>Other costs (total: 2.6k€):
Notary: Changing company address and CEO: 1.5k€
Notary: Changing company suffix from UG to GmbH: 1.1k€
This is absolutely crazy. For comparison, below are the costs in Switzerland (and you can do all the things yourself by writing a letter signed by the authorized persons, so add whatever your time costs):
It's very good you mention Switzerland, as the contemporary German exit tax legislation traces back to the scandal with Helmut Horten, a department-store magnate who moved to Switzerland in 1968, sold his business stake and paid virtually no tax. The event prompted enactment of the Foreign Tax Act (Außensteuergesetz) in 1972, whose exit-tax provision (§ 6 AStG) is nicknamed lex Horten.
Yep. The broader question for society is whether to introduce legislation which will make everyone suffer because a few individuals abused it in the past.
I don't have a perfect answer to that, but we can at least observe that most people nowadays affected by the German exit tax are not rich department store owners who planned to move to Switzerland to optimize their company sale taxation.
Most people I talk to are other founders who own a small business, and the overall bureaucratic complexity and tax advisor costs are cost-prohibitive for leaving the country.
Change or add company address
"Änderung des Rechtsdomizils oder einer zusätzlichen Adresse"
30 CHF
Change CEO
"Eintragung, Änderung oder Löschung von Personenangaben oder der Funktion einer Person"
20 CHF
Changing company suffix
"Umwandlung in eine juristische Person"
420 CHF
Deletion (from the registry) due to leaving the country
"Löschung infolge Wegzugs ins Ausland"
210 CHF
Switzerland uses an exit tax I don't quite understand. The companies "hidden reserves" are valued and taxed about at about 17%. Those include the "goodwill" you have generated over the years, which is similar, but not the same, as the market value.
It's all very simple. Islam is a unique religion in that its main prophet had military chops and there are specific surahs that suggest that fighting well gives you a reward and is a sign of being righteous.
So any competent general has de-facto political legitimacy and is a de-facto threat to whatever government is in place. Most of the leaders in the region know this and as a result armies are staffed with insiders (which the article notes).
Saudi airforce is basically a jobs programme for elite families.
This has to be by far one of the most ignorant and bigoted answers I've ever read on this site, or on this question in particular.
If Islam is as unique as you say it is, why is it that Pakistan is able to constantly hold its ground against India, ever since the independence of both countries? Why Afghanistan beat conventional armies regularly, including the most powerful military in the world? Why Chechnya was such a thorn in Russia?
The answer is much simpler - Arab society is built upon tribes, and the tribal system continues today. Rulers of autocratic countries want loyalists from their allied tribes at the top of the military, and tribes do their best to look after solely their own interests. Never mind that oil wealth has also enabled insane defence spending, which means with the right positioning, some well-placed members of the military could stand to earn millions in bribes and skimming, which makes a career in the military all the more lucrative for the tribes.
Which is why ISIS was so skilled and so much of a threat to the Arab countries - because their motivation was not to enrich themselves, it was purely driven by their radical ideology. The best killers are those who don't give a shit about their own lives.
I think you're probably right, but your counterexamples don't really refute the strongest reading of the thesis. The military establishment has always ultimately held the reins in Pakistan, so the dynamic of civilians avoiding threats by rewarding incompetence isn't there - the threat is present anyway and the rewarding isn't in their power. Afghanistan and Chechnya are confederations of tribal warlords, so of course the armed forces are controlled by competent fighters, it's almost a tautology. You need an example where there's a strong civilian central authority that controls the military effectively, and maintains a highly competent military, and isn't constantly troubled by the threat of coups.
A bit tough to do when almost all Islamic-majority countries are located in Asia or Africa, where they're prone to dictatorial tendencies and nepotism runs galore. But the few European ones are doing alright - Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, heck might even argue Turkey (people outside Istanbul voting for Islamist Erdogan is still democracy in action).
That's mostly a feature of monarchies. Even in European settings, monarchs claimed divine right to rule.
That's why ex: El Cid (a great knight/military commander in Spain) was a threat to King Alfonso. (Doubly so because El Cid is a local hero who could raise a combined Muslim+Catholic Army, while King Alfonso was Catholic only. El Cid actually comes from Al-Sayyid, the nickname the Muslim locals gave to El Cid )
This happened enough in the Catholic monarchies that I have to believe it's really just the shape of Monarchies. Like the King of the Franks King Charlemagne the Great is basically known for his military exploits, with Paladins (his royal guard) forever influencing future Europeans and creating the image of an ideal Holy Warrior.
Did I say military exploits? I mean spreading Catholicism to the pagan Saxons. By conquest. During the Dark and Middle Ages, they spread Catholicism the old fashioned way, with the sword.
I do believe that Kim Jong Um military Uncle was put to death as well, likely as court intrigue and a preventative measure to prevent a powerful well respected General from overstepping his king.
Kings are always worried about their generals. Or better yet, Kings are themselves a general to prove their divine authority.
So then why did damn near every European royal family make a habit of giving every prince and bastard son, including ones not in line for the throne, armies to go play around with?
If you're a crappy king the last thing you want is someone with a "legitimate claim" to the throne with an army to back them up instigating your court to depose you.
Followup question: do you know the story of how the Frankish Kingdom of Charlemagne the Great got split up into Lombards, France and HRE (basically modern Germany) ??
Kings juggled the conflicting tasks of choosing an inheritor, as well as preventing their sons from rising up and... let's just say "William the Bastard-ing" everyone.
Yes, on occasion a random bastard son will take over all of Normandy and Briton.
So I don't really know what your question is. That happened, constantly. Brothers killed each other, and sometimes their fathers, in a mad game of power for damn near a thousand years.
But clearly the kings of the time thought the risks were worth the reward. A hereditary title of king means that your followers know who is charge if you died in battle. The risk of your sons deposing you was accepted, because the risks of dying for other reasons (disease, famine, war...) was greater.
Because the parent's central thesis is wrong. Kings didn't war to spread religion because most of them weren't religious. They warred over land and power.
The way feudal societies worked, allegiance was like a (bottom up) tree. If your lord was at war with the king you followed the fool. ACOUP has a good number of posts on the workings of feudal societies if you have the time to read them.
Richard the Lionheart spent 10 years away from home and at most 6 months in Briton.
Do you know why he was fighting in wars in far away lands? It certainly wasn't about land or power (at least, not for Richard)
It was a Crusade. The 3rd Crusade to be precise.
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Also the whole Reconquista thing in Spain, coinciding with the Spanish Inquisition and all that. Plenty of major religious events that interacted with politics and brought glory to commanders.
And then things like the 30 Years War, which had substantial amounts of religious influence of Protestants vs Catholics.
I'm not saying every war was about religion. But Catholics have PLENTY of holy warriors that are even venerated for their battle prowess.
> This happened enough in the Catholic monarchies that I have to believe it's really just the shape of Monarchies.
There are still 12 monarchies in Europe, some of them Catholic, some Protestant. Your theory does not work there. The monarchies and Catholicism itself evolved (to a great degree, courtesy of the French Revolution), while Islam seems to have stalled.
> The King of England isn't in charge of the UK though. The power largely rests in Andy Burnham.
Yes and no...
Firstly there's not been a King of England since 1707, he's king of the United Kingdom (and fourteen other places) and secondly it really depends who you ask. On paper sovereignty flows from the 'Crown in Parliament', many powers are actually the King's and are now vested in other parts of the state. Since the 19th century these powers tend to be used 'on the advice of the Prime Minister / Cabinet'. In theory the King could go against this advice, but Parliament ritually reminds [1] the King's representative what happened the last time a king got too uppity and the courts can still rule on the limits of these powers. There's one view which says the people are fundamentally sovereign (very relevant during Charles I's trial for treason), but while this might be true in practice the orthodox view is that sovereignty comes from the 'King-in-Parliament', a composite body of the King, House of Commons, and House of Lords acting in concert.
The point is that when Andy Burnham exercises his power in many cases he's in a sense doing 'su king' by virtue of his role as PM rather than acting in his own right. The PM role is weird as well, traditionally (and in my opinion correctly) the PM is merely the first among equals in a collectively responsible Cabinet, the term 'Prime Minister' actually started life as an insult. Of course since the late 20th century the role has become increasingly presidential, but this seems true in Westminster-style systems generally.
Its not Islam. The article mentions several Muslim majority countries as being more effective militarily than Arab countries, and many other Muslim countries seem to have competent militaries.
Arab armies were historically effective. I wonder whether the resource curse is part of the answer.
Anybody else thinks that this whole Venezuela/Maduro thing is just an elaborate scam by Venezuelan elites so that Exxon and Chevron rebuild their industry only for it to be nationalised 10 years down the line?
>until I read up about the whole "direct to consumer" fiasco it really helped me understand another trend I was a bit confused about.
In Switzerland, every decent sports store now has a whole treadmill with some sort of gait analysis thing and a dedicated guy that is going to pick a shoe for you based on that + your running level.
Anecdotal evidence, but 80% of the time I see someone buying running shoes in Ochsner they end up using the treadmill and getting advice from the guy, and a lot of the time it they end up getting Hokas.
Semi-related: I did the gait analysis thing when I started seriously training for a half marathon. The guy showed me the video and reached the conclusion that, since I run with my knees flexed inwards (true) I needed a certain shoe that would "stabilize" my feet and push my knees outwards.
It took me several years and several pieces of orthopedic equipment to recover from the damage those shoes did to me. Do not trust salesmen with medical advice.
Can I ask how the shoes created actual orthopedic damage? (I totally understand how hard injury and recovery are, so not flaming. I destroyed my hip cartilage while a happy runner and triathlete, so I know about injuries, recovery and letting go of something I adored and that defined me.)
Shoes * body * mileage = impact, where body gives signs of damage being done and is also the one to work on via technique and strength if something is not going well in your posture. I see the 'duck run' (knee buckling inside, feet moving outside to correct for the loss of height) all the time and would think that something that mostly is related to underdeveloped muscles around the knee.
The explanation I got from my doctor was that one shouldn't fix posture problems by raising the inner part of the insoles a random amount because all that achieves is making you run "weird", putting pressure in the wrong part of the articulation and damaging the ligaments that keep the knee in place. The actual solution involved muscle development exercises, ripping out the insoles of those shoes to achieve a flat base and replacing them with custom-made ones, knee pads with metallic inserts, and a two-year training plan.
Conventional wisdom among running coaches and orthopedists these days is that the most important thing is to run comfortably, and that just because something looks "weird" doesn't necessarily mean it's bad or wrong. Yes, it may be inefficient, but it probably isn't hurting the runner, either.
I was having ankle pain and had one of these gait analyses and also had inward pointing knees and got some shoes to correct it - and it helped loads! Much less knee pain and my ankle feels lessy achey too.
So don’t trust all sales people - especially if feel fine already. But if you have an issue it really can help.
For me I didn't realize that my feet had actually grown and I was cramming my feet into the old sized shoes (and kept buying the old size too). Took years to figure that one out :-/
I think you're right - this was also during Covid where I was home and barefoot alot more. The effect is the same though which is that I need bigger shoes now and just that simple change solved alot of pain (also getting jeans that fit right).
The comments in the article about 'performance' are very real. When Nike was still in retail stores, 9/10 shoes were fashion sneakers and had nothing to do with athletics/running/performance.
By comparison, Hoka is positioned as a runners shoe. They have a variety of models based on the type of running you need (daily, long run, race), provide road/trail variants (their Speedgoat is amazing trail shoe), have large toe boxes to give your forefoot/toes the space needed to spread out on impact, also room to grow from swelling.
I'm sure Nike don't want to walk back from their fashionista offerings, but there are lessons in here for sure - maybe they need sub-branding like Nike Road, Nike Trail, Nike Casual or Nike Performance and Nike Casual.
I think they do have that - Nike SB for skate/street, Nike ACG for trail, etc. That said, I have twice gone to re-buy a trail-oriented shoe of theirs that I liked in the past, and found that it never stuck, and the new options in that space were garish or over-reliant on mesh which just lets in dirt and thorns.
I wear this category for hiking rather than running (prefer sneakers over boots - less weight). Current shoes are something waterproof from Columbia that I've worn in snow and desert trails and quite like. Bought on special in the US just before heading into snow, so didn't research much. Previously had Nike Wild Trail. And many years back, I think it was Nike Trail that I bought in NZ, but never saw that moniker again.
I was looking at Nike ACG stuff recently, but the colourways in AU are black (clodhopper!), neon blue, white with khaki, camo, or an odd light brown. And on the side it spells out "All Conditions Gear" like you're an idiot who can't remember what your shoes are for.
Nike are too narrow for me. I alternate between Inov-8 and Topo for trail shoes. I was really happy with an older pair of Adidas Terrex Pro, but haven't tried the new Agravic options in several years.
Trail running is highly dependent on the type of trails around you. I'm in the bay area and almost everything here is dry, dusty and hard. You can generally get by with structured road running shoes if you want to, and don't need much support beyond that. I would not recommend the same thing to east coast trail runners, or most northern Europeans.
Nike has Nike SB for skateboard and they are (were?) awesome, the last two pairs I bought lasted more than 5 years being worn everyday. For comparison Vans last at best 6 months for me.
Couple that with the fact almost everyone seems to run now, and that running shoes/trainers have become acceptable fashion in all but the haughtiest of occasions.
In the 90s, running wasn't even really a thing. A few people went "jogging" for exercise. Otherwise it was a proper sport in which very few partook. Trainers were predominantly worn by children. Adults wore "real" shoes.
Something changed in the past ten years or so. I feel like Nike kept the childish association whereas brands like Hoka became acceptable for adults to wear.
What happened but not in the last 10 years (it happened before) is that 1990's children became adults and kept using trainers (personally I don't wear anything else). But this doesn't explain why Nike died this death. We will get some MBA story about in the future, I guess.
Looking around me I was convinced that most of Nike's and Adidas' sales were coming from the "fashion" side of things. People buying everyday shoes from a famous brand. The "professional" shoe was for professional athletes, football players, etc. I'd hear that a player signed with Adidas, or a runner was wearing Nike for a race, but regular people didn't go in stores for the specs, they went for the brand.
Like you say, until recently almost nobody had running shoes because running as a sport for regular people wasn't a thing. People would have some trainers that fit every sporty activity. Just because people buy more running shoes doesn't mean they buy less of the day too day shoes. Fashion and sports shoes don't replace each other. The sales of sport shoes just created a new market, they didn't cannibalize the rest of the sales. That must have been self-inflicted.
totally. some brands really made a huge step-up and became "fresh", which Nike declined and is now considered "stale". From my euro-centric perspective I see Autry, New Balance, Adidas and Asics all over the place. Even Reebok had a revival. Basketball and skateboarding shoes fell out of style and now everyone trends towards running or indoor soccer style shoes.
I agree that something changed in the past ten years or so, because in the last few years I was surprised to notice on the street that almost everyone wears running shoes (in Europe).
I have transitioned myself to wearing only some kind of good quality running shoes, perhaps a decade before this became so fashionable, because I cared much more about my comfort than about the opinions that others might have about what I am wearing.
So I was surprised when everybody else appeared to have done the same thing, eventually.
Yes, I confess I made the change when the masses started doing it and it became socially acceptable to wear running shoes to work. I think it started around ten years ago and consolidated with COVID. It's been a considerable improvement in quality of life. Now I only wear "real" shoes a few times per year, for formal occasions, and I wonder how I could spend all that time wearing them daily.
Nike famously built there business on the back of the running trend of the late 70s and early 80s. It’s headquartered where it’s headquartered because of its association with a monster collegiate running program.
Before that they were known specifically for their innovation in serious running shoes.
If anything it’s that they abandoned that which caused their current downswing.
I could care less about running shoes, or shoes in general, but late 80's and into the 90's it was like Nike vs Reebok and Adidas on the side, with a dash of Puma. Haven't heard about Reebok ever since. It was as big as Nike, so it doesn't seem unprecedented for these brands to die by stupid mistakes?
Shoes salespeople wield huge influence over buying decisions, especially if they come off as authoritative.
My son works in a running shoe store that also does gait analysis and they default every new runner into something stable-neutral like a Brooks Ghost, Saucony Ride, or NB 880. They never default with Nike or Adidas because, although both brands make some excellent running shoe models, neither have anything that's in the same category (if Nike had a shoe that was a mix between the Structure & Pegasus, that would be id. If Adidas had something like the SL2 but with a little more structure, that would, too.). The problem with both Nike & Adidas is that they cater to a million different niche audiences, and while both have some amazing running shoe options at the top end (e.g. Vomero Plus for cushioned daily, Alphafly / Streakfly / Vaporfly for racing, etc) their shoes targeting casual runners doing 2-5mi slow runs a couple days a week are lacking. Yes, you could go with a Pegasus, and many do, but although that's a general purpose stable-neutral running shoe, there are way better options from other brands (including Hoka & On, but also Brooks, NB, Saucony, Asics, Topo, Altra, Mizuno, and more).
Having gone through this process what surprised me was that they were advising along brand lines: “Brooks are sturdy, ASICS are narrow shoes, Hoka have thick soles and a lot of bounce”. They didn’t have differentiation within a same brand.
I just want some regular running shoes that don't look like they have a 3" thick sole, with a 1" protrusion coming out the back. Most running shoes look goofy has hell these days, and for what purpose I don't have a clue.
Late reply, but I went to Dick's after posting this to pick up some new running shoes, and literally every single pair had those marshmallow soles. Not all of them were 3", but they don't make them like they used to.
I recommend Doctors of Running (website & podcast). They're a group of running PTs and each of them has different needs & preference. One in particular likes less cushioned and more structured shoes. There are ample options out there.
It's a thing for sure, maybe just not screamed about. If you run in a shoe that is 10mm+ and then go to a 0mm like an Altra - it is wild how different it feels.
>Ansar Allah (Houthis) is a terrible Islamist group
IMO this is kind of bad framing because it suggests that they're the minority in Yemen, when in reality they basically are the government of 70-80% population of Yemen and absorbed 60+ percent of the Yemeni regular army.
They are basically at this point the de-facto Yemeni government
Ansar Allah isn't even close to a majority of the population of Yemen. Yemen is majority-Sunni. Ansar Allah is a militant Zaydi revivalist movement, and what they're attempting to revive is a Zaydi caste system.
That's why relying on mercs (which is what both UAE and Saudi chose in Yemen) is a double edged sword. At some point the cash isn't enough of a motivator and they will just run away.
> It's just the stated goal is impossible given the political RoE.
People need to keep in mind tactical versus strategic success. For Iran, the military operation was a complete tactical success, it's just that the strategic goals — assuming there were any to begin with, which seems to be an unanswered question — were not, and it was questionable whether military operations were a useful tool to achieve them at all.
“War is the continuation of policy with other means.” — Carl von Clausewitz
'What is one's stated policy / goal, and is war a useful tool for achieve it', is a question that needs to be asked by civilian leadership. Sometimes (often?) the answer is "no".
It looks like the strait is still closed, the Taliban is back in charge and Syria is run by a former ISIS fighter. I think maybe the point is that the US has put in a lot of effort and resources into these areas with no outcomes benefitting our country, or the the world even
Most southern Yemenis don't want unification. North and South Yemen were separate countries for decades. When unification first happened there was optimism but South Yemen (which is about 20% of the total population of Yemen) was always hesitant about how little political power they'd have. North Yemen is 80% of the population and, today, almost entirely controlled by the Houthis.
I don't think native Yemeni are motivated enough to fight for unification. That's why all the fighters are mercenaries hired by the UAE or Yemen
We've seen Sunni majorities in Syria and Lebanon run for generations by oppressive Shia-supremacist regimes, so while I agree that the resistance against Ansar Allah doesn't have a lot of local legitimacy, I think you have to be a little careful about reading legitimacy into the dominant power in Yemen; once a group gets the upper hand, it can be hard to shake them off. There's a whole interesting history to how Yemen got here.
We seem to be in need of a mercenary Uber, where individual mercenaries will have their reputation and the potential customers will be able to check it.
the Houthis won't desert as they're fighting an ideological war vs the Saudi backed forces which are just mercenaries.
idealogical fighters fight to the death. & in almost every case besides the nazi's etc they always win. whether the ideology is right or wrong that's a conversation for a different day.
Pretty good summary of a real estate developer mentality: Heads I pay off my loan and get a return on my equity, tails the bank is gonna be stuck with the mortgage.
This is on paper one of the most "financially literate" cabinets ever (Bessent, Feinberg, Lutnick, Wright, Burgum, McMahon, etc.) but in practice most of the policies are degen gambling.
Author is basically very scared of DSA, because he knows that it's ready for power politics on their own terms.
When you are socially conservative but economically left wing, you are going to spend your debates arguing with a right wing / center guy who has 60 "non-partisan" studies about why liberal economics are good.
When you are in the DSA, you evacuate the question by mentioning Gaza at will. DSA is basically an American version of the french LFI, and they are constantly able to stonewall or turn any debate by going to moral issues.
> they are constantly able to stonewall or turn any debate by going to moral issues.
Only with debaters who let them. "I take that as an admission that you have no answer to all those studies that state that you're wrong economically. Let us note that well, and then move on to talking about Gaza, since you seem to want to go there."
> Foreign companies and pooled investment vehicles (such as mutual funds or hedge funds) must still report information about foreign owners. But they will no longer have to identify Americans who help them register to do business in the United States, according to a Treasury Department advisory.
> And Treasury will delete any information it has already collected about U.S. business owners, the advisory said.
I mean this is literally an invitation to use "bagmen" with a US passport to hold interest / investments in the US. The part about deleting already collected data is also pretty crazy.
Bessent, Trump and crew were born and often got rich before modern laws like credit act and such. Their sensory experience is being untouchable white guys providing cover for bad guys. Trump isn't commonly associated with money laundering for no reason.
They're dismantling white collar crime tools which were bad enough as is while installing license plate readers to track blue collar folks buying weed.
They’re just trying to recapture their own personal glory days and don't care who else it fucks over.
Stephen Miller even gloats about being like the power mongers of history who just took what they want.
This is absolutely crazy. For comparison, below are the costs in Switzerland (and you can do all the things yourself by writing a letter signed by the authorized persons, so add whatever your time costs):
https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/2020/180/de
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