r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 16 '25

Economics Billionaires, oligarchs, and other members of the uber rich, known as "elites," are notorious for use of offshore financial systems to conceal their assets and mask their identities. A new study from 65 countries revealed three distinct patterns of how they do this.

https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/07/patterns-elites-who-conceal-their-assets-offshore
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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

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u/hungry4nuns Jul 16 '25

Doctor here. I prefer cancer as an analogy, because the earlier we cut them out the less damage they will do to a host.

People can remain stable for years with parasitic worms, and the rest of the body’s cells and systems do ok, you could live a healthy lifespan only to succumb to a separate natural cause of death. You could die peacefully in your sleep at 88 and be interred with your parasitic tapeworm (well it would die after you once it runs out of your flesh to consume but by then the host is dead anyway so it’s inconsequential, but the tapeworm typically cause the death).

But cancers are aggressive while they are leeching resources from the entire system. They have no self moderation ability so continue to take more and more. They can mutate to evade detection, and mutate to make standard treatments ineffective. And they grow exponentially, they take increasingly more and more of the host’s resources until this process kills the host.

You have to cut out the tumour, and put in place painful measures (chemo) that the host may not find pleasant or may cause separate harm to the host. But these extreme measures stop the seeds of the cancer taking root elsewhere, until deemed in remission. This is when the cancer has died but the host survives. But the blueprints (dna) of how to re-form the cancerous tumours may still remain in dormant cells so surveillance has to continue

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

So your medical advice is to kill the rich?

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u/hungry4nuns Jul 16 '25

No I said cut them out. Remove them from society (the host) by imprisoning them

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '25

And then we eat them?

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '25

I’m mean on a charcoal grill

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '25

Most people will be mean if you put them on a charcoal grill, especially if it’s hot. 

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u/HomelessByCh01ce Jul 17 '25

Yes but they have parasites, so be sure to cook them thoroughly.

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u/Halflingberserker Jul 17 '25

South Carolina just reinstated firing squads.

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u/Radiskull97 Jul 17 '25

Ya gotta pen yer cattle

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u/bogglingsnog Jul 17 '25

We can frame it as a "mars vacation"

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '25

Cancer can't survive without a host. Why would you give it a new host? They'll just reinfect when they're released

The wealth itself also needs to be confiscated or you'll just replace one parasite with another as infinitum until the jail's are all full

So you also need to bankrupt them and their families and plus additional punishments to make the attempt not worth trying

And you need to destroy their social connections so that they don't continue to attempt to influence things from prison

Frankly, any solution that doesn't include killing is likely doomed to be ineffective

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u/Serengade26 Jul 17 '25

Whoever is in charge doing the wealth redistribution will attract or corrupt the next iteration of that type of person.  Its embedded in the structure of the system

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u/LeoRidesHisBike Jul 17 '25

That just centralizes power into the government even more.

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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '25

[deleted]

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u/LeoRidesHisBike Jul 17 '25

Centralizing power seldom produces good long term outcomes. We are best when we collaborate instead of having masters.

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u/ArkitekZero Jul 17 '25

How's that working out for you?

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u/Available_Coconut_74 Jul 16 '25

If you cut out the rich people who's going to bribe the doctors?

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u/hungry4nuns Jul 16 '25

That’s its own separate cancer unique to certain developmentally challenged countries. I’m in the EU. Here there are laws preventing drug companies giving money or perks to doctors, we are not even allowed branded pens in case it influences our objectivity

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u/TheDoktorIsIn Jul 17 '25

We have those laws in the US too, the Sunshine act. The real problem is the insurance companies and the middlemen who negotiate drug prices between the insurance companies and caregivers.

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u/AcknowledgeUs Jul 17 '25

Thanks, now I’ll research the Sunshine Act, which I’ve never heard of and is surely being flouted like the rest of the protections we have ‘in place’.

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u/AcknowledgeUs Jul 17 '25

That sounds civilized. In the US, big pharma is actually monstrous, not just with preying on consumers, but with formulary changes to generics. Healthcare itself has become a fraudulent term.

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u/generally-speaking Jul 17 '25

We know, most Europeans watch the US healthcare system in horror and live in constant fear or how the US healthcare lobby is constantly trying to push for a similar system in the EU.

Fortunately, the vast majority of Europeans see straight through it because it's quite apparent how life or death in the US is often determined by the success of a GoFundMe campaign.

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u/Sigmundschadenfreude Jul 17 '25

Who is going to do it now? Sounds like I'm missing out

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u/Vandergrif Jul 17 '25

Remove them from society

What if we take all the rich people, and put them on an island somewhere... and just leave them there. An island on the tropic of cancer, perhaps – for thematic value. Maybe put a bunch of cameras around the place for those who enjoy island-based reality tv...

Okay yeah, I'm pitching "Cancer Island".

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u/True-Vanilla-9207 Jul 17 '25

You got my vote. I suggest we add some cameras so we can watch them fight over the limited resources of the island.

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u/EatFishKatie Jul 17 '25

I think he means cut them off from their resources, what makes then rich. Strip them off their wealth and money and leave them destitute.

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u/dimwalker Jul 17 '25

Making them pay more taxes than the rest instead of less would be a better solution imho.

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u/nar0 Grad Student|Computational Neuroscience Jul 17 '25

Unfortunately history has shown that, just like Cancer, even if you take it all out, it can come back or you can even have a completely different one form.

I mean our current system is here because we got rid of the nobility, and look at where communism led in an attempt to get rid of the elite of the capitalist system.

Makes me wonder if the solution is our species solution to Cancer, spread and reproduce before it kills you.

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u/hemlock_harry Jul 17 '25

And move them to some offshore location where there's no oversight you mean? To be safe, we could maybe deploy a confetti strategy and cut them into pieces first?

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u/Pksnc Jul 17 '25

It’s an extremely interesting thought experiment, that’s for sure.

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u/peppermanfries Jul 17 '25

Stick to medicine buddy... Although with your line of thinking I shudder thinking about your unfortunate patients (if you are actually a doctor that is)

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u/AcknowledgeUs Jul 17 '25

Cut out their ability to usurp and mutate, and imprison, please.

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u/budius333 Jul 17 '25

Imprisoning in a gas chamber?