[ale] Incompetent corporate web sites (was: Ubuntu Linux ROCKS!)

[wylde bill]

On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 13:47 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:

> Maybe I just don't understand why anyone would like to keep the
> current fscked up mess that uses taxpayer money to actually _do_ the
> research that Big Pharma then get patents on so they can charge granny
> $100 a pill to keep her alive while _THEY_ piss and moan about "must
> stay profitable" when they already make 20+% AND get to write off
> their "research costs". NSF forks out a $1000 grant, Pharma adds $20,
> the school and the drug co split the patent on the outcome and me and
> granny pay $100 for a pill that can be made for $15. And to top it all
> off most of the edu's in on this are TAXPAYER FUNDED PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!!

I don't see why a health-care collective couldn't buy-up stock in those
companies, and put the "profit" into paying for the member's drugs.


> Patents are legalized monopolies. That entire pile of lawyer dung
> should be thrown away and never revived. People who invent do so
> because they are driven to invent and create. Those that do it just
> for the money are candidates for soylent green feedstock.

Patents are a mixed bag- and at least they're not forever.  I don't
really have a strong opinion on patents in general.   

Software patents, however, are patently stupid.  I think they finally
annulled the one where you owed company X- I don't remember their name-
a royalty for simply recording your own music and burning it to CD at a
live show.  Using software they had nothing to do with creating, on
hardware they had nothing to do with creating or designing.  That was
insane.  Along with the infamous Amazon patent. 


> I say we fund healthcare with a honkin' death tax. When people die all
> of their assets over an amount tied to the annual family-of-4 income
> per dependant at the time of death is liquidated and goes to
> healthcare. Don't like it? Don't die. 

So people just give their assets away to their chosen inheritors before
they die.  I think it would be a much better idea to approach the
problem of taxation in general through a resource usage tax.  The more
resources you (or your corporation) uses the more tax you pay.  I think
a land-value tax, such as suggested here:
 
http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html

would be a more equitable way to go.  I agree with most of what that guy
says, though I don't know if his assertion that the suggested tax could
eliminate all other taxes, but his reasoning (and the reasoning of the
sources he quotes) starts with what is a pretty obvious tenet, which is
stated most succinctly in the Blackstone quote he uses in his essay:

"The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property
of all mankind, from the immediate gift of the Creator."

and two more which are quite complementary:

Men did not make the earth.... It is the value of the improvement only,
and not the earth itself, that is individual property.... Every
proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he
holds.

                    --Tom Paine, "Agrarian Justice," paragraphs 11 to 15

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of [landed] property
is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the
higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise.

                                                      --Thomas Jefferson

I don't think *anyone* should have to pay a tax on their home (and I
think even the super-rich have the right to claim an exemption for one
residence).  Nor do I think anyone who wants to be a subsistence farmer
should have to pay tax on their land.  The right to a squat, and to feed
yourself are two of the most basic rights of humankind.  Property taxes
as they are enacted now are just a way to keep the "riff-raff" out of
the neighborhood. 

> They consume the most resources over their lifetimes and it
> should be recycled when they are dead.

Why not just tax the resource usage while they're alive?  If Jr. can't
handle the management of the resources, then he'll end up broke, sooner
or later.  If he can, he'll be paying just as much as daddy for what he
uses up.

> Fire the congress critters, draft the doctors, shoot the insurance
> execs, and make it all run on Linux systems and take care of EVERYONE.

Just keep the congress critters limited in their scope and power.  I'm
dead in-line with the idea guy has on his page for how to divvy up the
tax loot (give everybody a check with a percentage of the take to do
with as they please).  



-- 
"I've been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be a man. There is no
new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where
there'd be nothing to envy your neighbor. But there's always something
to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to
appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich
and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love." --
Commisar Danilov, "Enemy at the Gates"