[Sussex] If we applied "Progressive taxation" to bandwidth.

Mark Harrison (Groups) mph at ascentium.co.uk
Sat Mar 19 11:42:34 UTC 2005


Dear all,

Just a thought experiment.

Let us start by assuming that "equality" is something we strive for.

If we approached broadband in the same way we do "money", then we'd see 
the following:

- We would develop distributed applications (a la SETI) to run 
government tasks.

- The government would not buy or build any computers themselves (They 
wouldn't be allowed to by the IMF). They would only take use of the 
computers and bandwidth generated by citizens and enterprises. 
Legislation would be enacted and enforced allowing them to see what 
computers and network connections were in use, and allowing the 
government to download their applications to these.

- There would be a progressive set of "bandwidth / CPU taxation" such that:

---- everyone was allowed up to 9,600 baud that they could use as they 
saw fit

---- bandwidth between 9,600 baud and 54,000 baud was throttled, such 
that 10% of the transfers were reserved for running government 
applications. The government would download applications to your PC 
which would use no more than 10% of your bandwidth. So, someone with a 
54,000 modem would receive 48,600 throughput for their applications.

---- once you went to 256k broadband, this figure would rise to 22% of 
your bandwidth. So, someone with a 256k line would receive 199,680 
throughput.

---- once you went to 512k broadband, this figure would rise to 40% of 
your bandwidth. So, someone with a 512k DSL line would receive 307,200 
throughput.

- Everyone would see this as normal and right.

- The only arguments would be about what the exact numbers are.

---- Geoff would be arguing that 2Mb lines should donate 60% of their 
bandwidth to promote equality.

---- Richie would want to reduce the CPU needs of government, and argue 
for a flat taxation of 10% for anything over 9,600 baud.



Mark




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