Who can tax a satellite?

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Wed Jul 11 19:13:19 PDT 2001


At 5:58 PM -0700 7/11/01, David Honig wrote:
>At 08:58 AM 7/11/01 -0700, mmotyka at lsil.com wrote:
>>I suppose, as with any racket, whoever has the ability to knock the
>>satellites down or render them inoperable could levy a "tax" on them.
>
>Heh, right on.  But some dingleberry in LA is not about to violate an
>international
>space treaty without *really* needing the publicity.  The treaty that
>says you don't fight in space.  (Yes, I know its toast when next the US
>needs to perform a little orbital cleansing.)
>
>Besides, when multiple gangs see an untaxed (but coercable) resource, they'll
>fight amongst themselves first for the territory.

I'll bet good money that Washington is leaning on L.A. to drop this 
ridiculous claim.

For several decades the U.S. (and presumably Russia/FSU) has 
convinced the nations of the world that fees need not be paid to 
India, Botswana, and Shakedownistan just because U.S. satellites pass 
overhead. If L.A. is able to shake down Hughes for some tax to be 
distributed to the welfare bums and crack hoes, then Botswana and 
Shakedownistan will be next in line.


--Tim May

-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns





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