>[WS:] I do not want to speak for others, but I do not object to the
>fact of paying but to the conditions of sale. In pre-digital times,
>you paid money and you got a product which was yours. You could use
>it, resell it to someone else, or perhaps re-purpose it to prop up a
>crooked table in your kitchen.
>
>The digital "revolution" altered not just the medium but most
>importantly the terms of sale, which is seldom noticed. You no longer
>buy a product, but a conditional and revokable permission to use a
>product in a highly constrained and prescribed way. At the same time,
>the price you have to pay for that permission is much higher than the
>price you used to pay for the product in the pre-digital times.
It wasn't the digital revolution which changed that, it was simple legislation. I gather that here in Australia, when computer software first appeared, it was no protected by copyright at all.
Anyone could legally copy it and give or even sell copies. And they did. Then the federal government moved to amend the law to extend copyright to computer software. There was a bit of a campaign, led by an old Maoist in Melbourne, against this idea, he started an organisation called Software Liberation ;-) to fight the law.
(Same bloke sprung to national fame a few years later when he was sent to jail for advocating that people vote informal, a perfectly legal thing to do, but highly illegal to advocate. But that's another story.)
Anyhow, the point is it isn't the technology, but the state, which grants licence to extort money from computer users.
Its like this health insurance debate you're having. From what I can gather, the Obama administration is trying to make it law that all Americans are required to make regular payments to private health insurance mafias. Talk about a licence to print money!
Compulsory "insurance" is simply a polite term for extortion. Whether the compulsion is via thugs who come around and threaten to beat you up and burn down your house, or via government legislation. Government enforced compulsory insurance inevitably turns into a racket if the insurance is being provided on a for-profit basis.
We have an example of this here recently, the Tasmanian government brought in laws making it mandatory for builders to buy builders insurance, or they wouldn't be able to get a licence. The company that got the licence to sell the insurance was run by a couple of ex-government ministers who got the nod from their mates and the monopoly on providing the "insurance".
Of course the insurance was completely worthless, its terms were so restrictive that it was impossible for victims of dodgy builders to ever be able to claim any compensation. And the useless "insurance" was exorbitantly expensive. Basically, it was a tax, created in such a way as to benefit a private company. A sort of retirement bonus for an ex-Labor government Minister.
An extreme example perhaps. But the private health insurance industry in Australia is a bigger example of the same principle. Private health insurance premiums in this country benefit from a 30% government subsidy introduced by the Howard government. He wanted to undermine the national health insurance system, but it was politically impossible to do so, due to the deep public support for Medicare.
Private health insurance is mostly a racket where private health funds pay for fringe benefits, such as limited optical, dental and other extras. Enough benefits so that people paying the huge premiums can see that they get their money's worth. Though of course the premium doesn't cover any really large hospital expenses that might come up. That is covered by Medicare.
The private insurers profit by pocketing the difference between the nominal premium paid and the actual premium paid taking into account the 30% government subsidy.
It is not compulsory to take out private insurance, there is merely a punitive tax on people whose incomes are over a certain threshold, if they refuse. But the public get no benefit, that was never the intention, the purpose was simply to undermine the public health care system by diverting funds from public hospitals into private hands.
Some for this proposed US system it looks like to me?
Insurance is always a racket. People know this. I would strongly advise advocates of a socialised health care system to immediately cease using the word "insurance" as any part of the description of the system being advocated. It just makes people run a mile.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas