How to Solve Iceland's Problem

Here's a funny story.

Your captain, out of a combination of sheer curiosity, boredom and outlandish hope, sent an e-mail to the commerce department of the Icelandic government asking if they'd be interested in a quick fix for their economy.

What's even funnier is my idea would have worked.

And I don't mean that in a cocky, arrogant way. I meant that in a sincere way. One year and the Icelandic government's and Icelandic peoples' problems would be a thing of the past. The solution was so simple it was brilliant.

But like many other ideas I've had, they made so much sense and were so simple that when they were pitched to such brainwashed, automatonic dolts in management they were deemed too revolutionary, too simple and too outlandish (of course such "crazy" ideas including things like scanning documents in instead of spending hours filing the physical worthless paper, suggesting there was a Dotcom Bubble and maybe, just maybe we might want to do absorption studies for real estate, but again, "crazy" "outlandish" "unconventional.")

So I was always faced with a paradox. When it inevitably came to me leaving a firm (either willingly or forcefully) when they did an exit interview and asked why I was leaving, I wondered to myself, should I;

"A - Tell them why they're a bunch of effing retards, show them their weaknesses and explain to them how they could improve their efficiency and productivity

or

B - Shut up and be quiet in the fear that if I did tell them what was wrong and why I was leaving, there would be that infinitesimally small chance they'd actually listen and implement the changes, effectively getting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of consulting without actually having to pay for it."

What I inevitably found out is that the skull of management is so thick you could with a sun powered LCD projector burn a power point presentation into their brains and they still wouldn't get it. The legions of management are so numb to new and revolutionary thought, they are condemned to obsolescence and being replaced by new start up firms (see Napster).

With that in mind I've decided to explain my solution to the Icelandic financial crisis not in the hopes anybody over there would listen (because they won't), but to have on record some dumb "crazy" economist had an idea that would have saved those poor Icelanders decades, if not scores of economic pain and suffering.

The idea, as I said was simple;

Lower your corporate and personal income taxes to zero and become a tax haven.

The low taxes, along with a geographic location between the United States and Europe would attract billions, if not trillions in new investment, capital and corporate headquarters resulting in an economic boom. Not to mention Iceland could pilfer the talents of all the advanced countries in the world who are basically being held hostage paying 50% taxes in their current countries. Poaching the productive talents from the other nations would only increase the future productive capacity of Iceland and make the current financial woes of 200,000 people look petty by comparison.

But like I said, such brilliance will only fall on deaf ears.