- Joined
- Feb 28, 2021
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been a proponent of freeports. Essentially these are towns where companies can get lower tax and lower national insurance contribution requirements, and access to government grants. Additionally import tariffs on goods imported to freeports only have to be paid if they leave the freeport, so you can import goods and then re-export them to another country without paying an import tariff, or alternatively import raw materials and then sell the manufactured items that have a lower import tariff. They are designed to increase economic activity in certain areas and have been touted as a "Brexit benefit", although freeports were always allowed under EU law and we even used to have some anyway.
Some people Rishi Sunak is vaguely associated with are proponents of "charter cities", in particular Paul Romer who taught him at Stamford. These are a bit like company towns, effectively, where a company/investor/foreign country would purchase a town and could control a lot of civil laws in the zone (so e.g. set its own tax rates, scrap minimum wage, get rid of unemployment benefits, reduce environmental protection, ban unions, end socialised healthcare etc). The Charter City is still part of the UK but beyond foreign policy and criminal law (you couldn't e.g. make cocaine legal, although since you'd be controlling the local police force you could maybe tell them to stop looking for it) it'd basically be an enclave. The idea is that such a thing could allow for the creation of your own local Hong Kong or Shenzen.
While I wouldn't be surprised if Rishi Sunak privately thought Charter Cities were a good idea, there are absolutely zero plans to try and make them a thing. The residents of Folkestone, waking up to find themselves in the Zhōngguó Special Economic Prosperity Zone where minimum wage is £2/hr and the unemployed are "encouraged" to partake in Happy Citizen Civil Duty Work Exercises, would not take that lying down. Worse, they'd never vote Tory again. So Charter Cities have never been proposed, let alone passed through The Commons.
Idiots, however, think the Freeports are a sneaky way to implement Charter Cities and - having brainrot from watching too much cyberpunk anime - assume this means powerful multinationals will soon be forming autonomous city states in the UK. As always, Trans Women most effected, and this guy is linking it in to some stupid cyberpunk idea of a world where a cyberpunk company could execute any end user of their software by coming up with "clever" loopholes by making it part of their standard terms that an end user is an employee and separately that they're allowed to execute employees. Failing to understand international law he also speculates having their HQ there means they could execute people outside the Charter City too (stupidity of all that aside, employment law goes by where the employee is located - American companies often get sued when they treat European employees like their American ones).
Some people Rishi Sunak is vaguely associated with are proponents of "charter cities", in particular Paul Romer who taught him at Stamford. These are a bit like company towns, effectively, where a company/investor/foreign country would purchase a town and could control a lot of civil laws in the zone (so e.g. set its own tax rates, scrap minimum wage, get rid of unemployment benefits, reduce environmental protection, ban unions, end socialised healthcare etc). The Charter City is still part of the UK but beyond foreign policy and criminal law (you couldn't e.g. make cocaine legal, although since you'd be controlling the local police force you could maybe tell them to stop looking for it) it'd basically be an enclave. The idea is that such a thing could allow for the creation of your own local Hong Kong or Shenzen.
While I wouldn't be surprised if Rishi Sunak privately thought Charter Cities were a good idea, there are absolutely zero plans to try and make them a thing. The residents of Folkestone, waking up to find themselves in the Zhōngguó Special Economic Prosperity Zone where minimum wage is £2/hr and the unemployed are "encouraged" to partake in Happy Citizen Civil Duty Work Exercises, would not take that lying down. Worse, they'd never vote Tory again. So Charter Cities have never been proposed, let alone passed through The Commons.
Idiots, however, think the Freeports are a sneaky way to implement Charter Cities and - having brainrot from watching too much cyberpunk anime - assume this means powerful multinationals will soon be forming autonomous city states in the UK. As always, Trans Women most effected, and this guy is linking it in to some stupid cyberpunk idea of a world where a cyberpunk company could execute any end user of their software by coming up with "clever" loopholes by making it part of their standard terms that an end user is an employee and separately that they're allowed to execute employees. Failing to understand international law he also speculates having their HQ there means they could execute people outside the Charter City too (stupidity of all that aside, employment law goes by where the employee is located - American companies often get sued when they treat European employees like their American ones).
Tl;dr idiot doesn't understand politics and has cyberpunk brain worms.
He's also engaged in the same logical leaps of "JK Rowling video game popular" -> TERFs more empowered to TERF -> vitriol against trans people grows -> trans people get murdered ergo buying the funny wizard game = you have personally murdered a bunch of trans women.
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isn’t taking this shit.
