the same on a national scale.

Look at the USA. When I hear the “tribes” speaking, they lack all reason, and would like to exterminate the other side. The 6 Januari coup attempt was actually run by people who tried to murder politicians of the other side. And half the population applauds it, or at least does not want these murder attempts to have any consequences.

The behavior of USA governments is completely in line with what the people do themselves.

So indeed, they deserve each other.

Winter • May 22, 2021 12:24 PM

@JonKnowsNothing
“It conflates a moral judgement over something that is an economic system designed to yield wealth to a specific group of people, protect that wealth against seizures by others and maintain the defined hierarchy as long as possible.”

Inequality is tolerated as long as people see it as just. If they do not believe it to be just anymore, they change it.

Americans believe in personal, so they think it is just that a CEO earns 1000’s times as much as an employee. And everyone ignores the plight of those loser communities in rust belts.

In the 29th century Sweden was one of the most unequal societies in North&Western Europe. It changed course and became the least unequal.

Winter • May 22, 2021 12:46 PM

@Winter
Cannot proofread:
“Americans believe in personal +success+”

Not 29th but
“In the 19th century, Sweden … “

JonKnowsNothing • May 22, 2021 2:39 PM

@Winter

A “just” society is in the eye of the beholder. Rulers always consider their laws to be “just”, especially when enforced on those that do not approve of the Ruler or the laws.

When people see inequality they also fall into the many rivers of how to deal with it. In the USA we have private charities that run programs that educate, train, clothe and feed huge swaths of the population for No Charge. We also have programs that purport to do the same thing provided by Governments (local, county, regional, state, federal) funded by tax levy.

People respond to perceived injustice the best way they know how. Approval and Response are not equivalent. Action is not always metered equally.

You are painting a broad brush that sweeps aside what changes have been made, can be made and what might yet be made. People are not monolithic in ideas, concepts or reasoning, as can be seen even with the technical issues discussed in this blog.

Your lack of perceived progress does not make it so.

I would hardly call contemporary Sweden, or most of Europe, anywhere near Ideal Societies, for the primary reason, they haven’t been around long enough to survive their opposition. Nor would I paint a broad brush to imply that the general populations of those countries have not had their lives improved compared to their predecessors.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

===

ht tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabelle

The gabelle (French pronunciation: ​[ɡabɛl]) was a very unpopular tax on salt in France that was established during the mid-14th century and lasted, with brief lapses and revisions, until 1946.

Because the gabelle affected all French citizens (for use in cooking, for preserving food, for making cheese, and for raising livestock) and propagated extreme regional disparities in salt prices, the salt tax stood as one of the most hated and grossly unequal forms of revenue generation in the country’s history. Repealed in 1790 by the National Assembly in the midst of the French Revolution, the gabelle was later reinstated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806. It was briefly terminated and reinstated again during the French Second Republic and ultimately abolished in 1945 following France’s liberation from Nazi Germany.

ht tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taille

The taille (French pronunciation: ​[taj]) was a direct land tax on the French peasantry and non-nobles in Ancien Régime France. The tax was imposed on each household and was based on how much land it held, and was directly paid to the state.

Originally only an “exceptional” tax (i.e. imposed and collected in times of need, as the king was expected to survive on the revenues of the “domaine royal”, or lands that belonged to him directly), the taille became permanent in 1439, when the right to collect taxes in support of a standing army was granted to Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years’ War. Unlike modern income taxes, the total amount of the taille was first set (after the Estates General was suspended in 1484) by the French king from year to year, and this amount was then apportioned among the various provinces for collection.

Exempted from the tax were clergy and nobles (except for non-noble lands they held in “pays d’état”, officers of the crown, military personnel, magistrates, university professors and students, and franchises (villes franches) such as Paris.

The taille was used very heavily by the French to fund their many wars like the Hundred Years’ War and the Thirty Years’ War. It eventually became one of the most hated taxes of the Ancien Régime.

ht tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_States-General

In France under the Ancien Régime, the Estates General (French: États généraux [eta ʒeneʁo]) or States-General was a legislative and consultative assembly of the different classes (or estates) of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates (clergy, nobility and commoners), which were called and dismissed by the king. It had no true power in its own right as, unlike the English parliament, it was not required to approve royal taxation or legislation.[1] It served as an advisory body to the king, primarily by presenting petitions from the various estates and consulting on fiscal policy.

The Estates General met intermittently until 1614 and only once afterward, in 1789, but was not definitively dissolved until after the French Revolution.

(url fractured to prevent autorun)

Clive Robinson • May 22, 2021 4:08 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, Winter,

… most of Europe, anywhere near Ideal Societies, for the primary reason, they haven’t been around long enough to survive their opposition.

Whilst some parts of Western Europe were sort of democratic pre-WWII the 1930’s in Germany looks horific in many peoples eyes. However what they do not realise is it was not just National Socialist Germany that behaved in what we now consider an entirely barbaric form fo Government.

Looking through historic documents you will find that the “ruling classes” in most of North West Europe and certainly quite a bit of the USA actively supported those “socialist” policies and were very pro eugrnics etc…

It was not untill ordinary American Soldiers started sending home pictures from the concentration camps towards the end of the War in Eirope, and the popular press picked up on it that the ordinary people realised just what a real horror lay behind the mundane words artfully portraid as a “social good”.

So for half of Europe the experiment in representational democracy got started in the late 1940’s simply because all the countries were bankrupt and starving and freezing to the extent that governments and the elites were sufficiently cowed into it. In the US representational democracy turned sour in the 1960’s and had become the entrenched “bought by the elites” system by the 70’s. Some historians actually say that Neil Armstrong’s foot hitting the moon, was not just the end of the space race, but the last time America actually felt good about it’s self. The other half of Europe had to wait untill the 1980’s and the closing of the cold war before their experiment in democracy started. There’s is pehaps the shortest with many going bad very quickly with suppressed racial and religious tensions breaking out with extream far right politics causing no end of violence and blood shed.

Unfortunately such right wing extreamisum is clearly funded in part by some of the same people who fund the more extream parts of the right wing Republican movment in the US GOP (the Mercer Family for one). You only have,to look at what is happening in the UK politically to see what plans some people have. I fully expect that France will be the next target for US funded “destabilization”…

So yes I think that we are seeing the end, not just of democracy but the faux democracy of representational politics as well. In a way back at the end of WWII the author George Orwell having worked in the BBC and seen what was going on more or less called it right in his two books “Animal farm” for the politics of brutalistic communism in Eastern Europe and further, with “1984” for the brutalistic sham democracy of the West dominated by US power politics.

It’s why I hope that there will be a silver lining in the darkness that is COVID, and that like other historical pandemics the social upheaval that follows will favour the bottom 80% of the populations and the ruling classes will get pushed back before they become to entrenched.

Winter • May 23, 2021 4:37 AM

@Jon
“I would hardly call contemporary Sweden, or most of Europe, anywhere near Ideal Societies, for the primary reason, they haven’t been around long enough to survive their opposition.”

Many countries in Europe have been unified states for longer than the USA, e.g., France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden. These have recovered and reorganizes several times from continental catastrophes, e.g., the Napoleontic wars, WWI&WWII. The same can be said of other states, eg, China, Japan, and Iran.

Over all of their recorded history, their governments reflected their population with historical continuity of ruling classes and state organization. China, Japan, and Russia now look eerily similar to China, Japan, and Russia in the 19th or 17th centuries in terms of political values. The same for France and the Netherlands.

Claiming that Government changes Society by force looks a lot like the tail wagging the dog.

Back to the USA, the current attempt to start a new civil war reminds me of the prohibition in the 1920s where rural religious communities used alcohol to fight the cities like they now use abortion and lgtb rights.

Again, governments are simply a reflection of the populace.

Winter • May 23, 2021 4:45 AM

@Clive
“It’s why I hope that there will be a silver lining in the darkness that is COVID, and that like other historical pandemics”

I am convinced that without COVID, Trump would have started a major war that would have dragged in Russia and China. He would have won a second term and killed of the 2024 elections.

Now, neo-con economics is shown an utter failure and is dead. It has been shown that a “small government” is utterly unable to deal with global problems. Also, we have seen, once again, that society can do without all of the elite, but not without deliveries, nurses, supermarket and stock clerks.

Winter • May 23, 2021 6:08 AM

@Jon
“I would hardly call contemporary Sweden, or most of Europe, anywhere near Ideal Societies,”

I am curious. There is an old philosophical game to determine the “best” society.

Imagine you will be reborn in a country of choice. But you cannot choose in what family you will be reborn.

If you choose the USA, you have a 50% chance of being born as a woman, 15% being black and so on for Hispanic, Mississippian, LGBT+, Native American, or in a poor, rich, illegal immigrant, Mormon, Republican, Trumpian family.

Not knowing what family you will be born into, what country would you choose?

Personally, I would look seriously at Sweden or Denmark. But that is me.

Clive Robinson • May 23, 2021 6:27 AM

@ Winter,

Now, neo-con economics is shown an utter failure and is dead.

An utter failure, yes, dead sadly no.

Such malignancies are like secret societies, they can always find enough adherents to genufect at the alter of darkness beleving there is one true path.

We see such with various religious sects and they come back over and over.

Speaking of which the US, is about to enter a new “religious fervor” over the pandemic. Because “rationalism” was never a strong suit of the general human population. Their are going to be a lot of pepole out there who are going to have “surviovor guilt” in one form or another because they will not be able to accept “probability”. Depending on which way they go, they are going to be “easy meat” for con artists or shysters. Once such people are hooked they in effect form cults or similar. So instead of building a better future they will try to drag things back to times of mysticism and witchcraft and the like, and the devil “Red” as always will be sought in every person and place.

Imagine if you can the worst excesses of “Reds under the bed scares” driven by political opportunism and the religious basis for the “Spanish Inquisition” and “Witchfinder Generals” of bringing religion in as another political force. With both vying for control of the populous and the money, power and above all status that will bring those con artists and shysters.

The current little stupidity in Arizona, shows how it is going to start, and if not stopped carry on. Where facts, proof and truth, will be rejected for rhetoric, invective, falsehood and faux belief be held high with drums banging and speakers blaring strident marching music and the clear “with us or against us” and “might is right” which will tear communities apart. We look back on the 1930’s in Europe and we say to ourselves that could never happen again, yet the laws are being passed as we speak. The fudalistic past with all it’s absolut power and above all status by fear is too seductive to those who would rather lead short brutal and pain filled lives as long as they have status and power over everyone else.

Winter • May 23, 2021 7:49 AM

@Clive
“Speaking of which the US, is about to enter a new religious fervor” over the pandemic.”

I expect a widening of the gap. Those who denied the pandemic will double down on the denial and close themselves off of rational arguments. This overlaps with the Trumpian election denialism. They will find religious and fascist/white supremacist arguments for their denial.

The other side will ask why this went so wrong and blame their opponents for the disaster.

I expect both sides to ignore any lessons to be learned from the pandemic or the election disaster.

JonKnowsNothing • May 23, 2021 11:34 AM

@Clive @Winter

There is an aspect to the US Culture that often gets bypassed while looking at Hollywood Glitz.

  • Other than our original inhabitants, the influx of colonial persons were driven by 2 aspects:

  1 Money to fund the Life Styles of the Rich and Famous of Europe. Similar to all other colonial systems. Sugar, Rum, Slaves, Furs, Wood, Raw Materials and Finished Goods generating the most important: Cash Flow.

  2 A cultural foundation of all those “kooky, weird, unacceptable, discriminated against, persecuted” religious views that were not tolerated in Europe. Those folks moved to the colonies and our culture (inherent) is based on these views: Snakes are Charming.

  • The next large wave came from people with the sense to “GET OUT”, and they did, anyway they could scrounge a ticket. They came from East and West, North and South. Some did not get a warm welcome. This hasn’t changed and many get much less than that.

Most people, unless they are a Buddha or Similar, do not get to chose where they are born, who their parents are, what their nationality will be when they are born or what it will be over their lives. They do not get to select their circumstances or define the external situations that affect their lives.

The USA has a strong mix of what y’all jettisoned from Europe. We are the rubbish heap of what y’all didn’t want. We are the result of economic decisions made centuries ago in China and Japan to send their people here to build our railroads and cities.

I think we are better for it.

We change our minds every 2 years, 4 years and 6 years. Sometimes we have better results but our results are not much better than what y’all have done during the same period. We have the same pressures now as when we started.

The only difference is the country to our North, still has a Monarch and we do not.

===

ht tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_trade

ht tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_trade#Atlantic_triangular_slave_trade

The best-known triangular trading system is the transatlantic slave trade that operated from Bristol, London,[1][2] and Liverpool.[3] during the late 16th to early 19th centuries, carrying slaves, cash crops, and manufactured goods between West Africa, Caribbean or American colonies and the European colonial powers, with the northern colonies of British North America, especially New England, sometimes taking over the role of Europe.[4] The use of African slaves was fundamental to growing colonial cash crops, which were exported to Europe. European goods, in turn, were used to purchase African slaves, who were then brought on the sea lane west from Africa to the Americas, the so-called Middle Passage.[5]

A classic example is the colonial molasses trade. Merchants purchased raw sugar (often in its liquid form, molasses) from plantations in the Caribbean and shipped it to New England and Europe, where it was sold to distillery companies that produced rum. The profits from the sale of sugar were used to purchase rum, furs, and lumber in New England which merchants shipped to Europe. With the profits from the European sales, merchants purchased Europe’s manufactured goods, including tools and weapons. Then the merchants shipped those manufactured goods, along with the American sugar and rum, to West Africa where they were bartered for slaves. The slaves were then brought back to the Caribbean to be sold to sugar planters. The profits from the sale of slaves in Brazil, the Caribbean islands, and the American South were then used to buy more sugar, restarting the cycle. The full triangle trip took a calendar year on average, according to historian Clifford Shipton.[6]

Winter • May 23, 2021 12:15 PM

@Jon
“There is an aspect to the US Culture that often gets bypassed while looking at Hollywood Glitz.”

I won’t argue all you wrote. But I see another thing in America’s cultures from Arctic to Tierra del Fuego. Something I have never seen elsewhere:

The underlying assumption in a large fraction of the descendants of immigrants in the Americas appears to be that if things go down the drain, they pack up their stuff and move elsewhere.

In the rest of the world, there hardly ever is an elsewhere to go to. People know that if things go down the drain, they have to sit in the mess and only the top 1% will be able to move out.

JonKnowsNothing • May 23, 2021 8:09 PM

@Clive @Winter

re: Indigenous Lose Everything

A rather encouraging MSM report about the re-acquisition of indigenous territory in Australia showed they are getting back some of their lands. Although still a fraction of what they had before the Lime Juice Tubs showed up.

It turns out that the Squatters Sons didn’t quite do all the land grab deed legal bits properly and there’s vast areas of Australia that are not really owned by anyone other than indigenous groups. The sort of good news is that it might default back to those indigenous groups.

That doesn’t stop the Neo-liberals from blowing up cultural heritage sites for minerals, claiming “they didn’t know what it was”, but it did cause a big stinkum.

Recently, there was a significant legal case regarding the historical cross border migrations of indigenous people between what is now the USA and Canada. After decades being told “they do not exist”, Canada awarded the surviving US portion of the tribe, the hunting rights of their predecessors inside the Canadian borders.

I think we still run the Peyote Wars in the USA. It’s protected under religious freedoms but it isn’t protected between harvest and ceremonial use. There was a regular cop gauntlet between the harvest points and destinations; such interactions are not always enlightened.

===

ht tps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2021/may/17/who-owns-australia

  • the graphic of lands owned 1788 1965 1993 2018

ht tps://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/25/indigenous-people-canada-sinixt-us-border-hunting-rights

Indigenous nation in US has right to lands in Canada, court rules

Canada’s supreme court decision on the Sinixt people could affirm hunting rights for tens of thousands

For decades the Rick Desautel had been told by courts and governments that his people no longer exist in Canada.

But Desautel and others in his community in Washington state have long argued that they are descendants of the Sinixt, an Indigenous people whose territory once spanned Canada and the United States.

… Canada’s highest court agreed, ruling that Desautel and the 4,000 other members of the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington state were successors to the Sinixt – and as a result, that they enjoy constitutionally protected Indigenous rights to hunt their traditional lands in Canada.

(url fractured to prevent autorun)

Winter • May 24, 2021 5:05 AM

@Clive
“This derives from “Slash and Burn” agriculture for certain very basic staples to augment the hunter gather survival in very lightly populated environments.”

But I see this mentality more in the descendants of the European immigrants than in the indigenous people.

Case in point are the Argentine Elites who plan to move back to Europe whenever Argentinian economy collapses, the USA 1% who build estates in New Zealand, and, eg, the well off in New Orleans who rather move out than maintain the levies.

Everywhere, the neighborhood seems to be a disposable to be tossed out when consumed but not maintained.

Clive Robinson • May 24, 2021 6:25 AM

@ Winter, JonKnowsNothing,

But I see this mentality more in the descendants of the European immigrants than in the indigenous people.

Europe appears after some analysis to have “exported greed” that spread like a virulant disease.

I have tentative reasons to believe that it goes hand in hand with certain mental disorders and is in fact a minority genetic trait.

People talk of “Hawks and Doves” however “hawks” gives an entirely false representation of the mental view point of such people. They are not “hunters seeking prey as required” but “abusers controling and exploiting without self limitation”.

We sometimes refere to them as “Goal Seeking” but this again gives a false representation, because the goal is in reality just a step in an unceasing process, and may in actuality not actually achieve anything of merit. They behave like gamblers with other peoples money paying for the losses whilst they keep the rewards, thus no risk is to large for them to take.

It’s one of the underlying reasons for Banking Crises one and two, and the third one due in the very near future. In effect it is the mentality that underlies nearly all neo-con thinking, and much of the nonsesnse that comes out of the Chicargo School of econimic thinking.

It also undetlies “Hurd Immunity Policy” that caused the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 and thus the proliferation of the mutant strains. The truth of which is starting to come out in the UK and will no doubt come out in Sweden and other nations in the not so distant future…

Winter • May 24, 2021 9:21 AM

@Clive
“They behave like gamblers with other peoples money paying for the losses whilst they keep the rewards, thus no risk is to large for them to take.”

I do not see any reason to invoke genetics or mental illnesses.

American culture is about winning and winners. No one wants to be a loser, because a loser gets nothing. On the other hand, social bonds in the USA are stretched and people often see their relatives only rarely. The whole urban and village landscape is build on driving with minimal contact with people.

What do you expect to get in a culture where the winner gets all and there is little social checks and balances on behavior?

Especially when your social status is only build on the appearances of material wealth.

PS: In many societies, you can be of high status with little wealth.

JonKnowsNothing • May 24, 2021 10:24 AM

@Clive @Winter

re: Moving House in USA

While it may be that historical impacts and cultures affect the USA Psyche when it comes to Moving House, I will interject some RL aspects to consider along with the broad brushing.

tl;dr

In parts of USA history, people who came from Over There, either held ownership to the resources or the funds to control production. The majority of Others were workers. Similar to other countries.

In the USA some areas ensured a steady workforce by impoverishment: difficult and exhausting labor, low skill, low pay, with Company Towns and Company Stores, effectively trapping their workforce in place. This is still an effective method of keeping workers On Tap, sometimes called Golden Handcuffs in tech work.

In other parts of the USA, workers were and are expendable or interchangeable. They shift with seasons and work requirements. Cowboys are not needed all year round, they come and go. You get your pay and you have to live on the proceeds (or not). Folks traveled from town to town, farm to farm, ranch to ranch as needed and seasonally. This hasn’t changed either, sometimes called The Gig Economy.

Personal History: tl;dr

No one in my family got up and left their homes on a whim. They got up and left because the work went ThatAWay and they followed. The horse and plow disappeared, the stoop labor options shifted to mechanized versions and towns faltered under economic shifts and opportunities moved. They moved where there were opportunities. The majority of “small business” in the USA are family run and start on a shoe string. (1) We did lots of that with the common results of most such attempts. But we tried again and again and again and are still trying.

It’s about having bread on the table, the rice for dinner, and gravy on Sundays.

We do change jobs, in Silicon Valley it was 18 months on average. Why? ‘Cause the company got bought out or it didn’t get funding. We move to the next option available and if that’s in Boston MA, Portland OR, Seattle WA, San Jose CA that’s where we go. Rotate One to the Left.

I have met some folks in Europe who can trace their lineages and habitation to the same place and building for centuries. Most of them fall into the same two groups: Either they never had to do stoop labor or that was the only job they could get; they couldn’t afford to try elsewhere, to endure the animosity as they moved in, and compete for jobs in a new location. This hasn’t changed either. NOP.

===

1, Family Run or Small Business generally fail 1-2 years after opening, those that survive 5 years are rare, those that last 10 years are a very small portion of the total.

Many Small Businesses are now franchises costing beyond what an average person can pay and no longer are really Family Run. They may be owned by a family but are not run by the family, they are local and regional expansions.

Winter • May 24, 2021 3:26 PM

@Jon
“I have met some folks in Europe who can trace their lineages and habitation to the same place and building for centuries. Most of them fall into the same two groups:”

My family have lived around the same cities since 19th century. Some members moved for work or love, but still live within 200km of their birthplace (me included). That is, they can visit each other as a day trip.

What might be different is that population density here is high and all cities are old and multi functional, with universities and varied industries and commerce. There are very few cases in Western Europe, or even Eurasia as a whole, where whole cities collapse because an industry falters, like in the USA rust belt.

Winter • May 25, 2021 2:41 AM

@Goat
“Do you see one coming?”

Remember, this is SARS-CoV-2! And this it is Human Coronavirus 7. Why would it stop here?

Common human coronaviruses
* 229E (alpha coronavirus)
* NL63 (alpha coronavirus)
* OC43 (beta coronavirus)
* HKU1 (beta coronavirus)

Other human coronaviruses
* MERS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS)
* SARS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS)
* SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19)

hxxps://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html
(URL fractured for your protection)

Clive Robinson • May 25, 2021 7:47 AM

@ Goat, Winter, ALL,

What I said was,

It’s one of the underlying reasons for Banking Crises one and two, and the third one due in the very near future.

And the honest answer is,

“yes I do not think it can be avoided with the current politicians”

As to why you have to understand a little feedback theory known as “the hunting servo to step input” problem

You find terms such as “undershoot and overshoot” and “underdamped and overdamped” along with “lag / delay time” and importantly “characteristic response” and “stability factor/criteria”.

Overly simplisticaly any change at the inputs to a system will after a certain lag cause a change at the output. However the lag can cause “overshoot” that is the output gets driven to try and correct for the change but due to having an underdamped response goes past where it should be. Thus the feedback changes direction and drives the output back. The result is it behaves like a pendulum and does not settle at the mark, it just oscillates wirh smaller and smaller amplitude.

Now ask yourself the question what happens if the input continues to change? Well one senario is if the input is out of phase with the negative feed back then you get oscillation (likewise in phase with positive feedback). If the overal system has gain then the oscillation rises rapidly untill limited by some nonlinier effect such as hitting the end stop. Which as you might realise has a rather nonlinear effect on the system, that can be catastrophic, hence we try to design “fail safe systems”. Similar happens if the input or feedback becomes broken…

Now consider the economy as a feedback system. COVID has caused several massive step changes to the system. One of which has been a massive movment of capital from the “working economy” to the “storage economy”. That is trillions of dollars have stopped creating “economic churn” and effectively “work has stopped” and will take between ten and a hundred times that capital movment to get the economy working again. In reality what has happened is those trillions have been borrowed from “the future citizens” and given to those who will turn them from liquid capital into fixed assets, out of the economy and into other economies. So the home economy is not starting from zero but tens if not hundreds of trillions in debt…

Thus the difference between the input and the output over a very short period of time has moved the pendulum beyond any sensible point. Getting things back to tracking, is going to require a massive change but if underdamped you will get boom and bust cycles for decades, if over damped things will remain bad for a very very long time before the original point is reached. Thus the response needs to be as close to ideal as possible. The problem is those that have taken the money will fight tooth and nail to not return it…

For instance take Amazon, it has profited obscenely from COVID. What have Amazon just anounced in the UK? That they are going to replace the warehouse workers with robots. One thing you can be sure of those robots they buy will not benifit the UK econony in the slightest.

Do I need to go on?

Winter • May 25, 2021 8:41 AM

@Clive
“It’s one of the underlying reasons for Banking Crises one and two, and the third one due in the very near future.”

Wikipedia lists 39 banking crises since 1763. That is around once a decade.

ht tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banking_crises
(URL fractured for your protection)

@Clive
“That they are going to replace the warehouse workers with robots. One thing you can be sure of those robots they buy will not benifit the UK econony in the slightest.”

The solution is very simple: Robots should pay taxes just like people do. 😉

Jokes aside, it will be inevitable that companies will have to pay more taxes. Basically, if you earn money in a country, you will have to pay taxes in that country.

JonKnowsNothing • May 25, 2021 9:50 AM

@Winter Clive All

re:

Robots should pay taxes just like people do.

…it will be inevitable that companies will have to pay more taxes. Basically, if you earn money in a country, you will have to pay taxes in that country.

Robots are the only ones who will be working and they do not get a salary. You might be able to charge a Depletion Tax similar to Mining and Extractive Industries, but these are not close in tax value to what a human worker pays.

Companies may end up paying some sort of Global Tax apportioned between countries. Dealing with the Grey, White and Black Market sales remains difficult.

Exactly what they will be paying on, is more problematic.

When the neoliberals in the USA under Ronald Reagan, began to toss away all the people working in government under their Austerity and Make Government Small programs, these formerly employed, working, purchasing and consuming persons stopped doing those things.

A portion found work elsewhere but a percentage did not. Some skills just did not translate to new work conditions.

The so called Savings did not roll through the US Economy (velocity of money) but ended up off shore in dead letter accounts.

      Fewer Tax Payers made for Fewer Tax Dollars.

The same result will happen as they shift to full robotic and AI driven systems.

The Consumer Driven Economy only works when there are Consumers to Buy. People cannot buy when they have nothing to exchange.

Robots and AI regardless of how clever or efficient, won’t be buying either.

The shadow of another looming problem is already being felt as Governments convert to “fully digital” interfaces.

Those who are being exchanged for robotic mechanical applications and those who are affected by their lack of “digital interfaces” simply fall off the radar.

We call them by many names, few of which are complimentary, thousands are being added daily and tens of thousands will be added very soon and millions more will be joining.

No amount of “Help Wanted – We Pay Crap Salary” signs in Montana will alter this.

===

ht tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan
(url fractured to prevent autorun)

Winter • May 25, 2021 10:16 AM

@Jon
“The same result will happen as they shift to full robotic and AI driven systems.”

If no one gets a salary and no one pays taxes there will be no profits nor earnings.

The Ultra Capitalist Henry Ford understood that to sell cars, he should pay wages that would allow people to afford buying cars, and to give them days off every week to use these cars. He raised wages and reduced working times to sell more cars and earn more money.

I know this sounds as a heresy in the USA. And I am perfectly aware the the likes of Bezos and Thiel might believe that does not hold for them. Still, it is very simple, no wages and taxes, no earnings.

(PS, I know they will develop a model to minimize wages and maximize inequality)

Clive Robinson • May 25, 2021 12:53 PM

@ Winter,

I know this sounds as a heresy in the USA. And I am perfectly aware the the likes of Bezos and Thiel might believe that does not hold for them. Still, it is very simple, no wages and taxes, no earnings.

You forgot to add “eventually” to the end of the last sentance, and it’s very very important that you should do so.

As I’ve frequently pointed out US and other managment under the influance of the likes of the Chicargo Shool “neo-con” economic thinking have become at the very best short term thinking of maybe a year, but more normally less than a quater, to keep “shareholders selling out” thus robbing managment of bonusses and wages that in no way reflect their often pi55 poor abilities other than as sociopaths.

The investor viewpoint is to “dip in and pop out” of shares as quickly as possible, then importantly, turn the excess income into longterm assets such as rentable property or other investment such as utility companies –that admitted give low but– very consistent returns because they are essential to the functioning of society.

Importantly they get the assets at an effectively “knocked down rate” because of that all important “eventually”. That is the artificially over valued shares driven up by “short term thinking” managment, is “fake profit” which is actually “long tetm debt”. This “fake profit” gives the Govetnment some tax income and the rest goes to shareholders not business continuation. The government uses tax to pay off “politicians friends” and to “buy votes” as elections approach. The shareholders use the excess income to buy up the assets they can then earn a predictable income on. As the debt has to be payed or entities go bankrupt, first jobs then entire industry sectors disapear. The “consumer market” shrinks not because of a lack of buyers but because there is no goods to buy only services to rent.

Thus we move increasingly into a society forced on the majority by the tiny minority we have no control over of,

1, Zero asset pay rent existent.
2, Non-crimes with large fines.

Thus the citizen of the future becomes like a serf of near a millennium ago, where the product of their labours is stripped from them by those of “the first estate”.

Rent seeking entities use assets such as property to maintain their status, and the “King and his court” or as we would now call them “The Government” raises it’s income from fines and “eminent domain” to grab assets and sell them off for profit.

When you strip off the mantras, you find that the neo-con policy carrs not a jot about growing the economy or living standards of the citizens. It’s all about using aquired control to force a massive status difference on society, and throw back to times that the idiots believe were “better”… Even though history shows the reality to be brutish, unhealthy and very very short lived.

Have a look at a UK MP Rees-Mog who is only half jokingly called “the MP of the eighteen hundreds” he absolutly longs for Dickensian or worse existance with a huge “status difference” as he thinks incorrectly he will be skating across the top of the cream of society. In fact the only reason he is an MP is he is a wasteral but reliable “yes man” who was parachuted into a “safe seat”. Something that would not have happened in Dickensian England. He has written some fantasy nonsense he believes is a “scholarly work” but those who are domain experts are not even polite in the way they deride it. Worse his father was an editor of a newspaper with some realy loonie economic ideas. He wrote a book that identifies New Zealand as the last bustop to the South Pole and delieved an oncomming economic colapse made it the only safe place to be. The book is treated almost as a bible by those at the top of well known Sillicon Valley companies. Some of whom have taken up NZ citizenship and thus keep fully fuelled fully maned executive comfort jets that can get them to NZ, on standby 24×365.25…

Some people are only half jokingly calling Bill Gates “Mole Man” apparently he has been building underground bunkers in the US on all his properties he has homes on etc, and tries to stay within 20mins or so travel of them… Thus the modern “Castle of the Elites” does not sit high upon a hillside to cow all who see it, but hidden away out of sight underground where they exert control by proxie and stay hidden from the ravening hords who might be out to get them…

Goat • May 26, 2021 8:16 AM

@Clive,Winter
As someone pursuing taxation I can assure you that companies in most cases pay higher tax than individuals so the tax dollars would indeed come in at a greater pace.

While introduction of robots may increase tax revenue it will also generate a libability on the government as thousands become homeless.

And I dont think that unemployment compensations can make up for the time that work sucks up.. It all boils down to regulation

Winter • May 26, 2021 9:30 AM

@Goat
“As someone pursuing taxation I can assure you that companies in most cases pay higher tax than individuals so the tax dollars would indeed come in at a greater pace.”

In the UK, Corporate taxes make up only 8% of revenues, Income tax is 24%, National Insurance contributions is 19%.
ht tps://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/9178

It is true that UK Income Tax is highly concentrated, but VAT is not.

Winter • May 26, 2021 10:12 AM

@Clive
“After years of study, it’s been finally accepted that creative people only do about 2-3 hours “creative work” a day max…”

Yes, indeed. See David Graeber who calls them (see Wikipedia page).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Instead of giving people a basic income while they stay home and prevent them from harming productivity of other people, we hire people to are

  1. flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants
  2. goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists
  3. duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing shoddy code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive
  4. box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers
  5. taskmasters, who manage—or create extra work for—those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals[2][1]

We could really do the 15 hour work week if we stopped productive people from being harmed by the above and simply let those people stay home.

This is not exactly new, I remember that the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had a large segment about a space ship full of such people who were “lost” by the other two ships who were filled with productive people. I found that treatment rather inhumane.

Goat • May 26, 2021 10:58 AM

@Winter,

Should have been clearer.

I was talking about tax rates being higher for companies than individuals.

See if a worker takes up a job his salary is booked as an expense for the company and taxed in hands of the worker. But in case of a robot the benefits accrue to the owners who are likely to be corporates with no benefit of progressive taxation. This leads to more tax all in all(even if income is constant as a whole)

The taxes will shift from individuals to corporates here.

VAT would stay mostly unaffected

lurker • May 26, 2021 1:30 PM

@Winter

I remember that the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had a large segment about a space ship full of such people who were “lost” by the other two ships who were filled with productive people. I found that treatment rather inhumane.

The way the topic was presented left open the possibility that those unproductives were among our ancestors, which goes a long way to explaining why they are still with us.

Clive Robinson • May 26, 2021 5:07 PM

@ lurker, Winter,

The way the topic was presented left open the possibility that those unproductives were among our ancestors, which goes a long way to explaining why they are still with us.

That was just part of the joke, the first bit is the description of “three Ark ships, A, B and C” and it was the second that got launched first, so they could make a nice place for the others to arive at. It was only later when the second ark was about to crash that Ford Prefect shouts out “You are all B’Ark-ing mad” that the joke become obvious.

As for being our ancestors, hmm hair dressers, marketing assistants and “dead telephone sanatisers” would be a heady cocktail of dodgy geans. Not sure about lawyers and acountants, they are only marginaly better than Human Resource managers and a tads below second hand care salespersons and real estate pushers…

The trouble is we all want our ancestors to be someone infamous take Captain Morgan, with burning cannon fuses/matches in the hair, or some other villain with good notoriety and larger than life personality.

I’m sure some think of Bodacia in her chariot with knives for wheel hubs, or Good Queen Bess, or some such.

Someone in my family traced back the family tree, one or two famous faces to historians, but whilst there is royalty, there are no good villains. The nearest I get is AF Chapman, virtually unknown in England, but of great importance in Sweden. He was master of the Royal Docks on the banks of the Thames. But because he shall we say cuckolded the wrong man, he had to scraper abroad. Where he did the King of Sweden a favour and revealed secrets of “man-o-war” construction etc… So technically a traitor.

Mind you, it’s not to say that I’ve not tried to correct this lack of villains in the family tree… Turns out back in the mists of time, I realy upset one “Mad Maggie Thatcher” when she was the UK Prime Minister and trying to flog off the GPO / British Telecom. Apparently she was not ammused by some of my activities and wanted my head… Well I’ve still got it so I must have done something right.

Not sure it counts, but it’s the best I’ve done sofar, but I’m sure there is time to do better 😉

Pass me the bar of soap and the cheese grater =:(

Winter • May 27, 2021 12:42 AM

@Lurker
“The way the topic was presented left open the possibility that those unproductives were among our ancestors, which goes a long way to explaining why they are still with us.”

Australian colonization started with criminals from the UK and Ireland. That did not lead to a very criminal society. So I assume an ancestry of flunkies etc does not lead to a flunky society.

Leave a comment

Login

Allowed HTML <a href="URL"> • <em> <cite> <i> • <strong> <b> • <sub> <sup> • <ul> <ol> <li> • <blockquote> <pre> Markdown Extra syntax via https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.