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UN Proposes Email Tax
El Jefe writes "No, this isn't an email hoax: The UN has proposed an email tax of roughly 1 cent per 100 emails sent by an individual to help pay for bringing the Internet to developing countries. The only good part in all this is that they have no power to enforce this, and it is "merely a suggestion". "
As yuck as it seems, I think that a tax like this will do a
lot to curb spammers (suddenly sending out a message to your
million addresses costs a hundred bucks. Still a bargain, but it
ain't free any more) and it would benefit the countries coming
late to the net party. But I suspect it will meet pretty strong
resistance.
For starters, it is not my belief that the UN is the sort of organization which should impose taxes. It would also be somewhat problematic for them to tax US citizens - I seem to recall something about taxation without representation in the Constitution.
Additionally, if we assume that the going rate for bandwidth is $10/gig, the tax would amount to 100% of that.
Would you accept an increase of 100% in toll charges on your nearest non-free limited access highway so that people in South Africa can drive on one for free? A tax of 100% on your next car, so that someone in Equador can be given one at your expense?
The examples above may sound extreme, but are exactly what a bandwidth tax amounts to.
Now then, I'm certainly not saying that these nations should not have help, by way of charity of other voluntary effort. It's not the dollars I'm opposed to, but the general principle. I simply do not believe that the proper way to make things happen is by taxing industrialized countries and passing the funds along to the less fortunate, from each according to ability and to each according to need.
Sound familiar?
Kid-proof tablet..
And not to mention Gilliam's Brazil, where in the US it was changed into a rosy, happy movie. And the original version was very dark and ending with Sam going insane after being lobotomized.
God bless the US.
Want the internet in your country? Increase your GNP ...
Heh. Yes! That's the key to gaining wealth I've been looking for all along! Beautiful, in it's simplicity... If I want more money, all I have to do is get more money! Woo!
But seriously. The development of the middle class isn't necessarily the best way to increase your GNP. Large corporations and labor exploitation is really the way to go. Of course, that doesn't really help raise the standard of living or develop a middle class, but hey.
I'm not all that great in math, and I'm not sure where your numbers are coming from. But if 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth, isn't it rather obvious that there would be no middle class? I mean, if bob has $99 and 100 other people each have a penny, I don't see a middle class there.
And you can't really say fsck developing countries, because we have to do business with them. I mean, that 1% is a market for our goods and the other 99% is the cheap exploitable labor pool that we need.
You have a big penis, I believe you.
What does this have to do with the UN?
If the only place you read to find out about USPS rate increases is Slashdot: hang up and turn off that computer, before it's too late for you.
...fsck developing countries.
The internet belongs to those who can afford it. Want the internet in your country? Increase your GNP by developing a middle class (something all those fscking tree hugging liberals won't tell you when they start spouting off their "1% own 99% of the weath in developing nations" propaganda is that THERE*IS*NO*MIDDLE*CLASS* in almost every thrid world nations).
Man, I think the US and China should just HAVE IT OUT, so we can establish who the REAL world super power actually is. That would be a hell of a lot more straight forward than the UN's plan of incremental, piecemeal watering down of the living standard developed countries to support backwards wasteland countries who just don't get it and never will.
If you really think the US pays so much, then think again. The US is close to being the worst kid in the class when it comes to humanitarian aid.
At the same time, a large quantity of the money the US spends on "peacekeeping" go directly to US weapons manufacturers, and lots of the humanitarian aid of both the US and the rest of the world goes to clean up after wars escalated immensely because of US weapons manufacturers that doesn't give a shit about who they sell weapons too.
So not only do the US give less than their share, but you earn lots of money on worsening the situation.
Also, lots of the money for the peacekeeping operation come from the UN, which, as we all knows, the US doesn't pay it's dues to.
Screws over:
1. Fraud artists,
2. Deadbeat spouses (but clever of you to turn that into a 'battered wives' thing)
3. Various criminals
4. Paranoid people in need of professional help.
UNICEF boxes. Stupid. Little. Orange.
Actually I think the tax proposed was per byte not really per email. Emails are probably 1% of total Internet traffic (the rest being porn, mp3 and warez of course ;-)
If $70E9 was the total with a tax of 1 cent per 100 x 10kbytes = 1 cent per Mbyte. Therefore the article implies a total number of Mbytes transmitted over the internet of 7E12 which is 5.6E19 bits per year or 1.7E12 bits per second, lets say about 11,000 155 Mbit links running continously.
Doesn't sound too far out...
Every man for himself, all in favour say "I"
If this money actually went to the development of the systems instead of being funneled into corrupt third world governments or the administrators of this progam, it might be worth it.
Here's a thought: The dictators that run these countries are some of the richest people in the world... Why not make those assholes pay for these types of projects...
Just cuz you ain't paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.
This would be a one time "aid package", which would improve their budgets immensely.
The best gift we could give the Third World would be to teach them ordinary hygine. The first thing a person notices when visiting a Third World country is the stench. To ride a public bus in some Third World countries is enough to induce the heaves. A combination of body odor, rotting garbage, excrement, urine, exhaust fumes, tobacco smoke, and cheap cologne combine to create a stench that makes most visitors swoon. I laugh when I hear people say the Third Worlders are "just like us". One ride on a crowded city bus would convince you otherwise.
The UN is examples of how email would be taxed in an attempt to justify their position to the public.
The proposed unconstitutional tax is on bandwidth, not 'substantial email'.
There is an urgent need to find the resources to fund the global communications revolution -- to ensure that it is truly global. One proposal is a "bit tax" -- a very small tax on the amount of data sent through the Internet. The costs for users would be negligible: sending 100 emails a day, each containing a 10-kilobyte document (a very long one), would raise a tax of just 1 cent. Yet with email booming worldwide, the total would be substantial. In Belgium in 1998, such a tax would have yielded $10 billion. Globally in 1996, it would have yielded $70 billion -- more than total official development assistance that year.
Given a tax rate of $10/gig as shown above, would you consider 7,000,000,000 gigabytes of information too high for the world to have transferred in 1998 (including Quake, ftp.cdrom.com, and all else that comprises the network)? It doesn't sound unreasonable to me...
From each according to ability, to each according to need.
Kid-proof tablet..
And anyways, neither Burma, nor East Timor are among the poorest countries in the world.
But if you were to give Burmese dissidents a chance, would you do it by wiring all of Burma in the hope that some of the people who get net access will be dissidents?
Your money would be a damn more well spent by providing them with portable radio equipment, satellite phones (remember, a large part of the Burmese resistance consists of a guerilla movement that are living in the jungle), etc. This could target the dissident movement directly, and would cost a damn lot less, and wouldn't be as easy to monitor for the government.
In fact, the Burmese opposition already have a radio station in Norway broadcasting to Burma, and they have on multiple occasions talked to the media about how much help this is, because radios are cheap and easily available, and hard to block access to. And since they transmit from Norway, almost half a world away, the Burmese government can't to anything about it.
If you want to help the poorest countries, start by slashing all debt to the poorest countries, or at the very least refinance the loans, and lower interest rates. Some of the poorest countries have problems even paying interest on their loans. In fact, the poor countries pay more on their debt than the combined amount of humanitarian aid. The net money flow is still from the poor countries to the rich countries.
It would be a one time haul, that would put these countries in a LOT better position to spend money on improving their situation.
As a logical extention, pass laws that allow you to force companies operating out of your countries to renegotiate any deals on exclusive access to natural resources, and to pay fair market prices.
Many of the poorest countries in the world have large natural resources, but have been exploited by companies that have used bribes and more to gain access to valuable natural resources, and force through deals that give the humongeous profits.
Sierra Leone, for instance, is by many considered the poorest country in the world, even though it has huge copper reserves, and have had a highly sustainable fishing industry. The problem? Foreign companies get almost all the money. Close to nothing end up being funelled back to the people of Sierra Leone.
Pure colonialism.
Well, there goes all help to people in the United States (the biggest terrorist government currently in power)
Where does money 'dumped into relief efforts' go?
It goes to American companies, and American farmers. Then we ship stuff off to the countries. In particular, the part of the 'foreign aid' which is funneled back to US Weapons manufacturers is obscene.
GET the u.s. out of the u.n.
and the u.n. out of the u.s.
I think we should ship them Robert Heinlein novels. I don't know about the toilet paper situation in the third world, but there surely must be a need. Then when all the Heinlein crap is gone, start using various other libertarian pipe-dream crap.
That's an easy solution: Handle the aid directly, don't let the governments do it.
And anyway, you're wrong. Most money DO reach the needy. The reason it might not seem that way is because it's such a futile excersize: People give so little, and the debt of the poor countries is so high, that the poor countries still pay more to the rich countries than they get back in humanitarian aid.
And no, we won't keep our hands out of your pocket, because you, and I, and everyone else in the rich countries, earn a damn lot more than we give by exploting the poor countries.
It's also a matter of self interest: The poorer these countries are, the easier it is for companies to get cheap labour by exploiting poor workers elsewhere, thereby making it easier to keep wages down in the rich countries. By not getting rid of poverty, we aren't only holding the poor countries back, but we are helping the wealthy elites in the rich countries to keep taking our money.
Who let Marcos rule?
Etc.
There's a reason those dictators got all that money: Many rich countries government wanted them to stay in power.
As said before: Drop the debts, and many countries will be able to manage by themselves.
Optionally, link debt reductions to democratic reform in the countries where it is needed, and make sure the opposition in those countries spread the word, that the government is all that stands between them, and massive debt reductions and living standard improvements.
But of course, Suharto got to power with support from the CIA.
This is rather silly to the rest of the world, as China dwarfs Taiwan completely, and as Taiwan was the result of the Kuo Mintang fleeing China after being defeated by Chinese communist party and their army.
You don't usually accept a regime that has clearly been ousted, and that only manage to stay in power a small province. Taiwan should be glad that at least some countries have officially accepted it as a sovereign state, even though they know that this means rather strained diplomatic connections with China.
Maybe it seems weird to you, but people actually are more concerned about good diplomatic connections with a nuclear power that has one fifth of the worlds population.
Growth is a function of much more than simply food production. It seems clear that as a society becomes wealthier, the growth rate decreases. A big reason for that is the move from an agrarian to an industrial economy: On a farm children are cheap labor and an enormous asset. In a city, they're an expense. This is certainly clear if you look at the history of the US.
Third world counties need economic growth, which requires political stability. No one's going to invest in a factory if it's going to get burnt down or seized by the next revolutionary government. Political stability requires that the basic needs of the populous, food being a fundamental one, be satisfied. An industrial economy requires that agriculture produce more food than it consumes. You can't have cities unless farms are producing a surplus.
On the other hand, I think Taiwan has a legitimate right to decide for itself if it wants to be independent. That's not the problem. The problem is that the Taiwanese government keeps insisting it represents all of China, and keeps pretending they are just temporarily pushed into a corner.
If they would stop whining, and accept that China and Taiwan now are two sovereign states, and try to get China to accept the same, then maybe they would get more recognition.
As it is, Taiwan isn't even officially recognized as a state by more than a handful of governments.
i never said that the current systems worked in the least. i was just pointing out that we have it much better than the majority of people, and we shouldn't have to think twice about doing something that will help out the situation. one has to start somewhere right? if we can't even commit to giving some paltry sum, how can we do anything at all?
Posted by Justin:
thankfully.
i think this is just downright wrong, no matter how little the amount is. i don't want my government taxing my internet activities. why not have a telnet tax? every time i telnet to a computer, i have to give them a cent. or how about a pop3 server tax? i have to pay $.05 to check my pop3 mail. or what if the government wants a dollar for every individual web page i look at? even if it's only $.0001 or so, it's just icky.
> Figure the U.S. population as 245 million
Pretty close - 270,311,756 (July 1998 est.), according to the CIA
rant
I think eliminating anonymnity on the Internet is a great idea.
I have participated in various online communities since the mid 1980s. In the early years (when the Internet was a place only for egghead professors and defense contractors and their ilk) it was on small BBSes.
Where there is rampant anonymnity, there is foul antisocial behavior. All the little chickenshits become big burly advocates of whatever. On BBSes where people knew each other, and actually got together for social events, a kind of civlity surfaced which was kinda nice.
And yes, I am posting on this swamp called Slashdot as an anonymous coward. This is not hypocracy, because until everybody is fully disclosed, why should I be? All of you with forged email accounts and fuzzy-animal-hobbit-gandalf-dragonlord-whatever "handles" on here are no less anonymous than I am. You've just bought into the little moderator game in ways I quit doing when I threw away my nick on this site awhile back.
No matter what the benefits, no matter what the features, this can not be, and is not a good thing.
Ever.
No how. No way.
-awc
A fine idea -- I'm surprised no-one thought of this before. What's wrong with the idea that rich people pay towards the common good ? Tax is the basis of a civilised society. cf. USA / Russia.
flames to /dev/null.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I have a semi-acronym for you; ICQ - That's not e-mail, would it be taxed? What about IRC? What about "WinPOP"? Does a company have to pay for internal mail? What about each new communications protocol as it pops up?
The stupid thing about all of this is it's doing a band-aid approach, that is to say it just picks one particular arbitrary thing and targets it without any understanding of overall concepts.
The only thing that might work would be a plain "packet tax". Even then, the Internet is too dynamic to make it workable.
Anyway, these people already get their tax through ISPs.
This is just another bit of stupidity by a bunch of suit-wearing technophobic dinosaurs. I bet they think their documents are stored "in Word". ("I tried to open a Jay-pegg in Word and all I got was gobbledigook. The stupid computer's broken again" - LUsers)
Kris.
Win a Rio (or join the SETI Club via same link)
Even if this was imposed, which would occur around the time that hell freezes over, how could it be enforced?
I am on cable, all my mail goes through my own SMTP server. What will I have to do, meter all the emails through there and charge myself?
I have no problem with their raising funds for this worthy cause, but I fail to see how a recommendation from an organization such as the UN, which obviously, despite the considerable collective brainpower, has no idea what this involves, could ever be taken seriously.
Never trust anybody who uses 'never' regulary in pronouncements. Well, at least seldom trust them...
For they are didactic jerks who read too much Robert Heinlein and his ilk in youth and thus never grew out of a tribal child mentality.
I know it sounds harsh, but Darwin is harsh; most third world people are little better than rodents. The world would be a better place without them. I really don't give a damn what happens to them. Sorry if reality is too harsh; that's the nature of reality.
DOWN WITH REALITY
DOWN WITH LOWER CASE LETTERS
UP WITH PEOPLE. OOPS, ULP, whatever.
any kind of internet laws or regulations are dangerous, especially by the U.N. It sets wierd precedent, and seems to be implying that the internet is something that governments can control. Today it's something seemingly harmless like this, but tomorrow..
And if they in some way start counting e-mails sent, that sets up a system where they can do very scary things later to those same e-mails at the same time they're counted. Like read those e-mails if they aren't encrypted. How much you wanna bet that the Chineese government really likes this idea?
"bring the internet to developing countries"? Um, first maybe we should bring, like, economic systems where more than 0.001% of the population is able to afford computers?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The right to shoot people?
No.
The right to preach racial bigotry?
Yes. Free speech means free speech, even speech you are offended by. Everybody has the right to express their opinion. (Note: applies to the US, or should anyway. Other country's mileage may vary.)
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
We are fighting to make internet free and someone wants us to pay more?
So we get rid from access payments, and phone payments, than someone wants us to pay for a message we send?
Later they'd want us to pay by dowloaded byte.
Eduardo
I think it would be better if the UN just put some of the US$1 billion that Bill Gates and Ted Turner have donated to it into the IT budgets of the developing countries instead of taxing us! We pay enough tax as it is. In my country we are paying around 45% in taxes (inc. income, sales tax etc).
If the UN were to impose a worldwide tax on anything, then it would be grossly overstepping its bounds. The sovereignty of national governments would be effectively usurped, and the UN would become world dictator. The Internet that we now so freely enjoy would be the catalyst.
This grave concern supercedes all of the other technical and common sense reasons why such a tax would be an Extremely Bad Thing.
Besides, the way I see it, the communications revolution is happening extremely quickly, and doesn't need a few hundred billion dollars to help it along. In just a matter of decades, the Internet will complete its journey from obscurity to ubiquity.
How about ensuring basic necessities and rights for all people before shoving eCommerce and eDictatorship down our throats?
Yes, and it's lead to all sorts of evils:
The end of child labor,
Universal suffurage,
Civil Rights Advocacy,
A National Park System.
Why, without all of that, we would be a paradise.
And we'd pay for weapons to export our wars to other countries some other way.
How would one tax using SMTP anyway? it would either have to be a whole new protocol, or add on to SMTP or ESTMP. Plus then theres all the bug sthat would appear, and peoples account being charged for emails they never sent because the script kiddies would find some way to abuse it. PLus if that did happen, people would probably set up "rouge" free smtp and pop servers. Taxing email just wouldnt work out, IMHO.
The US is one of the biggest contributors to the IMF. The us is practically the imf. and the imf practically gives away free checks to underdeveloped/ economically unsound nations.
And everyone knows that NATO is like 90% US.
So please read the facts and keep away from the greens.
And every 18 months they will increase the rate by .005c! Kinda like when your letters get returned because the USPS has increased the postage fee (and you didnt see the post on /. about the rate increase).
Hate it when that happens.
Do it now! Don't wait! There's a hungry dog waiting out back behind your house for all the excess viscera, so no part of you needs to go to waste at all. Please, oh please, do it.
First, though, convince as many fellow thinkers as you can to go along with you.
I promise we'll build you a nice big monument.
Besides all the other problems with this, it would do more to kill mailing lists than spam. How much would the vger admins suddenly owe?
>Why do you think that tax == control?
.these sorts of "sin" taxes are often designed explicitly to modify behavior. On earth (what planet are you from), that is a kind of control.
.or maybe mainland China.
Not meaning to be a jerk here, but are you stupid enough to think it doesn't?
>Taxing different things in different ways can be
>used to encourage certain kind of behaviour
>(compare taxes of alchol and milk for example),
>but it's other kind of laws that do the
>controlling.
Read your own words. .
>And people do need controlling, that's why every
>society has laws.
Now, you're just scaring me.
Methinks you'd be quite happy in Singapore. .
The sureness with which you state this is just plain frightening.
>You believe that the only function of this is to shoot people?
> Uses of a gun
> 1 To kill someone
> 2 To threaten to kill someone
> 3 To accidentally kill someone
> 4 To kill someone cos you have had a bad day
> Get the message.
You forgot #5: To protect oneself from personal or property dammage from someone else armed with a gun.
This is getting to be a very good reason for owning a gun. The police, in spite of thier best efforts, are no longer able to protect us. And, in fact, are not required to protect us! If they fail to protect us, even in a case of gross negligence, they cannot be held responsible for that failure. You must protect yourself if you wish to be protected.
Keep in mind, if you ban guns, it won't stop the criminals from getting them. They will still get them. It is absurdly easy to acquire a gun in most developed countries. Even the european ones that ban them. You just have to know the right people, and have money. So the net effect is that you stop normal citizens from owning guns to protect themselves. Criminals LOVE anti-gun laws. It means thier targets cannot defend themselves.
As for the argument about a militia not being needed in the 20th century... Ask any military tactitian, a man defending his home is more powerfull then 20 hired men. Hitler decided not to attack Switzerland partly because of the terrain, and because the Swis have a civilian army, they are defending thier homes and would have caused huge losses to Hitler's army. It's also interesting to note that every able man in Switzerland is REQUIRED to own a gun and know how to use it, through military training much like our reserve units. And yet the crime rate is absurdly low compared to other "cizilized" nations.
> imposing measures intended to prevent births
Oh, like the U.S. has been doing to a number of third-world countries? i.e. money-for-sterilization campeigns in areas that we won't even send enough food (at lower cost) to?
---
DNA just wants to be free...
UN is super-liberal to the threshhold of socialism-communism.
It has little power.
Enough said.
If it would actually accomplish any amount of good it wouldn't bother me at all. It won't accomplish anything so it does bother me. A lot of these underdeveloped nations have problems that make lack of internet access absolutely trivial in comparision. Little things like little water that we'd consider drinkable, lack of the ability to even farm at a scale large enough to support the community, lack of an educational system that might allow a few people to make it out alive, lack of anything greater than late 19th century medical technology, the presence of a government that feels the need to commit genocide against its own people. Just so that matter can be made even worse how about rampant overpopulation and birthrate.
A far more useful thing would be to encourage or enforce birth control to keep the populations in check with the carrying capacity of the land. Harsh? Yes. Is it any harsher than referring to the deaths of civilians (of any side) as collateral damage during any war-like campaign? No.
In most of these countries it won't be the people who get internet access, it'll be the oppressive government which also happens to keep their people in the dark ages.
Give me a break, the plan is based on the same ignorance that causes politicians to focus more on computers/internets in schools than good teaching. (I.e., computers are the magic bullet that will fix everything without effort on our part).
The third-world doesn't need the internet... they need democracy. But the US (e.g. CIA) has a history of subverting democracy in the third-world. Go figure.
I do hope Seth Finkelstein doesn't throw his shoulder patting himself on the back, but the fact is that his statement is not at all "informative". Every account of this matter I've seen describes it as a "proposal", and all he does is repeat at length that it is, in fact, a "proposal".
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
These kind of messages make me feel very happy that I am not an american, I don't live in the US and I hopefully never will... Is Canada any better?
Why do you think that tax == control? Taxing different things in different ways can be used to encourage certain kind of behaviour (compare taxes of alchol and milk for example), but it's other kind of laws that do the controlling.
And people do need controlling, that's why every society has laws. Internet society needs laws as much as any other society. Or do you say that internet crime should be allowed.
Not that I think it would be possible to really implement something like this e-mail tax. I don't think that current taxation (or rather the way most governments spend that money) is OK either.
I imagine this isn't the result of blatant stupidity, as you credit it to, but rather a (l)user-level comprehension of e-mail systems. There seriously are people who think that AOL *is* the Internet. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard for AOL to keep track of how many e-mails you send. This person is probably someone who was on AOL (or some similarly nice, friendly, touchy-feely ISP) and noticed that they give him a count of how many e-mails he has sent. Upon noticing this, he didn't stop to ask someone who actually knew how this stuff works, but ran out and said, "they keep track of how much e-mail you send, which means we can tax e-mail and use the money to let starving Ethiopians networked Quake!"
True, it's an idea that's not even half-baked, but it's not a completely absurd idea for someone with (l)user-level expertise to come up with.
Hey now,
Monitor tanned skin is big bucks on the market these days.
And his junkfood acne isn't that* bad. Think of it as 'unique texture.'
Doesn't anyone remember Charles Darwin? Survival of the fittest and all that jazz? Why does the USA, as a collective group of individuals who happen to have a decent standard of living where most of the population doesn't starve to death, have to feel guilty that another group is NOT so well off? It is survival of the fittest group.
...it looks like another ploy by those socialist UN hacks still living in the '60s who spooge their trousers with glee every time they dream up another way to spend other people's money.
--
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
>First, food by numbers isn't the primary issue, it's nutrition. If you have nothing but rice, you're fucked. More kids die of malnutrition in it's assorted forms than starvation per se.
Rice and beans mixed form a complete protein. Add turnips (greens and bulbs) and alfalfa (sprout it) and you have complete nutritution. You can live a LONG life on just this. (Y2K buffs take note)
As to the "x crates of 486s and a satellite dish" have you ever BEEN to a third world country (watching CARE commercials doesn't count)? Computers and dishes don't work too well without electricity. Send books, and teachers first. Pay for them with donations. If I want to donate, good for me. If I don't, don't try to make me via taxes.
Reagan won the cold war?
hahahahahahahahaha
(we were just lucky that we lost it after the Russians, and not before)
Yes, yes, why do high school students take semi-automatic weapons to school, and shoot at their high classmates.
They are animal savages!
..... Just making a point. No flames please.
ONE fucking cent per e-mail! That's nothing...
There are a few separate issues when dealing with welfare-as-social-problem.
1. As a whole, American society does a lot to discourage intelligence. This goes up exponentially in under-class neighborhoods.
2. Money for welfare, and the minimum wage, take a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores little problems like cost-of-living.
3. Welfare as it is currently set up discourages families from staying together, and people from finding work. Not surprising, since it was originally set up as sort of a "pension plan" for widows with young children, until they could find another husband to provide for them.
Speaking from personal experience of having recently been unemployed for a month, being out of work is demoralizing. It is depressing. Helplessness sets in pretty damn fast for some people. And I know I have a good skill set and good references, and a father who will bail me out of severe financial problems. For someone who has none of these things, being out of work can be outright terrifying, and welfare or illegal activities their only way to survive.
Vicious cycle, anyone? Again from personal experience, I used to spend a lot of time with a group of friends my cousin refers to as "The Lost Boys" (I was Wendy, basically). They were around my age (I'm 21; they range from 19-22), had all dropped out or flunked out of college, had part-time jobs at pizza parlors or Wal-Mart (or no jobs at all), and still lived with their parents.
I haven't lived with my parents since I was 16 (though they were still helping me financially until slightly after I got out of college, and will still bail me in a crisis). I got my degree when I was 19. I had/have a full time non-WalMart job (at the time it was in the security vault of a bank, now it's at the local utility company as a technical writer).
Being around the Lost Boys was kind of frightening for me, even though one is my ex and one (slightly more responsible and level-headed than the rest) is my boyfriend. None of them are stupid. But only one of them (my boyfriend) gives a damn of ever making anything of himself. (Well, except for the one who predicts a Shadowrun-like scenario in the aftermath of Y2K and thinks he's going to be this powerful wizard, but that's another story!)
And these are all guys with successful, intelligent parents. One has a very "together" younger sister. They have examples. The folks my age in the underclass tend not to have very good examples.
One of the reasons my boyfriend and I don't hang out with them much anymore is the anti-success peer pressure. They seemed to find it amusing that I didn't want to sit in Denny's until 2:30 AM on a weekday because I had to be at work at 8 the next morning. "Corporate drone!" they say. Yeah, but I have rent to pay, unlike some people. Better to be a corporate drone with my OWN roof over my OWN head than a bum sponging off Mommy and Daddy or Big Brother. But a scary amount of people don't see it that way.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Yeah, but you've gotta appreciate the fact that he did leave out that bastard that *did* serve as president after Mr. Alzheimers mumbled off into history.
--
the new rules only apply to private mail boxes. You only need cash to open up a regular post office box at your local post office. The post office can't make people give up that much information for there own services because they are a government organization under the Privacy Act of 1974, and they would need congressional approval. This decision was just a little thing the postal service "made up." Them fraud artists and criminals still have plenty of ways of getting around it, and everyone knows it.
I haven't heard anybody called a "prominent Negro journalist" since we started laughing outloud in public at ignorant white trash rednecks.
I'm not just talking about 'politically correct' language ideology here, either. Using the term 'Negro' is plain old cracker ignorance. (the kind of 'cracker' who doesn't defeat copy protection).
Yep, I used bad words too, in my post. However I'm not pretending to be all genteel and shit like somebody up there was.
--
Your use of the phrase "catch-phrase banter" is catch-phrase banter, buster.
Please take that libertarian crap out back, if you really must vent it in public.
ignorant savage: (n) people who keep having babies without the means to feed them.
Sorry, but I just cannot seem to understand your point of view.
fnord you don't fnord know what you're fnord talking about, you fnord paranoid fnord freak fnord.
Chfnordeers,
Actually, I live in a poor urban neighborhood. My neighbors are "bad elements". This is why I own a gun.
In order to have generated US$70 Billion, this tax of US$0.0001 per email could only have been generated if, on average, each one of these 700 million emailers sent out
one million emails each!!Yeah, right.
They're either lying or stupid, take your pick.
I'm sick and tired of math-challenged people out to prove a 'point', making up numbers and thinking nobody will check.
Well, we're on to you, Ranworth.
Earl
Out of curiosity, who decided that the US owes the UN money? Or "dues"? IIRC, (and I probably do not, so _please_ correct me because I'd really like to know,) the US dues were promised by President Clinton, but never approved by Congress. If this is that case, then it carries no worth as all money matters _must_ start in the House, as declared by the U.S. Constitution.
May be this should be a slashdot poll (yeah, right) "should the US has a lot of power in the UN.) I'd rather just see it leave. Most of the world is not the US, and there is no reason for the US to force its ideas on other countries. Wasn't the UN formed to protect human right's? That is the one case where I believe the Monroe Doctrine should be ignored.
Any and all comment welcome here.
Have you read my journal today?
Yes please! Look at Europe's shape, and compare it to the US,
Have you ever though of the fact that taxes could be spent to prevent this, to lower the crime rate, to give a perspective to seemingly hopeless people?
Maybe unemployment and taxes are higher in (parts of) Europe, but at least I can live here freely without fear that someone with enough resources makes me responsible for someone else murder, hires an expensive lawyer and sends me into the gas chamber (and yes, faking evidence is not a problem anymore).
I can live without the fear that I will die because I can't affort to go to the doctor.
I don't have to care about stupid political correctness when I want to express my opinion.
I don't have to worry that some (European) company sells private information to, say, some obscure sect that starts to terrorize me then.
In a word, I'd never exchange European values for the US constitution, let alone US reality.
God bless America. They really need it!
B/A
Reminds of something I noticed in a news article yesterday that compared the net worth of Bill Gates to the accumulated International debt of the former Soviet Union.
BG: +$90B
USSR: -$100B
I can definitely see some sort of wealth tax on the Super rich. Congress is right now considering eliminating inheritance taxes, do you realize how much that would be worth to the Gates estate, and how much of an incentive it would be for him not to follow through on his often quoted statement that he intends to give away 95% of his wealth?
First of all you're pretty damned arrogant to think that the US is the greatest country in the world. In fact it ranks 7th in economic freedom. FYI at the time of the study Hong Kong ranked 1st, but since they are now communist number one is Singapore. Secondly, this is not an american thing, this is the United Nations. If the President signs a treaty w/ the UN (or anyone else for that matter) and said treaty is ratified by the Senate, it will be come effective law of america, regardless of whether or not it violates are own constitution. The reason: treaties are higher in priority than our constitution. If you are wondering about this, recall the genocide treaty from a few years ago that said that making racial jokes constituted genocide. Had the Senate ratified it, regardless of the fact that it would violate the first amendment to the Constitution, it would still have been enforced.
Oh, yes, let's all follow the example of Ted Turner:
Denegrate the Ten Commandments (obstensibly practiced by about 2 billion Jews and Christians) as being outdated and silly?
Answer a question about the Pope (who, let's face it, has done more to further human rights than Turner ever will, regardless of what you think of Catholicism), by making Pollock jokes?
Preach high and low about population control and yet have five children of his own. (Translation: I can make as many rich, well-educated kids as I want but let's get rid of those smelly little yellow and brown people messing up our planet).
I won't even mention his traitorous wife who would have been hanged for treason in previous generations.
Yes, an example for all of us to follow.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
'Scuse me, but at least in its US theatrical release "Brazil" DID have the downbeat ending. The US didn't get about ten/eleven minutes that Gilliam cut to try to appease the studio, and although it wreaked merry hob with the continuity it did NOT change the ending.
And before the denizens of Western Europe start going on about how free their cultures are, I would remind them that the UK is the only place I've seen Playboy censored for its POLITICAL content. Specifically, the May '89 issue covered the movie "Scandal" and was censored by H.M. Government by actually ripping out strips of text addressing the history of the Profumo scandal.
I do fully agree that the optical censorship of "Eyes Wide Shut" bites it big time and I wish Warners would reclaim their vitals from whomever ripped them off.
Fine, but do you know that at least some of the things you take for granted are subsidised by people who make more money and pay more taxes than you? (Unless you're Bill Gates). If you use any public services (oh like the police force for example, and public education) you are not actually paying your fair share. In other words, if everybody paid exactly for the amount of goverment tax supported services they used, most people would end up paying a hell of a lot more.
Your college days email (the part that you HAD to send, not the personal stuff that was optional) never left the Academic campus network you were logged onto. It wouldn't be taxed, for that reason. It would be taxed at the point when it made it's way out onto the Internet proper, and only if it had to traverse there.
Otherwise, they'd have to put tax monitoring software on every exchange server, every incarnation of sendmail in operation, everywhere. Obviously, the tax would be metered at access points to the 'net proper, and not in your precious PINE application.
>The right to preach racial bigotry?
Yes. Free speech means free speech, even speech you are offended by. Everybody has the right to express their opinion. (Note: applies to the US, or should anyway. Other country's mileage may vary.)
No. Think of political correctness. Think of sexual harrassment cases. Think of libel suits.
There are boundaries even in the US legislation. It's the same in other countries, with gradual differences. In Europe legislation may be tougher with libel cases, and less extreme in sexual harrassment cases.
History matter as well. IIRC Le Pen (french right-wing extremist) got away with saying that 'the gas chambers of Auschwitz [were] a detail of history' in France, but he was convicted in Germany, where legislation is very tough in these subjects.
God, it's tempting to make comments about egocentric Americans... But since the Wired article *was* misleading, it's OK. Just think twice next time, eh?
-Mister "Riled-up-Canadian" Ed.
Wah!
For such a smart guy, how can you say something so stupid???!!! Have you ever heard of the freedom of speech? How is it that we could speak freely if we are taxed for every item we send? Maybe some countries don't have The Constitution like us... look at the shape Europe is in! Asia, Africa... come on! They are falling apart and have not ever been even partially as successful as the US.
NEVER should the government be allowed to control ANYTHING that happens over the internet! Why did the government allow sales on the internet without sales tax? Simple: because they could not stop people from selling w/o tax. But now everyone registers their online business with the government and so when they decide to start taxing again, suddenly everyone is in their grips.
If Jefferson or any other founding fathers (even the ones who were considered liberal at the time) were around now and saw how their country taxes out 40+% of all national income, they would fall right back into their grave.
Are spammers really an excuse to give government the right to rule our internet actions? Buy a damn filter program.
Corndog
Not only would this raise funds, but it could have a profound effect on society. It could be quite interesting to see who makes it to the top of the list each year. Now I'll admit this may need some tuning, such as adjusting the number of people or perhaps including other entities on the list of potential donors, but its definately is worth trying. So much good at the expense of so few people.
Sorry, no deal. I do not like to kneel before tyranny, even if the tyrant is an omnipotent being and I will pay for my disobedience in Hell for all eternity.
Of course, I prefer to be an atheist rather than live my life waiting for eternal damnation. Do I have a worse fate if I believe but do not approve let alone praise god, or if I just don't believe?
I certainly hope your mail was just a parody (and it was a very good
...just in different areas. I'm sure I know a lot less about keeping cattle in the desert (which is surely a difficult thing) than somebody in central Africa. So I'm ignorant in this respect.
But the point is that those people are not aware of many problems like AIDS and education is THE KEY to the solution of the problem of overpopulation. If people can be sure that they will be taken care of when they're old even without having a lot of children then they'll accept birth control measures.
You see an important place for government and are willing to give up to it unconditionally, i suppose? The "disease" you describe is wrong. Governments are not the "disease". They become diseased after time. Then the corrode and die. /. ers that u describe are against this disease because they know this. In a way, MS follows the same metaphor. Once it was strong. It had it's place. Now it's corroding in it's own complacency. And the /.er is in the same spot, fighting the corrosion.
:)
(Unfortunately, people get caught up in the corrosion and get hurt.)
They
>"Soon the repubs will run this country to the
>ground with their isolationism and
> anti-social(istic) efforts"
This is incorrect/ up to debate. Isolationalism has never been a major mark of the republican. It has occured once in a while in some individuals.
Modern republicans tend to view the world as a big place with many opportunities to make $$
By "anti-social efforts": are you talking about socialism and the typical republican, democratic, response to it? Or are you talking about the conservative response to the liberal form of socialism? This is a completely different subject which i dont wanna get into.
As a final note, you mention the "grand individual and their right to non-intereference" with a negative tone. Are you an american citizen? Cuz this has historically been one of the key "American" ideals since the very beginning of the american state.
my 2 cents.
The UN representative acts under direct orders from the President and does not present an INDEPENDENT position. He/She is just an ambassador basically. So when you vote for President you are also voting for the kind of policies they will follow in the UN.
(An argument has been made that the euro is troubled due to its forthcoming shrinking market size. COme 2050, the US will have 350 mill. people, where current EuroZone countries will have about 150 mill.)
I presume we'll have a world currency by then.
B/A
So, kind of like NYC or some sections of Washington DC, then?
Since whichever Bircher libertarian nut who made up the rumor got this hyped up hysteria onto Slashdot as a discussion topic, as a means of furthering their inane dialogue about "freedom" or whatever.
Was it yet another attempt to get us to click those banner ads up at the top?
Why are you bringing up Taiwan Province? Sure, it's part of the Republic of China. We knew that already. But the dictator who runs the island is not a legitimate government.
Bashing the UN seems to be very popular in chauvinist US circles here.
In fact the US profits enormously in economic terms from all of the UNs and NATO actions.
Who supplies the waepons for the new NATO countries? - The US.
Who benefits from all the wars the US has started via the UN? - The US of course.
In Kosovo the US threw the bombs, which was just a subsidy for the US military industry, and the EU has to pay for the rebuilding of the country. - Net benefit for the US.
The US is not "dumping money into relief efforts around the world", they are just actively pursuing their interest, also against the EU. In the end they make more money out of it than they spent.
The individual built this country. This republic is the most powerful force the world has ever seen. Only now, as you socialist virii infect our civilization do we see it's decline. You make me sick.
Corndog
they're watching.
they're watching.
Oh me, oh my!
(look out for bitmaps of black helicopters)
Ancient Geek,
You are my kind of guy. B)
Corndog
40% starvation! Can you give me your sources please. I have lived in Africa and famine, usually happens because of crop failures and diseases not as routine thing.
Reagan's Vice President was George Bush, not Dan Quayle.
I have lived and worked in Europe and U.S.A. I live in the U.S now because it is a fine country (poroviding you are not poor and/or sick), but we have to get away from this U.S V 'the rest of the world' attitude...
;)
;)
The Constitution is a great idea. It encompasses the concept of enumerating 'rights' and 'responsibilities'. But a constitution does not a democracy make!. Many democratic countries do just fine without a constitution.
The U.S has it's pro's, I have religious freedom (providing I can cope with the words 'In God We Trust' everywhere, not very free if I were a devil worshipper!), I speak my mind (and defend my words in a libel case if someone dislikes it), I live in 'relative security' from an oppressive government, the taxes are low and I can watch a succesful Female Soccer team
Europe has its pro's, I do not have to carry picture ID in the form of a Driving License, I do not have to be 'rich' to have decent medical care ( although 'decent' is relative), I do not have to worry about governmental oppression (on the whole) and I can watch succesfull male soccer teams
Lets not have intercontinental p*ss*ng contests on here!
;)
Hey, I've got a better idea! Let's tax...abortions! One million abortions in the USA alone every year, times say $100 == $100 million dollars!
I dunno about you, but I can't say I'd feel comfortable knowing that my internet access was being funded by blood money.
---
DNA just wants to be free...
The populations are over and above what the environment in the areas supports. Net access is the last thing they should be worried about. If anything some forceable population control is more in line. Seems pretty damn ignornant, no actually its stupid, to keep producing kids when theres no food to feed the ones that are already there.
Not possible.. Where do you actually perform the tax? On the ISP SMTP server? Ok, I'll bounce it to another SMTP server.. You really can't track this sort of thing..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I'm thinking books from Mao and Che, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle, would be good for taking care of the toilet paper shortage in the third ("turd") world. Better absorbancy.
Ah, the brave new world of the Internet, where post-industrial powers like the USA arm-twist emerging countries indo adopting our ridiculously extended copyright and patent laws (heck, even Microsoft has a patent on "style sheets"... which existed before Microsoft).
:) and I really wish it were like this on TV (it *is* cable).
As the USA passes more and more laws against online "evils" like online gambling, porn, and CRYPTO, and demand goes UP, we'll see a lot of development moving offshore. Lots of internet gambling sites relocated from the USA to the Carribean for this very reason.
The world is going *broadband*, big time. The next big thing will be broadcasting over IP, and the net offers unlimited freedom. People WANT trash for television... look at all the daytime talk shows or the nighttime "COPS" type offerings. People order extra-explicit versions of these tapes because you can't get it on TV. I went to see the South Park movie (died laughing
All this stuff and more will be streaming at viewing quality in just a couple more years. The US might have one of the best technology infrastructures in the world, but this is a capitalist world and services will move to make the highest profit, so the third-world will get their Internet.
There's no shortage of clueless breeder drones in the US who want the government and television to work as their babysitter. That alone will export all the Internet the 3rd world needs...
As it should be. If you support capitalism and competition, I'd imagine you would understand why it is essential that there are rival nations with power in the U.N. No single country should have monopoly over global economy and politics.
Thanks! Considering the trend here on slashdot, its nice to see someone who has actually given this some thought.
>>Reagan, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, stand astride the latter half of the 20th century.
Only so they could piss on it.
Strange the way you think.
So? It's the principle of the thing. What has the UN done for us recently aside from starting wars? Albania, Somalia, Haiti, and now the Balkans (Sorry, peacekeeping exercises) Are any of these strategically important in the slightest? Did any of these countries want the US there? In every case there hasn't been a shortage of food, but crackpot dictators with guns have been controlling it.
And who do you think installed and maintains these dictators? The US not the UN has kept Saddam Hussain propped up for years after installing him in the first place. They still actively help Turkey with their war on the Kurds and support various regimes in central america to practice torture and murder on their own people. The US does this in the name of economic self interest as well as a way of maintaining the current balance of power which is entirely slanted towards them. Universal human rights, real democracys...can't have them then you couldn't run sweatshops in third world countries and keep your profits high. The worst thing is that you don't realise that this had led to your own comparitive diminuation in living standards. As corporations globalize, they can apply pressure to diminish wages in other countries in the name of "competition".
The irony is, ( and it's a commonly held belief outside the US that americans don't "get" irony,) by holding the redneck ignorant americans view of the world and fear of being dragged down the rest of the world this is exactly where you are headed.
anoymous: yes
coward: only when pesented with the prospect of torture.
>[...]If anything some forceable population >control is more in line[...]
What an elitest attitude! If we could just get rid of those ignorant, the world would be a great place. That's just plain sick. As others have pointed out, food itself is not necessarily in short supply, rather it is other people that choose to prevent the distribution. IIRC a number of sources (don't have them off hand) have made the claim that the "bread basket" of the USA could easily supply the world with more than adequate food. Why then are people suffering from malnutrition? The same reason for most other forms of suffering-- people are just "evil" (some more than others). The US doesn't produce/send the food-- possibly out of selfishness. Many governments with suffering populations refuse to distribute food. (It's actually more complex than this...)
What am I saying then? Simply that trying to forcibly control the population of a people group is just another form of oppression and not a good answer to a serious problem.
I suppose he is a Web Century or so behind the times in terminology, but that doesn't affect the accuracy of his arguments nor the quality of his expression, both of which I thought were high.
When I moved to Los Angeles in 1983, I didn't have much money. So I lived in a cruddy slum-class building in Venice. Members of the underclass are very much interested in the con, very much interested in working as little as they can, and very keen on consuming as many illegal drugs as humanly possible. You really have to see this up close to understand the original poster's comment. I have developed a theory that the closer to the poor you are, the less you sympathise with them. I was close to the poor for a number of years, and that's cured me of any charitable impulses I might have had. The poor that I saw fully deserved to be poor.
I don't think this is exclusively a racial thing; it's cultural. Whether black or brown or white or purple, people with underclass attitudes act in underclass ways. True, more blacks have this attitude than whites, but the problem is more universal than most people want to think - and the solutions are personal and have nothing to do with the acts of other groups.
D
----
You forget that Taiwan is not really a country, but a province of china that thinks it is a country. Just like China is a province of Taiwan that thinks it owns taiwan.
I like this claiming to own countries thing. As of now, I own Finland. Submit to me, my finland, or feel the wrath of my empty rhetoric!!!
You are right, this is a UN thing. The best possible outcome of this fucking bullshit would be if we FINALLY got pissed off enough to kick that commie coddling piece of shit organization the hell out of our country.
The fucking UN does NOTHING but preserve and expand it's own power. It exists so dirty, little third world countries can strut around and pretend they are worth something.
They can stick their goddamn tax, along with all their stupid, centralist treaties straight up their asses!
Most countries in the world (Europe, what a fucking joke) crow about how THEY are ACTUALLY more free than the US, but, when it comes down to the nut cutting (and since they have no Constitutional protections, real or not) they find a way to stop whatever their pointy-headed governments don't like!
Shame on you Rob. If the "underpriviliged" countries what to be wired, let them raise the money and do it themselves. The will appreciate it a HELL of a lot more if they work for it than if we give it to them. I am 100% in favor of very low interest loans so they can wire up their infrastructure, but not giving it away.
Do you think everyone that doesn't know everything is an ignorant savage? Then which is it-- do you know everything, or are you an ignorant savage?
Everybody has a lot to learn, and we in "civilized" nations surely have a lot to learn from less industrialized cultures. Believe me, I espouse this a whole lot.
In this case, most people who study the problem agree that overpopulation is causing a lot of ecological problems in a lot of locations. Apparently a lot of people bearing children don't know the urgency of the situation. Sure, listen to them and their views and ideas, but make sure they understand the consequences as you see them. Ultimately, they choose. It's not like I'm advocating forced sterilization or anything.
I know well-educated, otherwise intelligent people in America who are still quite ignorant of the risk of AIDS! Scary. As if ignoring it makes the risk go away.
I swear to god...everytime i turn my head i see some sort of communist attempt to fucking tax a currently free medium. Im not anti communist or anything but why is it necessary to always make something that is free and great expensive. I guess i know why but i will be moderated down so i better shut my mouth now.......
yeah its good to stop spammers and make everyone else feel guilty for emailing their friends!!!!!!
The UN doesn't have the authority to levy a tax on any nation. They can beg, plead, suggest and whine, but as it now stands, they are not a "real" government. Should they succeed in levying a tax on nations, it would open up a whole can of worms.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You are correct, but the question remains how you expect the 'developing countries' to create this long-term solution if the dont have the money NOW to start working on it.
... the money for these 5 years of higher eduction I have had, actually came from the fact that my country has exploited the thirth world countries (mainly Congo, in this case) by extracting all the couper, cobalt, ... I don't know what ... at a price so low.
The internet was created using gouvernement money (it was a MILITARY PROJECY, remember?), my 5 years of high-school education was payed mainly via gouvernement money.
Where does this money come from? TAX!
The next question will be, why do we have to pay for them?
Perhaps,
Well, I also DID gain from it. Paying my x. eurocent per megabyte internet-traffic seams like a small thing to 'give back', doesn't it.
And besides, creating an internet or internet-like structure in (e.g.) Africa will help the flow of knowledge of these countries to the rest of the world. (e.g. councerning the medical usage of certain plants in the african forests that could help the fight the illness you would otherwize have died from).
KNOWLEDGE in the only good who's total value INCREASE by sharing it among more people!
Cheerio! Kr. Bonne.
I fully agree that there is an important place for anonymity on the Internet. But there is a difference between claiming to be "Publius" or "Anonymous Coward #1234" and claiming to be "Linus Torvalds."
A law against falsification of identity in electronic correspondance should be against claiming to be someone you are not, rather than against obvious anonymity. It would be easy (and uncontrovercial) to require anonymous messages to be explicitly and conspicuously marked as being anonymous (like using usernames like "Anon1234" or "Anonymous Coward").
That should satisfy most concerns.
the populace of the U.S. is the supreme law. If we don't feel something is going along with the constitution then we form a militia and fix it, which is our right. More people will join once they wake up.
Ahhh, liberty demands a sacrifice and only blood will suffice.
A:Why, the EU. Who dragged NATO into bombarding Serbia for months on end? The USAmericans.
Q: Who constantly bails out Mexico's failing economy?
A: Amongst others, the USAmericans. Why? Well, wouldn't you do the same if you had millions of illegal immigrants swarming across your southern border? Also, Mexico can't fall apart or all the US-owned industry down there (Nike, tech companies) would suffer.
Q: Who is now preparing multi-billion dollar bailouts for the former USSR?
A: As said in a previous post, the same country that would suffer from terrorists armed with nuclear warheads. Think the Oklahoma bombing was big?
Q: Who spends billions/year stationing half of our military might in the middle east to protect half of the countries there?
A: Replace "Half of the countries" with "The countries that supply the oil which we need to keep up our bloated standard of living" and you've got it pretty much right. (Kuwait!)
Q: Who rebuilt half of post-WWII Europe/Japan?
A: This is a good deed which the United States has performed in the past. No question about it. A few things: The United States rebuilt Japan so as to make sure that it would not turn to the USSR for help. They created Japan as an American-Asian country (which it remains today) to base their military efforts in the Pacific Rim. It wasn't just altruism. Same goes for Europe, to a lesser extent. The Eastern sections of Europe were under USSR control, and it wouldn't do to have the rest of europe looking shabby.
Q: Who is CONSTANTLY dumping money into relief efforts around the world?
A: Read earlier posts. Just because the US puts more money into relief efforts, doesn't mean that Americans are doing more, percentage-of-GDP-wise. Also, since our 20% of the world's popluation devour and own 80% of the resources, ya gotta figure we owe something back?
"Michael Jordan gets paid $20 million to wear his Nikes. Children in Indonesia get paid $2.20 a day to make them."
Wah!
Might want to re-read the post AC. A clear distinction is made between representative and popular forms of government; and also between administrative and legislative law.
/. readers political systems.
Taxation is not policy, and if the UN becomes a body that levies taxation, a typical function of legislative bodies of government, citizenry should have more of a direct say in who represents their interest. As it stands, the UN is more analagous to an executory branch of government, which usually can only quasi-tax by setting up fines, fees, and tariffs. That is the point of the message.
At the present time, the UN does not have that power. Even if they adopt a resolution to impose a tax, they theoritically cannot enforce it, they can only encourage the member countries to adopt the tax through their own legislative branch. In this way, it is analagous to how a federal executory department can recommend taxation to congress. The major diversion in analogy occurs because the UN has an army while the FCC does not.
This causes at least a perceived since of danger. By legal realism standards, the UN could theoratically posit their law and maintain it with their army. Granted, at least some armies are reluctant to use force against their countrymen, but this threat is enough to cause some degree of panic. Particularly among many US citizens who, while they may not actively show it, still have a large since of national identity and have their political roots born out of libetarinism.
I do grant their are two problems in the above explanation. First, a pure popular form of government breaks down above a certain threshhold of citizenry. It would take too long to have every person vote and debate on every issue. However, if a semi-autonomous entity even begins to think of recommending taxation legislation, I want more direct representation. I want to vote for the party occupying the seat. I do not want to be represented by a distant emissary.
My vote for the President of the United States is for the chief executive of my political system. For the president to abuse his power (i.e. be a part of any system imposing a legislative function)or not honor the laws of the US, chiefly the constitutional seperation of power, would violate the trust of my agreement, void his oath of office, and subject him/her to grounds of impeachment.
This leads to the second problem, while the FCC does not have an army, the executive branch does, so it could theoretically posit its own laws and ignore the other two branches of government. To my knowledge, this has only been threatend once in American History (re: Andrew Jackson stating to the effect, "I see the Supreme Court has made their decision. Lets see if they can enforce it."), and has never occurred.
My analogies and explanations are based on US political theory and law; however, I hope that some of it will be loosely analagous to other
I'm not an expert, you don't have to be an genius to figure out that starving people need food. Maybe a little medical care would reduce infant mortality rates. Internet connections and MS Word classes are not the solution to the World's problems.
"For starters, it is not my belief that the UN is the sort of organization which should impose taxes. It would also be somewhat problematic for
them to tax US citizens - I seem to recall something about taxation without representation in the Constitution."
The UN would not "impose taxes". IF the proposal is accepted the US goverment would sign and ratify
a treaty agreeing to implement whatever system is arrived at. BOTH houses Congress would have to approve.
Furthermore, the US is HUGELY influential in the UN, it is VERY unlikely a proposal would pass without US approval.
"Taxation without representation"? The US has a permanent seat on the security council with veto power. In practice, nothing is ratified without US approval.
"Would you accept an increase of 100% in toll charges on your nearest non-free limited access highway so that people in South Africa can
drive on one for free? A tax of 100% on your next car, so that someone in Equador can be given one at your expense? "
Ok what about a 1% increase so that much needed infrastructure can be built in Brazil? Is that OK? It all depends on the specifics of the proposals.
"Now then, I'm certainly not saying that these nations should not have help, by way of charity of other voluntary effort. It's not the dollars I'm
opposed to, but the general principle. I simply do not believe that the proper way to make things happen is by taxing industrialized countries
and passing the funds along to the less fortunate, from each according to ability and to each according to need. "
I can't argue with that, it all depends on your values and what you think is important.
If the UN cannot collect from its member nations, what hope does it have to collect from Joe Spammer??
There is no email program out there that really fits those adjectives, but every commercial alternative to sendmail I know of is much less a candidate for the same description.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I think we should all deluge the UN with pennies. Send them one every month or so. After a while I'm sure they'll beg for us to stop. :-)
pray tell how does one tax SMTP? think about it...
:-)
Will we all go underground and just telnet directly to port 25 to compose email?
(oh wait, some of us do that already...
It's a callous attitude, but if your program has a memory leak do you just buy more memory?
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
A better idea would be to tax domain names a simple, flat tax. Say, $5 a year. It might generate less money, but it's also the easiest thing to implement.
Email is a hard thing to tax, mostly because it can be so easily forged. And true Spam can't be taxed, because spam is sent through open SMTP relays on mail servers with low security, so you can't catch the spammer easily.
But domains clearly _belong_ to someone, and can be associated to someone by more then just headers: Network Solutions has hardcopy records it can submit to services like the american IRS.
When you think about it, at the current level of technology it is rarely possible or even desireable to tax most things online. Things either lack the technology to be taxable (web pages and email), or taxation would kill the taxed industry (online sales and shopping).
Let's ignore the infrastructure requirements needed to establish such a revenue service.
Maybe this _could_ happen in 10 years, when crypto is a few bounds ahead of where it is now and the net is a well-established industry that is no longer going through geometric growth.
Instead of taxing emails to help the poors and slow down the use of the net, it would be better to tax finacial transactions.
Here is an extract from the editorial of ATTAC
http://www.attac.org/ang/
The Tobin Tax, named after the American Nobel prize winner for economics who proposed it in 1972, [would allow] for
the modest taxation of all transactions on the foreign exchange markets in order to stabilise them, and at the same time,
raise sums of money from the international community.
At a rate of 0.1%, the Tobin Tax would obtain an annual sum of about 166 billion dollars, twice the amount needed per
year to eradicate extreme poverty between now and the beginning of the century.
Thanks AC,
As a "third world person" its nice to know what you think of me. Remind me not to feel any compassion if anything happens to you. After all, YOU don't give a damn about anybody do you? As for the rest of humanity that actually gives a damn about each other, lets try to make a better world for the next generation.
[my idealist side:]
Even a penny per message*recipent. I could mail to my heart's content and still spend less than I blow on Snickers and Coke (the cola), and if that would help others get in on the fun who couldn't otherwise, great!
[my cynical side:]
Of course, the sad reality is that the administration would cost more than the revenues, and even if they did squeeze any cash out of it, it probably wouldn't end up in the intended hands.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The economic spin-off benefits from "offshore" businesses in the Caribbean and elsewhere are few for the people in that country. Offshore business relocation generally wouldn't happen if there were taxes to generate economic development or improve infrastructure. High-paid, skilled employees of internet gaming companies come from whatever country spawned the company in the first place, and you can bet that they are not investing in local education or local development (hiring servants, and guards for gated compounds, is a poor-quality spin-off and does not represent a sustainable industry).
Creating new bandwidth to support a sports pool or casino enterprise does not translate to high bandwidth internet access for ordinary citizens of "offshore" countries, any more than the growing number of phone sex chat companies in the Caribbean is going to mean everyone there gets voice mail, or even telephone service.
I take the view that the more people, and more diversity, on the net, the greater the benefit for everyone. The best means for ensuring this happens is to promote, and provide resources (including money) for projects which extend telecommunications services to all of those people who have no access to such services now. Get the switches and lines in, then start carrying IP on them.
Whether funding for this comes from tariffs on internet traffic or somewhere else is an interesting question. Many posts here have pointed out the impossibility or at least extreme difficulty or imposing, monitoring and enforcing tariffs internationally on the internet. I'm not a tax specialist or an economist (neither are >99% of the people who have posted here - it shows too), but my feeling is that any tariff would have to be imposed at a national level, by an international agreement. The only institutions I can think of at a national level that might be able to generate tariff revenue are national domain registrars.
Another alternative is for an international internet development agency to spring up and to promote grassroots-level programs such as the already existing Grameen Bank telecom and internet community programs in Bangladesh.
http://www.grameen-info.org/grameen/gtelecom/
(couldn't find a link for the internet acces project, it may still be in the planning stages)
The US is one of the biggest contributors to the IMF. The us is practically the imf.
Incorrect. The US gives approximately $7 billion annually to the IMF, while Japan, which has a much lower GDP than the US, gives approximately $15 billion.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
>It would be wonderful if the world population were reduced to 2 billion by 2099.
Wonderful for whom? The billions who would have to be exterminated to reduce the Earth's population by two-thirds in a hundred years?
What is this tendency of people to want to interfere in the affairs of others, and on such a grand scale? A worldwide, authoritarian government would be needed to bring about the "utopia" you describe. I wouldn't want to live under the iron heel of this authority, but since this government would be all-encompassing, one couldn't opt-out.
After they can tax us they'll say that the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to
the net. Which is fine 'till you read right #29.3
Posted by ShannonBrown:
While the ire against yet another inconceived attempt to "tax" the Internet is warranted, my concerns regarding this issue lie in the assumption that the United Nations has the authority to "tax" or even suggest a "tax" to any sovereign government. No one is a citizen of the United Nations. Therefore, even the presumtption that the UN has "taxing" powers or even "suggestive" powers is a dangerous precedent.
The companies wouldn't have it. This would basically kill the effectiveness of such places like Hotmail. They get their money from the ads, but now people are sending less emails because of the tax, and most people that use those accounts don't put their real information in there anyway, so the ads will be seen less often, causing less money for the company.
It's only a suggestion. And it shall stay there for eternity. (If it does go into effect, you better believe I'll help find a way to mask how many emails I send out!)
Posted by ShannonBrown:
While the ire against yet another ill-conceived attempt to "tax" the Internet is warranted, my concerns regarding this issue lie in the assumption that the United Nations has the authority to "tax" or even suggest a "tax" to any sovereign government. No one is a citizen of the United Nations. Therefore, even the presumtption that the UN has "taxing" powers or even "suggestive" powers is a dangerous precedent.
Maybe I'm missing something here
1. There is no popular vote for UN representative. Therefore any agreement the executive branch reaches with the UN is NULL and VOID. But wait a minute, don't the SENATE and HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES have to ratify any treaties?
Aren't they popularly elected? Besides, even on a practical basis, I don't think conservatives have to worry about Congress just ratifying everything.
Radical right wing Republicans always have a lot to say. I just hope they don't get the last word.
Besides, we all know the Rosicrucian's are manipulating the Jaycees, who are using the influence of the international banking cartels and the Gnomes of Zurich to have The Vast Right-Wing conspiracy manipulate UN policy through their devious front, FEMA.
I know its true, because my Ouija board said so! And I heard the time traveler (who was also the Antichrist) discussing it with Art Bell last week.
Ow, my headache is back. I think I need to double up on the tinfoil...
:)
Lotek---
If you think Bill G have donated anything to the UN, think again. Ted Turner donated one billion US dollars to the UN.
Bill G donated a lot of money to a fund which his father is the trustee of.
Go figure.
And I'm not sure that TT did give one billon in one big heap, or 100 million each year in ten years, or some other scheme. But more billionaires should follow TTs lead, show the world what their made of, stone or flesh.
The Speedy Viking
*sigh* If they had suggested setting up a fund to receive voluntary contributions, I think that an awful lot of people would have cheerfully chipped in to spread the gospel of electronic communication. But most of those same people will dig in their heels and resist mightily any attempt at a "tax".
Figuring out when people are sending email is also going to be an interesting problem. A person like me who prefers to run his own SMTP daemons won't be noticed unless his ISP hacks its routers rather severely. And you know that many bright souls will get to work on tunnelling, etc. to evade the tax.
Didn't they take *any* advice from someone who knows something about email?
Microsoft has already expanded into developing countries. In 1997, the company opened offices in South Africa, Kenya, and the Ivory Coast.
WTF? How did that get in there? American computer companies have been in Africa for many decades? Is this a Microsoft promo piece?
It doesn't seem to make sense to tax companies for email sent between users within the same local network. Then the question seems to become, what consitutes a "local network." If a company or groups uses a proprietary email program over a VPN, what then? The whole idea seems rediculous.
Because God is a sovereign God, and should be thanked for all of His righteous judgments, whether you like them or not. Everyone who gets AIDS gets it as a direct result of God's will (including babies and people who get it from blood transfusions), and He should be blessed for it. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" Galatians 6:7. You should follow Job's example: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Job 1:21.
As far as innocent people who get AIDS, God isn't bound by your humanistic standards of justice. Throughout history, He has killed innocent people to punish those people who are still living (e.g., the innocent first born of Egypt). And He's doing it today. God's wrath is being poured out on this world in many forms, including AIDS, and part of that wrath is the destruction of innocent people (including babies).
1 epistle every 11s isn't normal, even for me, but lots of people using spam bulk-delivery tools might stand a chance of bringing that up a bit, mightn't it?
Gee, them email headers. Long things, them...
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
I wrote the comment you replied to. If thats the way you think, I'm afraid I can't persuade you otherwise. I will only comment that speaking English does not mean a damn thing. English and French are two of the most common languages on the African continent. Africans are a lot more aware of what goes on in America than most Americans are of Africa.
Blah blah blah blah.
There is nothing wrong with "oppression". That is a morality judgement that has no room in biology. There are some peoples whose extinction would make the world a better place to live. What the hell do you think? Do you think that the scum polluting the rain forests don't deserve the ultimate penalty? Do you think that surplus humans whose only contribution to society is thier excrement and pollution deserve special treatment? Go to any backward town in Mexico and you will see so called "humans" that would be better off used as fertilizer for their pathetic fields. No it is not a sentimental view. But it is the reality of life itself.
> It's a callous attitude, but if your program has
... that's genocide, isn't it?
> a memory leak do you just buy more memory?
Of course not; obviously we need to make sure these people don't reproduce, to leave more resources for the rest of us. These people are nothing more than a resource leak in the grand program of life that must be excised... Oh, wait
Yes, it is a very callous attitude. It is an arrogant attitude.
That being said, you are right in implying that there are some fundamental inefficiencies in these areas that limit the effectiveness of simply pumping in resources (i.e. food). I would submit, however, that they are not the result of overpopulation, but corrupt and inefficient governments. There are, even now, enough resources to go around; the problem is that they end up "going around" to a very few people.
Since when has it been right, or even efficient, to eliminate a group of people simply to prop up the economic viability of a wasteful totalitarian regime?
Who made you and your kind the masters of humanity, such that you can select entire portions of the population and deem them a waste of resources?
Since when do you start throwing out valuable data rather than fixing an innefficient resource allocation scheme?
The really sad thing is that in many cases, these governmnents are in power largely because of our intervention in the regional politics in the first place.
Can we stop acting like we know better how to run other people's affairs? Can we stop making things worse because we don't really understand what's going on? Can we stop telling them whether or not they should have children? Can we stop telling them who their leaders should be? (yes, we HAVE contributed to the overthrow of several democratically elected governments)
Can we stop acting like we are some superior civilization, it being our birthright to dictate the way the rest of the world is run?
---
DNA just wants to be free...
Oh yeah... that MUST be it. All these cries of liberty aren't because we're cheap people, it's because we really care. LOL.
If, as part of my ISP signup, my ISP asked me, "Would you like us to add an additional 50 cents to your bill which would go to a UN fund to aid in the development of the Internet in lesser-fortunate countries?"
I'd say "Sure, that sounds nifty."
Even if it was just a general-purpose "Internet for the poorer" type of fund, I'd still have no problem spending an extra 50 cents a month for it.
Using a flat-rate voluntary fee would have a minimal impact on the ISP (they just have to write a check each month) and the administrative/collection requirements on the part of the organization collecting the money would be trivial in comparison with a "tax".
From: Seth Finkelstein
- --------------------- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Web Programmer sethf@mit.edu
Subject: Re: UN Proposes Global Email Tax
Posted to Cyberia-L
----------------------
From: Seth Finkelstein Subject: Re: UN Proposes Global Email Tax
THERE IS NO GLOBAL EMAIL TAX IN THE WORKS!
This looks likes the sort of thing which will get vectored by the Libertarian and the gullible (by no means disjoint sets!), and receive lots of help from hype-mongering "reporters" who seem to have invented the Internet's own particular version of yellow journalism (instead of *pedophiles* lurking in the Net to _molest_ *your children*, it's the *UN* trying to _tax_ *your email*). There is a report dozens and dozens of pages long, http://www.undp.org/hdro/contents.html on all sorts of weighty topics having to do with world populations, globalization and the Internet. In it, there are A FEW SENTENCES, which read as follows:
"There is an urgent need to find the resources to fund the global communications revolution -- to ensure that it is truly global. One proposal is a "bit tax" -- a very small tax on the amount of data sent through the Internet. The costs for users would be negligible: sending 100 emails a day, each containing a 10-kilobyte document (a very long one), would raise a tax of just 1 cent. Yet with email booming worldwide, the total would be substantial. In Belgium in 1998, such a tax would have yielded $10 billion. Globally in 1996, it would have yielded $70 billion -- more than total official development assistance that year."
And later, reprised:
"* New funding mechanisms should be created to ensure that the information revolution leads to human development, not human polarization. Two proposals -- a bit tax and a patent tax -- would raise funds from those who already have access to technology and use them to help extend the benefits more widely."
That's it. Just a *mention* of a *proposal*, nothing more than the outline of a vague idea. There are plenty of other ideas mentioned in the report, e.g. "Alternatively, funding could be reallocated from the research subsidies, grants and tax breaks now given to industry." and "Citizens could be given tax credits for contributing care services that develop long-term relationships between individuals.".
I hope I've helped stop an urban-legend-in-the-making, but I'm scared that the meme is going to be just too attractive.
-----------------------------------------------
What an utterly stupid proposal! Besides it being just plain wrong, it would be nearly impossible to implement. I assume that they would only want each e-mail taxed one time so you couldn't implement this on the servers because the mail may have to pass through more than one to get to a destinaton address. Therefore, you would have to implement in on the client and I'll be damned if I'm going to use a mail client that charges me.
The UN doesn't have any real power anyway, it's only when the big major countries in the Security Council decide to declare a war that anything happens.
It's being CHEAP plain and simple.
Cool! UN can start spam chain email to tax the clueless! AOLusers are good for something after all!!
The U.N. has never really done anything major. For the most part, it's the permanent members of the Security Council bickering over sanctions and bombing. They certainly have no taxation authority and will never get it. Didn't we try the "loose collective" idea in the USA with the Articles of Confederation? It didn't work and neither will the U.N. ever get anything real done.
Much of the money that goes to the U.N. is sucked up by bureaucrats living the high life in NY and other parts of the world, enjoying the privileges of their diplomatic passports. If Bill Gates and Ted Turner could actually setup Internet for these developing countries, they'd be far better off.
Better still, just take all the money and buy the hardware they need, because we all know that we can get free software that would work great for these guys.
'nuf said!
Email is typically a message sent via the smtp
protocol over port 25. How exactly would they tax this? Honor system? Filters at every isp? Filters on the backbone? Do they even know what they're asking?
And nothing says I can't encapsulate my email message into a packet that travels on a different port until it gets past the filter, then translates back to port 25 once it gets back inside a friendly network. This would require a slight change to the sendmail configuration, but nothing your average sysadmin couldn't handle.
Oh.. but this would require the server on BOTH ends, so I couldn't send email everywhere like this. Well, lets see. I send email, on average, to less than 100 different people, so as long as they were set up to be compatible with me, I wouldn't need to worry about it. All the external spam messages, well, hey, not my problem.
Ok.. so they figure out the port, and latch on to it as well. Ok, so we use dynamic ports. One packet goes through just to set up a separate port for the mail message to go through. The port would never be constant, therefore, it could never be filtered (although that is unfeasible anyways).
I could go on, but I know this will never go anywhere, so its not really worth the effort. All I'm saying is that whatever method they plan to use to enforce this tax would be so cost prohibitive that it wouldn't make any sense to do it in the first place. And even if they do it, most people could find a way around it with just a little creative coding.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Ummmm, you _are_ aware of studies that show education is correlated inversely with average fertility, aren't you? And that the world is generally *not* well educated?
People _are_ savage and irresponsible. Why else would there still be tribal warfare, mass mutilations with machetes, and so forth?
ROFL
ROFL
ROFL
ROFL
>Wonderful for whom? The billions who would have to be exterminated to reduce the Earth's population by two-thirds in a hundred years?
I'll give you a hint. Most of the people alive today won't be in 2099 even in most Utopian visions. C'mon, use your brain before clicking the submit button.
Article VI, paragraph 2, makes treaties the supreme law of the land on the same footing with acts of Congress. By this supremacy clause, both statutes and treaties "are declared...to be the supreme law of the land, and no superior efficacy is given to either over the other." As statutes may be held void because they contravene the Constitution, it should follow that treaties may be held void, the Constitution being superior to both. And indeed the Court has numerous times so stated. It does not appear that the Court has ever held a treaty unconstitutional, although there are examples in which decision was seemingly based on a reading compelled by constitutional considerations.
I only know of one genocide treaty, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The US ratified it during the early 80s under Reagan's administration. The only acts made punishable by the Convention are genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. Genocide is defined as killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, forcibly transferring children, imposing measures intended to prevent births, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or part.
IANAL, but I hardly see how making a racial joke could in any way be construed as "direct and public incitement to commit genocide".
Try to get a clue next time you post something inflammatory.
Or rather, that we were able to stay in denial about losing it longer than they were. You don't win a war, hot or cold...You just lose less because of it than the other guy.
How much would the vger admins suddenly owe?
Wow, this could shut down the linux movement in mass. Imagine every microsoft employee suddenly subscribing to the kernel mailing list. Instant death for the movement. Microsoft would be hurt as well. As the DOJ trial showed, they send about 600000 emails a day detailing how they intend to use windows to smash competitors. You think NT is expensive now, wait till they have to cover that overhead.
2. Personally, I don't use email much. ICQ is so much more efficient for most things. Anyway, the bandwidth I suck up from playing Quake in one day is probably more bandwidth than all my email uses in a month. Taxing only email makes no sense.
3. The last thing we need is another pork barrel UN program where the local 3rd World dictator takes all the money from the UN that's supposed to go towards 'net access for all the little 3rd World children, and instead puts it in his Swiss bank account.
Get fragged @ Lone Star Quake II
When telcos make combined revenues of $500billion +
surely a spare $100million aint hard to find
It really annoyes the hell out of me to see organizations trying to charge people for the use of the internet. First it is the government charging users Long Distance Rates whenever they connect to their ISP (whatever happened to that one)...Now this....
I kinda get the feeling that they just want another way to get money from people. The internet has provided a way for individuals and corporations to make alot of money and now the government wants a way to line its pockets! It just isn't fair.
I am a poor college student....I pay 1/3 of my salary to taxes as is. I have no money left to give!!!!
Besides how the hell are they going to "count" every email a person sends....It seems kinda impossible....
I thought only polar bears and mosquitos were up there. Oh, and frenchmen, but they don't count.
Basically, we act superior because WE ARE SUPERIOR. Get over it.
You are absolutedly right. "Oppression" is a soft headed liberal concept. You know what I want to do? I want to crush your mushy brain and use it for fertilizer in my garden. I think that is a more suitable use for your biological material than that to which you are currently putting it.
No sentimentality here! Just good rational BIOLOGY!
Note: So sarcastic its not even funny
Once you start to categorize human beings and decide who is "useful" and who isn't, you begin to face serious ethical problems. Who decides the worth?
and use the convenient drive-thru window.
I hope this doesn't seem to cold-hearted, but it would seem to me that "developing" nations have better things to worry about than internet access. Perpetual civil warfare in places like Sudan, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, crushing poverty and infant mortality in Iraq, forced cannibalism in North Korea, the list goes on. And they're worried about email? Gimme a break.
The third world has so far to go before net access means anything that it's not even funny. We're talking about places with literacy rates in single digits, where people walk miles to get water. How is this going to help? Instead of an attempt to broker peace, foster better education, or build basic infrastructure (roads, running water, electricity), what do we get? More pie-in-the-sky idealistic idiocy from the UN. Two million people have been killed in the Sudan in the last couple of decades, and the slave trade has staged a comeback, but the starving paupers can browse the web! Too bad they can't read anything on it, unless it's in the universal language of porn.
This is the kind of scheme I'd expect from a soft-skulled second grader who saw one too many Sally Struthers commercials. They should come back down to Earth and concentrate on real issues. Throwing money at fundamental structural flaws in these states will change nothing. It's a total waste, and worse yet, it will intensify the West's impatience with LDCs, damaging their willingness to help in the future when it may actually matter. How stupid can an organization be? I guess with the UN, there are no limits. To hell with it, the future belongs to regional trading blocks, political regimes, and alliances, they are the only way progress can be made in these areas. I sincerely hope I outlive the UN.
We need a gene manipulated virus that would cause an un-vaccinated woman (third world or just poor and stupid) to become infertile after the first of second birth.
Problem solved.
Either that or we have to go in and clean up the third world the hard way.
"Oh, you heartless nazi, you genocidal maniac"
The way things are going, it WILL come to this.
I am sorry, but as I am for absolute freedom of the net I cannot bear to watch this. First of all I don't really see how it would be possible to "Tax Email" unless they were to tax bandwith because how are people going to distinguish between emails and data flowing over other ports? The UN is getting way too Ballsy for me. They were designed to keep peace and now they have the nerve to suggest taxes??? I am sorry but this just supports all the paranoied rumors I've been hearing about one world governments. The UN does not have any right at all to suggest any sort of a tax! Besides all that why should we pay for 3rd world countries internet connections?! I'm sorry but paying even .00000001 of a cent so some african tibal member can "Surf the web" and play online games seems outrageous to me. Personally if this ever even gets anywhere I'm all for throwing the routers off the side of a ship ;)
-Jove
*Do not pay any attention to the above.
I'm sorry, I don't recall voting for the US Ambassador to the United Nations in the last election. I also do not recall SPECIFICALLY voting for a US representative on XYZ UN councel.Maybe that didn't make the Massachusetts ballet.
As much gridlock as it may cause, I still prefer a popular vote election for representatives rather than any nominated office. This is particularly true for representatives with legislative authority. Taxation would be legislative.
I do not like it, but I can live with a certain amount of adminsitrative law coming from persons either elected or nominated in the executive branch
Think of all the potential uses.
We could shut down the government by e-mailing our senator ever 1 second or so, from an anonymous address. They have auto-reply features built in.
Any corporation that has an auto-reply function built in to e-mails that tech support receives could be the subject of such an attack.
A new Outlook Virus would be written and users charged because their client sent out 1 billion e-mails without their knowledge. Microsoft would deny that their OS had any problem.
We could e-mail the UN with massive amounts of mail, and every auto-reply they send would cost them money.
I love it.
Gah.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Perhaps another reason for the Second Amendment was so that the people of the US could defend themselves against oppressive governments, be they foreign or domestic.
Hitler disarmed Germany in his rise to power.
Clinton is attempting the same.
An unarmed nation is ripe for the picking, for they will bow to the first tyrant that picks up his metaphorical sword and threatens them with it.
Ken calls himself a "negro", you asshole.
Still, the tax proposed here is ridiculously high. I just checked my stats for the past two months at home, and I've averaged about 200mb/day. This tax proposes one cent per megabyte, which works out to $60/month. I pay $50/month for my cable internet access, so this would be a 120% tax! Ouch.
--
The was discussed at this year's BC according to http://www.inforamp.net/~jwhitley/HERALD.HTM
Could be co-incidence I know, but I'm gonna keep an eye on the rest of the stuff apparently discussed just in case.
I'm not a nut, but I remember thinking when I read the above link 'That shit'll never happen' and now this has and it has freaked me out a little.
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with this argument. I'm all in favor of providing certain necessities to the poor. For American citizens, I don't mind that my tax dollars go to provide food stamps, homeless shelters, etc. For the population of the world at large, I don't mind that my money goes to stopping the slaughter of innocents, and other such humanitarian causes.
Access to the internet, however, is a luxury, not a necessity; a privelege, not a right. Internet access makes life easier in some ways, more entertaining, perhaps, but it is not vital. You don't need internet access to get by. And, despite what some forward-thinkers may say, it's not going to be a necessity in the near future.
Thus, I object to having my internet access taxed to provide access to those who can't afford it themselves. I shouldn't have to subsidize the luxuries of third-world countries and their citizenry.
-Snibor Eoj
To answer your question, Canada takes its character and heritage from numerous different sources, the US and europe being the primary influences. There is much less crime, fewer bible beating fanatics, and a much more relaxed attitude towards subjects like gun control. We tend not to have the same intolerance for anti-national sentiment, and are a little more open minded to change. That said, we do have our fare share of psychos, fanatics, lobby groups, and the like, not to mention the cultural tension between French and English Canada.
;), but let me put a rider on this. Canada is a small country, in the shadow of a very big country, many of us DO resent the unthinkingly superiour attitude that Americans take with other countries. And we do have our problems too, like the fact that our highest payed citizens lose over half of what they make to income taxes alone, and the fact that the French and English can't seem to just get along. But at least the majority of us admit, examine, and try to correct our faults, rather than carrying on with the unbending opinion that we live in the "greatest nation in the world", and that nothing will convince us otherwise.
I think what sums up my attitude are the feelings I get whenever I visit the US. In the less developed areas: hopeless, lonely, oppression. And in the better developed areas: self centered, arrogant, superiority.
Now if that isn't flamebait I don't know what is
By the way, I don't think the Internet should have centrally administered laws and taxes.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
But it's the correct word.
Feeding them only makes them survive to breeding age and then the problem starts all over again. It is a Law of Nature that when an animal population does not have enough food, their numbers decline until they are once again in balance with Nature. This is part of Nature's Way. It would be far more humain to give them birth control so that their numbers could become in balance with their agricultural resources. Feeding them not only postpones the inevitable, but it also degrades the environment as more and more of Nature is denuded in doomed effort to feed them.
>Your college days email (the part that you HAD to send, not the personal stuff that was optional) never left the Academic campus network you were logged onto.
What about when I was collaborating with people on other campuses or people in businesses for my work? How can you determine what's necessary to my acadamia research that I had to send and what's fluff? The tax proposed isn't just an email tax but rather a bit tax and since I transfer about 2.8 gigs down a month and about 100 megs up, I'd be looking at a $30/month tax on my transfers( vs my access cost of $19 )
>Obviously, the tax would be metered at access points to the 'net proper
My ISP frequently routes packets over other backbones and back to itself( say from NY pop to MCI backbone to San Jose pop ) so every time I send a packet out, I've got a 50/50 chance of being taxed whether it's sent to my network or net.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
The money raised at $.01/100 emails isn't the point. The point is that in order to enforce such a tax, someone has to keep track of what email you are sending. It's an excuse for closer monitoring.
Are you insane??? Please remind me of our own national debt (US) and then try and tell me that we should help others get on their feet. If you ask me we need to stand up ourselves before we can give others a hand. It is sad when I hear people like you wanting to "give to other nations" perhaps you don't realize how bad it is here. Until we're a perfect nation how can we even think about helping other nations?! It's liberals like you who have thrown us into this debt and burnt our only life preserver. Please stop to think about what your saying before you go and defend what other nations should get from us. Besides, the way they live is their way of life. If they want to change their way of life perhaps maybe they should figure something out instead of filming commercials with Kathy Lee Gibbard(sic) ? Oh no, people in 3rd world countries are starving?!?! people in our country (US) are starving also. Let's take care of our own first.
The only way to create such an economic environment is to provide security for investments. If any newly created profits is simply going to be destroyed in civil strife or stolen by crooks (either freelance or government), obviously nobody is going to bother creating anything.
Infusions of money through this or any other hare-brained scheme would actually retard this process, by propping up the kleptocratic regimes that are a large part of the problem (as I said, why bother building a communications infrastructure, or anything else, if the Maximum Supreme People's Leader would just confiscate it and give it to his second cousin's brother-in-law?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
OK OK so I forgot the guy who lost to Clinton. And that was...? Um. Oh yeah, the next president dad, right!
I wrote parts of this stuff
The reasons those countries are having so many problems is because the infant mortality rate is dropping. Do you think that the fact that the population in some countries doubles every 20 years is a new fact? It used to be that 40% of all children in third world countries survived to adulthood. People's birthrate would compensate. Now that the mortality rate has been dropping , they are having severe overpopulation problems.
What did Japan contribute last year? What did the U.S. contribute?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The "dictator" that now runs the Republic of China was chosen by the first ever democratic presidential election in Chinese history.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
The enviroment can support plenty of people. The problem is producing enough to have a surplus, so that when famine strikes there is some kind of relief food left over. Drought struck the US a few years ago, but nobody died because there were enough grain reserves under some federal program.(Take that you anti-goverment libertarians! ;))
In addition better poitical leadership is needed to administer the hoped for surplus, and prevent civil wars and other instabilities.
Resources vs. population is not the real problem in most cases, how to use and manage the resources is.
I predict the Internet will interpret taxation
as damage, and route around it.
Think about, charging for email will give the spammers an excuse to say, "See, we PAID for the RIGHT to spam millions of people. Go f*ck yourself." Charging for email is not the solution. A cooperative meritocracy is the only way thus far that has actually succeeded in quelling spammers on a large scale. Site X.Y spams the net and other sites refuse to forward IP packets to the site. More than a simple UDP, but boycotting them at the router level. And with crappy distribution, secondary spam customers will stop using X.Y to send their spam since it's now less likely to be read.
Actually, in case you hadn't noticed, the whole world (yes, everyone) has gone metric, except for this rinky-dink country.
I'll bet you think we give 20% of our taxes to International Aid, right? Actually we give 1/10th of one percent - the lowest in the whole world. That's 1/1000th of our taxes.
Wake up and smell the International Coffee Conspiracy!
Will in Seattle
yeah, I own Starbucks stock too, just bought it on the dip
Will in Seattle
Well, if they're a tool of the US, why is Israel denied a spot in any caucus (and thus, denied any possibility of SC membership)? Why is it advocating complete disarmament of the world citizenry, which is something the US is definitely not suggesting? And so forth. It's not a US tool; the non-aligned nations, plus RUS and CHN are quite capable of manipulating it...
Yes, it is true that once upon a time the ROC government claimed jurisdiction over what is now communist China, and Mongolia. But that is simply not the way things are anymore. Prior to a few days ago, the government on ROC insisted that there is one China, which is being governed by two independent soverign governments. Then a few days ago the President of ROC announced that he would like to view the cross strait relationship as one of "state to state" or "special state to state". You must also remember that the government on ROC has already renounced the use of force to take over communist China, communist China still threatens to use its outdated arsenal on ROC.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
It would do what most things like this do, hose the people that use it legally and make it free for the spammers and idiots that use it illegally. And as soon as they find out just how freaking expensive it is to monitor, enforce and collect, it'll be $0.10 PER email.
Regarding the ROC claiming to have jurisdiction over all of China (and Mongolia), this is no longer true, as I have said in another message in this thread. The real reason the United Nations is not granting the ROC membership is because of communist China. communist China claims to represent all of China, which is clearly not the case.
It may be a surprise to you but right now, the ROC has a much larger economic presence in the U.S. (and perhaps the world) then communist China. True mainland's market has a much larger potential then the ROC, but as it is, were the ROC to be wiped off the face of the Earth, the economic effect would be much greater then say, if communist China's economy collapses. The ROC is among the world's top 15 trading nation and has one of the world's largest foreign exchange reserve. The ROC was United States seventh largest trading partner in 1998, etc. etc. I think you get the point.
Oh, ROC was also one of the few nation in Asia that had a mature enough banking / stock system to not be devastated by the economic troubles there.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
People in developing countries don't have home computers. They don't have public libraries with computers, or net cafes, or low cost ISPs.
This won't help the downtrodden join us in the "first world". If anything it will do the opposite.
All this is going to do is allow Exxon to use an existing data trunk to get onto the internet and VPN into the home office instead of using a flaky voice line and international callback to talk to the home office when they show up to exploit the resources.
I don't mean to point a finger at Exxon. Heck, Avon would do the same thing. Or any signifigantly large company with a weasle in middle-managment who thinks it's ok to build success in his market by bending the rules of decency.
Even the usually squeaky clean IBM has had problems with mid-level execs in south america breaking the law.
The internet will get there one way or another. Lets start by teaching them to read.
- Eric
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Two arguments:
I think that a one cent tax per hundred e-mails isn't going to discourage spammers. It costs ~ 9 cents to send a piece of junk mail in the united states (assuming that you meet all of the postal guidelines, pre-sort, etc), and that doesn't seem to stop anyone from sending them. Even at 33 cents a piece, that doesn't stop you or me from sending postal mail. Although, charging about ten cents per e-mail would probably put a lot of mom and pop spammers out of business -- you have to do a little more research then just blanketing a half million addresses because they work.
Second, if it did happen, I would much rather see it go to helping 3rd world companies then I would like to see it lining that MCI Worldcomm CEO's pockets, or funding more parking meters, or some other crap like that.
Wait, they can confidently estimate it down to the last digit? If so, then they're much better at keeping track of people than I would have given them credit for.
Of course, they probably just estimated to the nearest thousand and made up the last three digits to make people think they're watching that closely...
you can run Beowulf on it?
(FIRST BEOWULF POST!!!!)
Argh!!! Must...control...fist...of...death...
OK, let me get this straight, if we don't count all of the black people in the US, then the crime rate is lower than those found in Europe. So what are you saying? Black people don't count? It's all black people's fault?
This kind of statement exactly illustrates that "Arrogant Yankee Attitude". I know all Americans aren't like this, I go to school with a large number of US citizens in Canada, but it only takes a small group with loud, blustering voices to ruin the reputation of the rest.
Please, for all our sakes, think before you type.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
The negroid population of Africa is currently killing all the Elephants, Rhinos, Lions, and Giraffes for use in superstious "sexual aphrodisiacs". And the Chinese, another problematic group, is financing this silliness. The black population of Africa has an insatiable desire for what they call "bush meat"--the meat of monkeys, gorillas, and other of their close relatives. The gorilla population of Africa is highly threatened by this cannabilistic desire for monkey meat--aka "bush meat". Ask any international organization that is concerned with saving the ecology of Africa. Whites are not the problem. It is the other inhabitants of Africa that cause all the trouble.
But don't just blame the Africans. The Hollywood moguls who insite unwholsome sexual appetites in Africans also are to blame. They exploit these Third World people by providing them with pornographic (by their standards) Hollywood movies that flame their appetites for sex and aphordisiacs. Every time a Rhino dies, you can be sure a Hollywood jew is lurking in the background. For an interesting look at how this came to be, you should read Who Rules America?
TedC
> If the UN were to impose a worldwide tax on
> anything, then it would be grossly overstepping
> its bounds. The sovereignty of national
> governments would be effectively usurped, and
> the UN would become world dictator.
That'd make for a nifty war. The US military against... oh, wait a minute.
> Once you start to categorize human beings and
> decide who is "useful" and who isn't, you
> begin to face serious ethical problems. Who
> decides the worth?
The dollar, naturally.
Do you people even realize how much difference there is between the third world and the first world? We should do anything we can to raise the lowest common denomonator up to current levels in developed countries. Not just technology transfers, ie internet, but medical, educational, etc. The less of a gap there is, the fewer problems we have as a world population. Stop being so selfish, realize just how darn good we have it in the US, UK, etc. And look at the level of poverty in other places. Remember your humanity and help our fellow people.
Although the idea of having a government enforced billing meter running on every email server is crazy (the technology is changing too fast. Will ICQ messages count? IRC? etc.), the general idea of having people who use the technology help subsidise the have-nots in our world might not be a bad idea.
There is no reason we could not have an Honor System method that would entail responsible or concerned organizations making contributions based on estimated net-usage and then configuring their sendmails to add a little:
X-I-Support-A-Public-Net: YES [insert amount of support here]
to their messages.
Then, a law could be made to forbid falsifying email headers (which needs to be done to help crack down on SPAMMERS anyway) which would also include forging this message when they did not actually support it.
This way, public and possibly socially conscious stockholder pressure (along with some well publicized filters for popular email programs) might just help raise a lot of money by making it uncool and possibly unprofitable to be a pure commercial leech on the 'net --- which was, after all, designed and built due to the support of US Taxpayers.
Never trust anyone entrusted with any officialities. You give them an inch, they want a mile.
And now they are trespassing on the rights of the Net users, in the name of "helping the developing countries".
What the UN is doing is to impose a FORCED SOCIALISM on everyone who use the Net.
Down with the UN !!!
No tax without representations !!!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
People are not rats, you idiot. Why is it that whenever someone has something indefensible to say, they always hit that logout button??
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Is this stuff for real? Is there a secret conference that decides Western policy, including taxation of the internet?
Due to Terence and Philip, I must ask, do candians really have beady little eyes and heads that flap around when they talk???
Clue: lesser-developed countries are poor because their citizens lack secure property rights, not because they have too many children.
Explanation: if you're going to invest in something, you want a return. If you live in a free country with secure property rights, you'll be willing to invest in property. Otherwise, you'll invest in people, because the people can follow you when you become a refugee because of the latest damnfool thing your government has done.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
What the fuck do you know ? He is perfectly right ... I used to live on the other side of the cold war and I am teling you Reagan won this war - clear and simple.
There is quite a bit of diffrence between a speed limit and taxing e-mail.
Starting off with the point that this is just a myth. Considering the kind of stupid and outragous ideas that can be (and probably has been) preposed this seems mild. It is dead on arival.
Part of the point is valid. People would like to get rid of speed limits however they are in place for our safty.
On the other hand there is such thing as being reasonable. A speed limit on walking would be an example of going overboard.
A tax on e-mail is NOT reasonable...
The thankful reality is this kind of thing is DOA anyway.
I don't actually exist.
a conspericy?
It started with the news media...
I'm convenced the news has no leanings... none at all.. fiction and fact all have equal chance. Who cares what party it helps or whos agenda is uplifted as long as it sells.
Whats scarry is Bill Gates couldn't bribe a reporter to get it right....
a very bizzar world we live in....
Oh well...
Long live the revlution... *BANG* *THUD*
I don't actually exist.
"Look at Indonesia's dictator Suharto and all the money the IMF has given him in the past, only for him to build palaces for his family accross the country" (Comment #72). :>
:). There won't be enough money to maintain it, while majority of people are not using it. Of course, this is just a Coward's opinion, so :>.
Could you be more specific on this? Like how many palaces he built and the locations of the palaces? Oh, and please cite the source if you can. I'm curious.
Other than that, I will side with the no tax position. If the peoples in a country want to have the internet, they will pay for it, and maintain it. If they don't want it, they won't. Giving the infrastructure when the people doesn't want it is like planting a tree in a desert (or eating steak for dessert)
yep, that $60/day would sure kill MS.
I agree with you.
...' into '...a economic and political enviroment ....'.
1/ Just change my sentence from '...a economic enviroment
2/ I also agree you may need some 'emergency aid' (be it soldiers or food) to cope with a tempory 'fire-storm', but this doesn't thange that there needs to be a longle-term solution too, and it is THERE where the internet taxt would come in.
Cheerio! kr. Bonne.
The first thing I thought of when I read about this issue is the proverbial "nose of the camel". I was pleased to see that the first few messages to scroll across my screen had already nailed the issue. :)
But, at the risk of being moderated down for redundancy, I'll add my spin...
Once people are used to thinking about a *tiny tax* for a *good cause* the battle is lost. After that, there will be no single event left (the introduction of internet taxes) to focus the resistance.
Once you concede the principle, all that is left is to haggle over the price.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
TedC
A lot of countries are poor, and the Internet won't change that.. but at least their collective goventments could build some infrastructure if they were not blowing all their money on corrupt projects.
:), so we're in a sense already funding plenty of economic development. Not to mention the fact every time a US citizen buys a bag of mother nature they're contributing to economic devlopment..
How much money did you say the World Bank has lent these governments for "modernization" so far. Oh, you didn't. Much of this money is wasted but only the local government has direct control of how it's spent. Instead a lot of these loans are wasted on things like the Malaysian MultiMedia Corridor, then to prop up their economy they engage in large-scale deforestation, dragnet fish harvests, or other very short-term economic plans.
For what it's worth, a large part of these loans are guaranteed by the US Government (they WILL be paid back, right?
Apologies if I sound conservative.. I offend conservatives too because I think for myself..
That's not right, there is *plenty* of food in the world, far more then enought to feed the population.
in the places where there *are* starving people, it has more to do with distribution problems then anything else. in those places, it's the Governments, not the amount of people causing the problems.
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
On the contrary, subsidies are the very thing that would forestall long-term solutions, which must ultimately come from the local people building a society in which development and investment are worthwhile options. Attempts to fix problems from outside just don't "take", which is why they are only useful in short-term emergency situations.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Posted by BrainMold:
The Day the U.N. or any larger power enforces this succesfully is the day I auction off my soul, limbs, and various "personal organs" on eBay. (Should I have made that plural or is it as a whole an individual organ?)
For those interested, I will donate all proceeds to the Free Software Foundation. Mmmmmkay?
No, you did the math wrong - it was a tax of 1 cent per 10KB, which is $1/MB. Of course, the so-called economist who mentioned this (as one of many possible funding mechanisms) should have noticed that any tax capable of extracting $10B/year out of Belgium alone is a huge tax, not a small one, and that it would cause substantial market distortions. However, as Seth pointed out, that was just one suggestion, not a proposal.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is not a wonderful idea considering what third world countries have done in the past. Why should we even give money to a country for food let alone internet access when many dictators stash it in their swiss bank accounts?? Look at Indonesia's dictator Suharto and all the money the IMF has given him in the past, only for him to build palaces for his family accross the country. What about the Philippines and the late Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda's shoe collection?? They still haven't been able to find the all the money. How about the former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha?? His prisons were filled with political dissenters. Do you think he would have wanted them to have free and easy communication??
Annother question - how do people who work for 25 cents an hour afford a computer??
Many third world countries do need assistance, and access to communication can only be a good thing for them. Which also begs the question, If the country is given an internet infrastructure, would the leaders of the country allow the citzenry open access??
Somehow the majority of Slashdot posters have gotten this notion of the grand individual and their right to non-intereference into their heads. Civilization as we know it is an immense social effort. National governments, international bodies, other organizations, societies are not some kind of disease, they arose through necessity. The Jesse Helmsian mindset is very irritating.
Soon the repubs will run this country to the ground with their isolationism and anti-social(istic) efforts. Like a competing species of fungii, when one population dies, others will flourish with the nutrients available. We can choose to go along with the other countries by helping them now, or we can fall by the wayside. Don't depend on the bubble to sustain this country, another Reagan is enough to run it to the ground again.
One of the 4 elements of a super-power is the diplomacy - that's relations with other countries.
As I've said before, the United Nations has absolutely no right to the Internet. When the United Nations is able to break its own charter ...
(Chapter II, Article 4, Section 1)
Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
... and refuse membership to the Republic of China (Taiwan) (one of the UN's founding members!), it should not be trusted to guide the Internet. And remember, chances are your motherboard was manufactured in the Republic of China.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
I notice that you are not attempting to convince me that I'm wrong. It must be, then, that you think I'm right, but don't like it. Too bad for you, then.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Was this a reply to my post? If so, I don't see the relation.
...
I would certainly agree that World Bank/IMF initiatives have been a vast failure. They have undoubtedly benefited someone - I would guess primarily two groups: the western (usually US) contractors who supply goods and services to the megaprojects; and the local bigwigs who funnels the money. So, stop griping about US money being spent on third world megaprojects - it's mostly flowing back to the US anyway
Why should people have to pay TWICE to get access to the internet? Any form of taxation is essentially a secondary charge for the same service.
... some "poor" countries haven't even got phones yet. Why not propose to tax all the people/countries that have phones then? Course, not everyone has caller ID, we'll need to fund that too :).
Any taxation system would be riddled with technical difficulties. Often the only solution to these difficulties has one or more of these drawbacks:
1) Increased bandwidth usage - massive quantities of packets would need to be generated just to track the charges
2) Increased complexity - ex: using crypto
3) Conflict with other internet laws- crypto export laws
Other problems:
Charges a fee for "free speech"- nuff said.
The notion is self-defeating -- would the UN then tax the very "poor" nations it recently aided?? Of course not. Would this be fair? Of course not.
Given the "poor" conditions, one might think that there are higher priorities to be concerned with.
If small countries want net connections, let them pay for it when they are ready.
In reality, any country that has a phone CAN have an inexpensive internet connection. Clealry, what the UN report is REALLY talking about is ubiquitous access within the "poor" countries- access on the scale not even available in the US; access that requires massive efforts by foreign nations.
For cryin out loud!
Did anyone ever think that the "poor" countries might not want foreign incursions onto their soil? Truly, this could be considered an attempt to justify a new imperialism -- lets spread the gospel of the net much like the Spanish Conquistadors... or the like the US has in countless instances.
--Personal Comments--
Clearly, whoever thought of this idea (I recognize it's not much more than that) has no source of technical knowledge regarding the internet beyond the National Inquirer. I don't know whether to laugh or be furious... how can raving mad politicians make laws pertinent to things they don't understand!
It's nice that the UN wants to be Robin Hood, but Robin Hood is childish tale, not a prescription for action.
"/.ers are Cheap nerds"?! Hah, I don't think so. The argument against an "internet tax" is strong from both a technical and ideological standpoint. Ideally, it would be wonderfull if everyone could have net access- but don't let idealism screw with your sense of reality.
What arrogance! Who are you to presume that they are ignorant savages? Could it actually be that they know their own living situation better than you, and that they have chosen the way of living which is best for them?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Elvis has the red fish. Your suspenders are melting.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
That is a great game. I haven't played that in years. "that game", for those who are interested would be Illuminati
Reagan? You mean the guy who won the Cold War? Yeah that would be a disaster. Ask any Russian: Reagan is the most important world leader since Churchill. Reagan, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, stand astride the latter half of the 20th century. Read Kissinger's book Diplomacy if you really want to get a queasy feeling about the current bunch of Carter administration retreads. Even Reagan's Vice President, the legendary Dan Quayle, was more effective than the U.N. over the course of its entire existence. These guys, and Jesse Helms, are only irritating to people who find a strong U.S. irritating. Yeah, the U.N., just the people to make sure the whole world benefits from the Internet economy. Ha! Why do you think the WTO is not under the control of the UN? The UN is incompetent to handle any matter having to do with serious economic consequences. You do not have to be a libertarian to know that enabling the UN to tax any aspect of the Internet is a very very bad idea.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I am sick of people who think that its nice to
distribute food and clothing. OK its nice. But
there are more important things than that. How
about helping them to get on their feet.
How about giving them education. Helping them
build infrastructure necessary to disburse
education.
How about just infrastructure so that they get
more efficient.
And one more thing there should be no help for
countries with terrorist governments. That doesn't
help anybody.
I don't even know where to begin, as very little of that made any sense. I fail to see why it is so evil to be concerned when yet another huge bureaucracy attempts to forcibly take money that I have legally earned to further its grand utopian vision. Wealth redistribution does not work. Perhaps you've heard of Johnson's Great Society, which created a permanent underclass dependent on handouts to survive, or FDR's Social Security, the world's biggest Ponzi scheme. And I'm not sure how you get from Republicans to isolationism, Republicans (excepting lunatics like Pat Buchanan) have always supported free trade over the objections of labor unions and other Democratic constituencies.
Although the chance for such proposal to pass is close to zero, there is another unwanted side effect for such propasal. Sooner or later people will carry spam e-mail with this hideous UN message to e-mailboxes all over the world.
You just must not realize they would spend a lot more money creating a system of taxation and enforcement then they would raise from taxing the emails.
Hey, if I can't afford it, I refuse to believe that anyone can.
Do you realise that you just used the words 'small', 'bulletproof' and 'simple' in the same sentance as 'sendmail'?
History lesson: Ireland's green revolution
A country where food production roughly equaled food consumption found a miracle crop, many times more productive than the staple of turnips and grain.
time : 1490's crop: potato (New World import)
Result= population grew to match new food resources, until the crop failed. Then a mass export of newly surplus population.
Conclusion: Food Availability is directly linked to population growth, assuming economic growth and development are held static.
Get everyone out of the building in NYC; then push the building into the river. Send 'em all home only after they pay all their parking tickets.
Seriously, folks, the reason that they are even thinking about it is that email and the Web threaten the kind of big-govt attitude that the UN thrives on.
Did you know that the UN guys who live and work in the USA don't have to pay ANY taxes? How many billions a year is that?
Hey, I've got a better idea! Let's tax...abortions! One million abortions in the USA alone every year, times say $100 == $100 million dollars! What do you say? Hmmm, sounds as dumb as taxing email don't it?
It's like with free software: even the slightest restriction on proliferation necessarily leads to some kind of tracking. This is even more obvious in the case of email. Since an email isn't "used" for a long period of time, but normally read and then deleted, the usual legislative measures of occasional checks (as for pirated software) won't cut it: Only an infrastructure covering all providers and mail-relais could make something like an email tax enforcable.
This essentially means that *every* communication via email would have to be reported. Even if you don't know the content, a complete record when A is communicating with B at time t is more than most intelligence agencies can dream of (the CIA/NSA is an obvious exception as they have the necessary infrastrucure up and running for years).
I don't assume that this is what the UN guy who suggested this tax had in mind (when considering issues like local email, mailing lists, etc. I don't think he has ever used email before), but with such a resolution in place once, this would serve as a great excuse for law enforcement and agencies over the world to do what they best at: control the people they are supposed to serve.
I lived in Panama, Central America for three years. I had direct contact with Kuna Indians who live throughout that country, in some really harsh conditions.
I'm sure in a U.N. utopia they would all be buying cars online. Unfortunately, to the dismay of the U.N, they spend their time worrying about having enough food, and possibly educating their children.
Awesome!
When I got my first modem in 1983, I soon ran into a heated post about a new "modem" tax.
Some things never change.
The cake is a pie
First, food by numbers isn't the primary issue, it's nutrition. If you have nothing but rice, you're fucked. More kids die of malnutrition in it's assorted forms than starvation per se.
/.er. Indeed. But if there's no educational infrastructure (i.e. research universities, libraries, books, people who know what they're doing, etc.) how do you give people access to this knowledge?
Modern medical care and techniques are obviously necessary. This includes birth control and family planning. But how do people gain access to the knowledge required to develop and utilize these technologies, be they medicine, nutrition, or sustainable agriculture?
Education, pointed out a
Sure, some people are going to be able to go overseas to university, but with a couple T1's and you suddenly have a world of information at your fingertips. The proposal isn't dial-in lines for the public here, it's basic access to information in the most effective and cheapest way possible.
Educated people have less children and are more capable of taking care of themselves (in a physical sense) than people who don't know. It's not a magic bullet, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. Think about the logistics involved with traditional information distribution -- you can ship x crates of books that will have to be split up and only one person can use each book at a time. Or you can ship x crates of 486s and a satalite dish and everyone has access to everything at the same time.
While this tax may (or may not) be a bad thing, so violently rejecting the premise seems a little short sighted to me.
Considering htat most american businesses are expanding exponentially internationally and our wealth is rippling out to the rest of the world, I must conclude that your accusation that the pro-business republicans are isolationists is a bunch of bunk.
Please try to make sense with your catch-phrase banter.
When I was in college, I had to work 65 hours a week just to pay tuition and make ends meet. I had to send a whole lot of email back in those days. Should today's students have to pay? What about the poorer folk that go to a public library for access or pay $20/mo for an account to help little billy with his school work but don't have much money? Do we start creating exemptions? How do you qualify the millions needing exemptions? Where do the exemptions end? If I make $1 a week after my bills are paid, should they take 6 cents so I can't buy a bottle of pop? Do we create internet welfare that subsidizes access( hardware, software, and ISP ) for people in the US/UK/et al that can't afford it? Do we also tax NNTP, IRC, ICQ, et al?
The bureaucratic tasks would be absolutely enormous and merely line the pockets of the "UN Internet Council" and the telecom/software/hardware companies rather than actually providing a good solution that the third world isn't ready for yet anyway.
I guess the good thing is that it would be impossible to realistically tax something like this unless it was purely on amount data sent( which would remove all those upgrades, etc software companies offer online ) and the US Constitution doesn't allow a foreign body to tax anything inside the US borders(technically Congress could tax and "donate" the proceeds to the UN. Not likely since we can't pay our membership dues )
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
The part of this that bothers me the most isn't even financial or tied to free-flow-of-information issues. It's the possible ruin of the beautiful simplicity of email as it is right now. Now, email is a built in capability of any unix installation at a nice low level. A simple, small, time tested bulletproof gem of a program (sendmail) routes it around with beautiful simplicity. It works across intranets and the internet with very little maintanence at all. I like that.
:-(
With any kind of proposed restriction, like a tax, suddenly you need this huge, high maintanence infrastructure in place just to take a very little amount from each person (probably under a buck a year). ANd from a tax system like this, more restrictions would naturally follow - it would be a crime to send a message that does not end up being recorded for tax purposes. And what do you do about anonymous email (things sent through cypherpunks and mixmaster remailers)? Administrators would have to keep detailed logs and send them to washington.
In short, the simple, functional, utilitarian beauty of electronic mail would be gone forever.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Since when does the United Nations have the right to impose a tax?
The scary things about this is it means the John Birchers are right.
This theoretical tax is a terrible idea, at least on spam grounds. With reference to spam, having a per-email tax would legitimize spam. Spam currently is seen as such a great problem not b/c it's annoying, but b/c it costs the recipients money in terms of bandwidth & connect charges. If spammers paid for each message, they wouldn't have that image problem, even if that money wasn't going to the targets of said spam. Simply having paid for it would validate sending all that mail; 'having paid for it' is one of the cornerstones of capitalism. And at a penny per hundred mails, spam would remain massively cheaper than any other form of advertising; and thus proliferate.
Actually, this sounds much worse than an "email tax"... it's a bandwidth tax at 1 cent per megabyte, if I did the math correctly. ;)
Of course, the actual price is not the issue. That, and the Good Cause, are just to make it sound palatable and to get good PR. As I said before, once you concede the principle, all that remains is to haggle over the price.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. And I don't know which is worse--that the U.N. proposed this silliness; or that Wired, Slashdot, and all the Slashdot netizens missed the absolutely glaring error in the proposal.
Ms. Kate Raworth projects that this 1-cent per hundred "lengthy" Emails (not just any Email, but "lengthy" E-mails) would have raised $70 billion in the U.S. alone in 1996.
DO THE MATH!!!!!
That's 700,000,000,000,000 (7.0e14) Email messages. Seven hundred trillion Email messages. Figure the U.S. population as 245 million--that would mean that every man, woman, and child in the U.S. sent a "lengthy" Email every 11 seconds for the entire year. Oh--and only 15% of the U.S. population had access to Email, in any form, in 1996.
This U.N. economist pulled a cockamamy number completely out of thin air, and everybody has bought it. The U.N. bought it; Oxford University Press (who actually published the report) bought it; Wired magazine bought it. I fully expect that the mainstream Web media will buy it next, and sometime around the end of the week it will make the New York Times.
We don't need to sweat this. Instead, we should take up a collection to send this idiot to Math Camp for the summer.
According to http://pages.ebay.com/aw/help/t opics-png-remains.html, it is against eBay's User Agreement to sell your body parts, even if it is for a good charity.
Even Reagan's Vice President, the legendary Dan Quayle, was more effective ...
You know, I didn't major in American History but uh.... are you sure you you got the names right there?
The idea is not necessarily a bad one, though I think it might open the door to more onerous burdens down the road. However, if I may be permitted a typical knee-jerk American reaction, my primary objection is that UN representatives are appointed by national governments instead of by direct popular election.
When I get to vote for my UN representative the same as I get to vote for my President and my Congressmen, then I will at least consider the idea. Until then, forget it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Proton,
I share your concerns. Just rememember, thats there are a lot of different developing countries under a variety of circumstances. It would be unfair to punish them all for the misbehaviour of a few.
Also not everyone in these countries is poor. (Just like not everyone in America is rich).
Does the Third World want alms?
In the beginning, when aid was first suggested all the African leaders said no, we don't want alms, we want equal rights.
Rights to What?
Rights to sell their goods in any country without barriers. Rights to own their own resources and letting those who pay the most exploit them. Rights to the same information as any others.
Today we see the results of alms, people lining their own pockets, totally inadequate systems of distribution. The alms have prolonged the misery of the nations receiving it. They have even indebted them! Because not all 'help' is free, because much 'help' require deals which benefits the economy of the giver (i.e. buy this stuff from this company), because 'help' needs 'advisors' which come from the givers country.
It is in fact a system which is much akin to a company town (like those in the US of A). You get your money in company dollars which has to be spent in company stores. You can get tools to do the job, but they are paid via debts to the company, and you have to buy support from the company.
The worst ones are the local ones?
After all that is said and done, it is infact the dictators who where the worst. They imprisoned their people and spent their money, BUT with the blessing of the US, and the USSR. The Phillipines has been a loyal US supporter. Singapore could invade East Timor without protests from the US, because the US needed a deep strait for their subs. Different communist dictators have of course had their support from Moscow.
You have to step back, gang, take a look at the whole picture. See what makes the world economy tick, see what makes the world politic tick, and see why it's so damned wrong.
The Speedy Viking
I like to oppose the general tendency in this tread. I actually think this is a GOOD idea.
...) as a way to implement the idea of 'social solidarity of goods', and not (as seams to be the american (US) way of thinking), as an evil demon that eats up all your money.
... aspects, they need EDUCTION and INFRASTRUCTOR.
...)
First of all, coming from Europe, I see the system of social security (read: 'the state', 'tax',
1/ What the thirth world need is NOT food, but a way to make sure they can produce their own food.
They don't need emergency medial aid, but need a way they can set up their own medical schools.
They don't need UN or NATO-soldiers to enforce some peace-deal between two clans, but need a economic enviroment in which in makes more sence to work together and not fight another (civil or inter-state) war.
Appart from economic, finacial,
In these days of 'knowledge based' industry, this means telephone lines, sateline-links, PC's, free or cheap internet-access for schools, etc..
In a more practical way, to stop the mass of people fleeing mexico into the US, you don't need more barb wire and police-men, but you need to help mexico to help their own people help themselfs so they don't NEED to flee their own country (and family, friends,
For that reason, the idea of taxing the "have's" for helping the "have-nots" looks a very nobble idea, and makes a lot of sence economic-wize.
2/ From a practical point of view, taxing email-only is a bit difficult to implement. So why not tax the bandwith one uses, and use the system, like the VAT tax-system.
The states tax the internet backbone providers (x eurocent per Gigabyte). They -in turn- taxt their client ISPs, who -in turn- tax their users.
This money goes into a fund organisations like inmarsat, the UNDP, universities in thirth world countries, etc.
Cheerio! Kr. Bonne.
And how are they going to implement such tax?
Today, anything containing the word "internet" make it's way to the news. I starting to hate that!
do not need internet access!!!! They need fresh running water, sanitary plumbing, and health care of some sort. They do not need to check e-mail like all of the living room dunderheads in America with AOL and WebTV. Besides the fact that they need a utility infrastructure before they need an information infrastructure, I am not paying for some kid in the middle of South America to cruise AOL chat rooms saying he is a 13 year old girl looking for hot guys.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Other problems:
Charges a fee for "free speech"- nuff said.
Oh, there's a bit of an irony here.
I think the poster may be making a mistake common to many who do not understand the concept of 'freedom' as opposed to 'cost-free'.
Usually, in free software, we call this the 'free speech vs. free beer' argument. However, the poster has evidently failed to grasp even this distinction.
If the paradigmatic alternative to 'free beer' is 'free speech', then I suggest free software should change its name to something else, like 'Bob', in order to reduce the confusion caused.
Cheers.
Nick.
-- O improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
Could you expand on that a little? I think you're overestimating the power of the UN. They didn't make us sign that human rights treaty. They're not making us pay our back dues.
Even if you're a die-hard america uber alles type, the UN remains a tool for the US to impose it's will on other countries. Granted, not so much now as it has in the past, but still, extert what you can while you have it. It's all about domination, right?
Other than some lost parking ticket revenue in NYC, what bad stuff has the UN done that affected us?
Perhaps it's stating the obvious but it occurs to me the best thing is not for the UN to "tax" mails (be they long or whatever), but instead for a large organisation like Amnesty International to make a simple java applet available securely so that whenever one wants to make a donation, you can just click over -->there, sort of thing.
:)
This avoids all the problems inherent in taxation and you can at least find out pretty easily who's on the receiving end.
Anyone want to code it for them, that's the question?
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Society is the sum of the interactions between individuals.
The state is the institution which has traditionally interfered with these interactions, but whose proper place is solely to stop the non-voluntary interactions.
You're right -- society is a necessity. The state is optional.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist