Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Mike Meyer]

entropy <entropy at domain.invalid> writes:
> entropy at domain.invalid wrote...
>> axel at white-eagle.invalid.uk wrote...
>> > In comp.lang.perl.misc David Schwartz <davids at webmaster.com> wrote:
>> > > "Mike Meyer" <mwm at mired.org> wrote in message 
>> > >> Sorry, but nobody but the government actually owns property. In most
>> > >> places, you can't make non-trivial changes to "your" property without
>> > >> permission from the government. They even charge you rent on "your"
>> > >> property, only they call it "property tax".
>> > >    I see you are a totalitarianist or perhaps a communist. If you want to 
>> > > live in America and discuss things that are relevent to America, let me 
>> > > know.
>> > Why would you say that - Mike Meyer made a point to which you have
>> > obviously no answer. Or do you deny that his comments on this matter
>> > of property are true?
>> Methinks David simply missed that Mike was being facetious.  (Irony 
>> and facetiousness don't translate well into print, as Frank Zappa 
>> once noted.)
> Uh, you _were_ being facetious there, weren't you Mike?

No, I wasn't. The statements I made are true: the government charges
you taxes on your property, and in most places restricts the changes
you can make to it and the things you can do in it. I used the words
"rent" and "ownership" in an unconventional way to emphasize the
point.

The conventional usage of "ownwership" ignores these kinds of
facts. So you can talk about "your" house even if you're renting it,
or if the bank still owns most of the house. There are political
groups that are unhappy with these facts, and like to point out the
inconsistencies in the usage of the word "ownership". See <URL:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-propertyrights.htm > and <URL:
http://magazine.14850.com/9307/politics.html > for examples of this.

David claimed that everyone had a right to do whatever they wanted
with their property. This is simply false throughout most of the
civilized world - zoning laws control what kinds of business you can
run on your property, various laws designed to control the looks of
the town dictate what you can do to the exterior or lawn, flood and
earthquake laws state what kinds of structural changes you can make,
and so on. I took the view of a political extremist to point out that
he was wrong. David predictably used that to tar me as an extremist
from the other end of the spectrum.

     <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.