"I don't see too much bitching about land-owners that don't want to sell"

Actually, there is, and with similar arguments to the domain name problem, only on a larger scale. Just imagine you manage some large-scale development project, but there's an old couple sitting in the middle of your projected building site that refuses to sell at any price. It happens a lot more often than you realize. (the large scale developer usually bullies its way in, which is not as easy with domains I guess).

One local example to illustrate my point:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

You see the green patch and the house in the lower left of the parking lot? The people there didn't settle with the supermarket owners, so they simply routed the parking lot around it.

There are lots of cases of inefficient land use, and land/house owning incurs in much higher fixed costs than U$ 7.

I meant that nobody disputes the protections of property the constitution of a democratic country gives you.

That family that didn't want to sell may be a PITA to deal with, but it's their right, and I would be really offended if some law passed that favors the supermarket.

As for taxes for land ... yes, they are much higher, but you get lots of stuff in return, as I've said, public roads, public hospitals, public schools, infrastructure for water / electricity, etc...

So raise the tax of owning a domain to $1000 / year.

What will that accomplish? Sooner or later all the good domain names will still be taken and we're back to being creative or to putting our money where our mouth is.

technically it does.

if you can't afford $1,000 that means you aren't even making $1,000 a year. If your project only makes you $83/mo...it's just a hobby.

Here on a startup site, how many of us have purchased domains to start a company? A lot of people here bootstrap their own businesses, which often can't make any money before they own a domain and put their site up. In that case, 1000 dollars is a lot.

Plenty of people blow $1000 per year on a hobby, though it's usually cars and parts, camera lenses, ski gear, or greens fees instead of domain names.

Technically you can make 1 million $ in revenue and not have $1000 in profits.

yes...but it doesn't work the other way...you can't have $1,000 in revenue and $1 million in profits.

I don't see the relevance.

Spending $1000 a year for a domain is $1000 that gets cut from profits and $990 more than I'm willing to spend on a domain that's on standby until I have the time to work on my idea.

On the other hand I should have the first-mover advantage, because yes, I thought about that name before somebody else did.

Properties in general are cheap for first-movers ... I can think of dozens of places where I can buy land from uninhabited areas with a breath-taking mountains panorama ... for small prices like $5-$20 per square meter.

Prices get high sooner or later due to infrastructure developments, or increased demand, but thought luck, it's my property now.

And yes, for land you pay taxes ... but you're receiving services in return, like water, electricity, public roads, hospitals, etc...

So you want that domain name so badly? Pay me a sum I cannot refuse.

Sure it will cost you more than $1000, but that's life for you, and you shouldn't have a problem if your project is not a hobby :)

So you're proposing 80 total websites with $500/yr profit each should actually be costing their fictional single owner $40k?