From my experience with regulators from several countries, they tend to not sweat the small stuff until it is obvious that you aren't paying attention to the big stuff. Then they go through everything with a fine-toothed comb and throw the book at you.

The guy flew into the DC SFRA. If the FAA doesn't ruin his life, then everybody and their uncle will be doing it, and then they don't really have a buffer zone in which to shoot down aircraft that are potentially threatening.

The fuel tank issue is a bit like citing somebody for worn wipers in a vehicular homicide investigation. They're just padding the charges.

Agree. Can you imagine how much noise those addresses get?

This is a bit like explaining to the IRS that it shouldn't have been a problem that you filed your taxes late, because you told the postal delivery agent that you were running a few days behind when he was dropping off a package.

You can't legally fly within 60nm of the center of DC without taking an online training course. If you want to fly to an airport right on the edge of the restricted area it is probably complicated, but for the most part you just need to stay outside of a certain distance and you're fine. If I were operating anywhere near that area i'd probably request flight following as well - then you're broadcasting a transponder code and talking to somebody who can tell you you're wandering towards trouble before they are scrambling jets.

Obviously flying IFR is the simplest solution. ATC tells you where to go and you follow the route and you're fine.

But, if you're just buzzing around sightseeing over the white house, then sure, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. They actually have lasers to illuminate aircraft to try to warn them off, so that shooting them down isn't their only recourse.

That is hardly true. US income taxes on the upper brackets are far lower than they used to be.

That sounds a bit like walking past somebody lying dying on the street, pointing out that there is no law that obligates you to help them, and then saying that there is nothing to be ashamed of when you refuse to do so.

If the government actually sets up a tax break to incentivize something, there is nothing dishonest from doing so. The problem with corporate tax avoidance is that it usually involves structuring one type of transaction as if it were a completely different type of transaction to claim a tax break that was never anticipated. That is why you find companies doing nonsense like buying municipal sewer systems in Europe and leasing them back to the government for free in perpetuity.

I think the other theory is more plausible. I don't think there is some massive conspiracy to increase government intrusion for its own sake, such that there are deliberate attempts to desensitize people to it. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of intrusion all the same, but the motive tends to be more directly tied to somebody with a stake. They don't want to monitor what you download just to do it - they want to monitor it because they get bribes from Hollywood and Hollywood wants to stop movie downloading, etc.

Whenever something bad happens there is ALWAYS a blame game. Actions that were perfectly reasonable get questioned if they were somehow tied to the chain of events. If somebody blows up a bus full of kids while it is stopped at a traffic light, some idiot is going to propose that school buses should have flashing lights and be able to drive through red lights to reduce the opportunity to attack them with RPGs.

It seems like a 100% certainty that at some point in time terrorists will attack another US airliner. Security can make that very difficult, and maybe it will happen in 10 years, or maybe it will happen in 50 years, but sooner or later somebody will figure out a way to do it. At that point, everybody is going to be pointing fingers at anybody who voted no when the bill came up that would have instituted some control that would have prevented that particular incident. Never mind that there are countless areas where you could tighten security and if you tightened them all we'd be flying naked on planes with our baggage in separate planes after having all gone through full body cavity searches.

Consider yourself lucky then. Many are born without the ability to work a single productive day in their life. Are you suggesting that they should be euthanized?

Yeah, that makes sense. If the poor can't afford taxes, just let them not eat.

The problem with these kinds of schemes is that they tend to be incredibly regressive. You can't have socialism without fairly high tax rates on the parts of the economy that actually produce wealth.

I think it would be far wiser to take the opposite approach.

The most effective form of enforcement is self-enforcement. You want to give companies incentive to just stick with boring accounting and to stop using schemes designed for tax avoidance. The best way to do that is not to create lots of well-defined rules to ban particular practices, because that means that companies can simply use different practices with relatively little risk. What you want to do is create a lot of uncertainty around whether a particular practice is legal or not. This means that companies are going to err on the side of caution, and minimize their use of tax avoidance schemes.

Any businessperson will tell you that the worst thing for a company is uncertainty in regulation. That means that in areas where you want business to grow, you want simple laws that get rid of the risk and allow companies to invest. On the other hand, in areas of the economy like derivatives and tax avoidance schemes that don't really create true value for the average citizen, you want there to be a LOT of uncertainty in risk. Make those CEOs find it impossible to sleep at night for fear that the FBI will kick down their doors while they're sleeping. Give them a reason to have their finances audited twice to make sure there isn't any activity that anybody might construe as a tax dodge. When somebody makes a minor mistake make their shareholders lose their retirement accounts. Then you'll see a return to simple accounting practices.

Agree, but governments should really do these kinds of tax law fixes in a way that creates tremendous expenses for companies that have been gaming the system.

Otherwise they'll just keep finding another loophole.

It might even make sense to make tax code changes ex post facto for some period of time. That would create tremendous risks for anybody taking advantage of loopholes, and thus companies would just be boring and use traditional accounting.

You could argue the same thing of any tax. Sales taxes raise costs of living, which means workers won't live in the area unless employers pay more, which means their costs go up, which means prices go up, which raises the cost of living. Income taxes get passed on to employers (since they have to pay more so that people are still willing to work for them), that gets passed on to customers, and so on.

And yet, taxes still work and have worked for centuries. There might be a loop, but as long as people can keep a reasonable return on their work, they'll work. It isn't like the taxes add up to 150%.

That depends greatly on the specifics, but it generally isn't true. Companies can't just substantially change prices without losing money. It may be more profitable to leave the prices alone and just make less money per sale, than to raise prices and watch the volume drop.

You'd be amazed how much effort it takes to jump through all those hoops. I've seen ERP systems with fairly complex configurations to keep track of all the shell games.

When the transaction is A pays B, B ships product to A, the systems are pretty easy to build/maintain. When the transaction involves money and physical goods going through completely different paths it gets really messy staying on top of it all.

Companies do it because it still pays off, but as with most of the finance sector this stuff is just a drain on the economy. If we could get rid of it all we'd be much better off as a society.

I've heard this point before, with the obvious comparison of Shuttle wings. The counter is that wings are absolutely dead weight on liftoff, plus you've added an entirely new structural mode to the airframe. It has to have the correct structural strength for both vertical ascent and horizontal landing. Both wings and bimodal structure add weight.

Landing the F9 on it's tail, it's practically empty, a fraction of it's initial weight. I'd be interested in seeing the math between F9 and Shuttle, but I suspect SpaceX has done their homework on this.

Of course the science fiction idea of landing anything that can then take off is just that - science fiction. The LEM did it, but then again, only half of the LEM - the bottom was left behind.