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Comment by kartan | Hacker News Reader

> Year after year, followers of respective patron saints attempt to outspend and outdo their neighbouring parish in a contentious crusade for showmanship

It looks like a set of very bad habits. A place where signalling power and wealth is more important than self-growth.

Malta is a tax haven and famous for the assassination of the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.*

All that does not hint a healthy society, but a society that needs to get away from tribalism and embrace better ways.

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/daphne-caruana-galizia

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Small island nations (or smaller countries in general) don't have the muscle large nations do. You're not going to build a production facility for cars on Malta, for example.

There is nothing wrong with them having a beneficial tax system if it means people will relocate and spend money there while paying (some) tax.

What does a country like Malta, Cyprus or Monaco honestly have to lose by being a tax haven?

Dyson may have missed your memo: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/23/dyson-to-begin-construc...

Well Singapore is 10 times more populous though. Not to mention the strategic location of Malacca strait.

Oh and because of southeast asian culture

And Singapore is not as majority are Chinese/china culture

> What does a country like Malta, Cyprus or Monaco honestly have to lose by being a tax haven?

Simplisticly speaking, they only gain from being tax havens. Point is that everyone else looses. Taxing is a zero-sum situation where if you pay taxes in one place, you don't pay them somewhere else. So this is a nonsensical, because essentially the other countries' taxes are rendered optional. Why pay the whole thing, when you can do some corporate gymnastics and pay less to a tax haven?

It comes down to what in the socialist context is referred to as solidarity. In this case, if you want to tax something, everyone has to agree to that. If there are notable exceptions, it doesn't work. Malta is an example of a notable exception.

Agreed. Smaller nations/states almost have to do that to remain competitive.

Especially the newer EU member states that have been experiencing an incredible amount of brain-drain i.e. people moving to bigger/"richer" countries. Bigger countries profit from that while smaller die out - unless they make themselves more attractive somehow. To some extent its happening within bigger countries as well with urbanisation - in Germany for example villages that are not close to bigger urban centres have the same problem.

Whether you call it a "tax haven" or subsidising - in practice its virtually the same thing. Of course you need some rules in place to prevent creative tax practices by multinationals (like linking taxation to physical presence) - but its a do or die sort of thing.

>anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia

I'm not really sure if "anti-corruption journalist" accurately describes her work:

https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style-wroug...

https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-barre...

https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos-here-m...

https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/

Can you expand on your subtext for the nonexperts?

"The shape itself of Mrs Muscat’s ‘New York for the UN’ dress is beyond horrible – really unflattering. Only a tall, skinny 20-year-old can carry off something that shape, but then a tall, skinny 20-year-old wouldn’t want to wear it."

I'm assuming he meant that that is not the writing you'd expect from a so called "anti corruption" journalist.

So writing about corruption means you are no longer allowed to write fashion pieces? Why must journalism be so exclusive?

No, I'm not saying that. But have you read the articles? They don't exactly seem like excellent journalism to me.

This reads like articles from a high school newspaper, not investigative journalism into corruption.

Are those the actual anti-corruption pieces or just something the poster randomly found with that journalist's name in the byline?

While she may have been involved in a couple of corruption related stories the vast majority of her reporting is more like what you’d expect from tmz or the daily mail.

TMZ has probably broken a corruption related story in the past, would you call them “anti-corruption” journalists?

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. I really doubt what got her murdered with a car bomb wasn't her fashion comentary.

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