[PvK]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"There are probably thousands of possible alternate economic systems available to open-minded people, and economics is not my favorite subject. However my personal proposal would be that there would be a tax levied which would be somewhat less than the estimated average expenditure on the media which would be made free, based on the person's disposable income. Taxpayers could then voluntarily indicate which content creators they appreciated the most, and these creators would get compensated accordingly."

PvK, you've got to be kidding me. What you're proposing here is essentially taxing everyone so Joe Schmoe #41445 can watch his porn collection without having to pay for it first. I'll pass; we don't need yet ANOTHER level of government intervention (and there would be abuse of this system on that level as well)

The person who does nothing because he doesn't enjoy that kind of game, or whatever, shouldn't have to pay for those who do..

Well there are plenty of variations and specifics to work out.

For the sake of simplicity, I was trying to express a way to support content creators without also proposing a change to the US tax system, which is awful in itself but seems quite off-topic. The current US system does all sorts of taxing for the purpose of providing services that not everyone uses, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I didn't mean to directly endorse that specific system.

As an alternative model, the agency which disburses benefits to artists could be one which people Subscribe to voluntarily (e.g. A non-profit network which charges $200/year for DSL-type access to a huge network of content, and disburses the fees after infrastructure costs to content creators.). Or, it could be a tax, but one which only applies to Users of the media, by means of taxing equipment, network access, etc.). There are plenty of possible methods, as I said.

Even using the tax model I originally mentioned, however, it wouldn't be a case of people having to pay for items they didn't like. The appreciation voting would give people a great amount of control to reward the artists they actually liked, and not just the ones they used. Practically everyone would pay less annually for all media than they would under the current system, but their potential consumption of media would be nearly unlimited. You'd have to be someone who made more than you needed before you'd be paying media taxes, and then your taxes would support all media, which you and everyone could then enjoy without worrying about costs, so you could play all the games, listen to all the music, see all the films, read all the books, TV, radio, etc, that you wanted to, without specifically paying for any of it, and even if you were in a bracket to pay media tax, you'd be paying vastly less than you would if you had to pay for everything you used. Moreover, you could reward the artists you liked, and not get "fooled" by flashy marketting that turned out to be crap - they'd make enough not to starve, but not to roll in dough as they currently do.

PvK