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> whose value is purely of the labor (the good kind)

What's the 'bad' kind?

> logic needn't go out the window in pursuit of an outlet for that anger

Many of these watches are Swiss. Switzerland is (or was) a known tax-haven...

It's our inability to connect the dots that baffles me sometimes. Where else do the wealthy elites get the kind of cash needed to buy these watches?



The US (a country without a wealth tax, and an income tax that only applies to realised, non-loopholed, income) can be a more effective tax haven than switzerland. I believe various ex-british islands may also part of the reason we get this particular bit of anglophone[1] two minute hate[2].

Yes, we're part of the Global North. We have a relatively high standard of living now, due to not having blown ourselves up twice last century, before which we were considered poor in relation to our neighbours. Compare Heidi. (Iodine in salt may have helped immensely, too.)

[1] the brits may still be salty that our bankers did to them what Soros did to thailand. Someone's gotta make sure The Market stays efficient, innit?

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975900

How are worker protections in your jurisdiction? Solidarity is an ideal invoked here even by the pro-free trade pro-small business centre-right party.

(One way our rich flex amongst themselves is on the Züri equivalent of Groundhog Day: they ride horses around a giant wooden snowman with explosives in its head after it's been set on fire. The faster it goes boom, the better the summer will be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reuJ8yVCgSM&t=58

One can tell the Zürchers are a bunch of capitalist pigs who'll be against the wall when the revolution comes[3] because although the holiday is celebrated on a Monday evening, some of them don't even get the day off.)

[3] at the end of Cold War I, we learned we'd had a secret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-behind unit active on our soil. This was a scandal, because we are not a Nato member. Thank you, UK!


The good kind of labor is where the people doing it are free, compensated and satisfied.

If we are going to avoid Switzerland because it's a tax haven then we should probably avoid doing any commerce with any country, including the one you probably are in now (unless you're in NZ or something).

And with regards to your update - no one is talking about faux luxury consumer goods here; in fact an argument can be made that the _only_ sustainable mode of consumerism is the kind practiced by these luxury watch makers if antrhung.


High quality watches were coming out of Switzerland long before it was a tax haven. [0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/style/international/what-...




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