Re: looks like it's happening everywhere but the US.

On 27 Oct 2003, Jan C. Depner wrote:

> > >	Multithousand employees, multibillion dollars in taxes.  'Nuff said?

Not in the slightest :-)

  There is an interesting assumption you bring in which is that if people
were not employed by Microsoft they would somehow be on the welfare lines.  
I've heard this used by both the right and left in politics to justify a
lot of very unusual things.

  I do need to ask what the basis for this assumption is?

  My analysis of the economics of this suggests that there are *more* jobs
(and thus more taxpayers) in a distributed open collaborative based
economy than a centralized monopoly based one.  The demand for technology
does not get reduced if you move from a supply-side centric methodology of
production (manufacturing) to a demand-side centric methodology (open
collaborative models).  If anything the ability of the demand-side
methodology to meet the actual needs of itself is greater than that of
supply-side's attempt to meet demand with "one size fits all".
  There would likely be an increase of technology creation that meets
actual demands, making technology projects more successful to the bottom
lines of the majority of the economy that are not technology suppliers.


  Open collaborative (and free market competitive) methodologies
facilitate more people becoming involved entrapraneurs rather than being
largely passive employees (surfs) of manufacturers.  The more diversity we
have with economically independent entrapraneurs the stronger our economy
will be: diversity strengthens economies in the same way as it strengthens
ecology.  As a self employed person who has compared my motivations and
those of other self employed people to those of employees in the high tech
sector (Ottawa is known as Silicon Valley North), I know we are more 
motivated to do a good job than surfs.

BTW: The following may also make an interesting read: 
Unplugged: How Microsoft's Misunderstanding of Open Source Hurts Us All
By Robert X. Cringely
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031023.html



  As to the companies themselves paying taxes these monopolies are more
likely to have political influence and thus more likely to pay less taxes.  
We already see many cases of overly-large companies pitting political
jurisdictions against each other in a race-to-the-bottom to be the "home"
of this so-called "taxpayer".


  As a taxpayer I want governments stop promoting (through existing
categorical preferences for manufactured products built into procurement
rules) and otherwise subsidizing incumbent business models.  I want them
to use my tax dollars towards the public good.  When a government helps
resource an open collaborative project everyone benefits:  FLOSS project
participation and benefits span the entire of the economy (private,
public, volunteer, etc) while "software manufacturing" product
participation and benefits only include a small subset of the private
sector.

  Just looking at the private sector alone, more of the private sector
would benefit from governments resourcing open collaborative projects than
the current situation of paying royalty fees.  We get double benefit with
the open collaborative projects as governments pay less money (due to
resource multiplication that happens in open collaborative models) for
open collaborative technologies, and we get the direct benefit of the open
collaborative advancement of the technologies themself.

> You lost me there.  How am I paying twice for something I don't use?  I
> didn't even pay once for it ;-)

  How are you paying?  Inefficient spending by government costs all of us.
With "Software manufacturing" not only are you not getting the benefit of
technology advancement paid for through tax money, but you are having to
pay royalties for technologies that would otherwise already exist.

  That is a double-loss, even if you are not using the same technology as
the government is.




---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
 electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than 
 politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/