[registrars] Regarding taxes

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

Bruce,

If this were a discussion about taxes -- some sovereign authority to levy
tax -- but it isn't -- taxation and authority to tax are simply analogs
to fees and contracts.

Tax structures serve a variety of policy goals -- my wife has become a
tax maven over the past year preparing to run for a seat in the Maine
legislature -- we've a Jarvis-Gann "property tax cap" on a ballot, a wild
disparity of means between the wealthy summer-people and the year-rounders,
and and the Maine woods are rife with strutting turkeys of any number of
stripe gobbling out "fairness and equity" arguments. 

Oblig promotional: Please point the browser of your choice, and mozilla is
always a good choice, at http://www.williams4me.org and stuff up to $250 into
the PayPal box. US law prohibits campaign contributions by evil foreigners
(e.g., Canadians, etc.) only in _national_ elections, not state, so evil
foreign and good domestic registrars please throw money. This blatant grab
at fat checkbooks is not limited to Bruce's.

Mainers ("Mainiacs" is the prefered form) need to find out what their shared
policy goals are, within the bounds of municipal, state, and federal taxes
and services -- one instance of the American political idiom. Presumably a
balance can be found that is better than raw police power. Some agreement
about the nature of government, etc.

Our problem(s) is/are different. Is the original policy, some form of
economic diversity (e.g., "competitive registrars") still controlling in
ICANNv2.0? Do we have a shared interest? Is it just surviving the dotBOMB
market collapse? Is it "good government"? (would the "goo goos" in the RC 
kindly hold up their hands.) Is it expanding the dns market? Is it expanding
the derived market? Is it being ahead of the telcos in franchise-space when
e164.arpa goes live? (Sorry about that BT, DT, and AOL.)

We know there is insufficient shared interest by the registries to support
a single protocol/version/toolkit model. That was tried and it failed. We
registrars may be just as incapable of finding a shared interest that can
shape our fees and services dialog with ourselves and the rest of the bits
that make up the ICANN constituencies and institutional secretariate.

Nothing is perfect, including this note.

Eric