Freezing to death is worse than looking nice?

5% of a $100 jacket is $5

15% of a $33 shirt is $5

5% of a $33 jacket is $1.65

...it's definitely gamesmanship but if you squint you can see where it comes from.

This reminds me of maybe the worst tax in human history which is also unconstitutional. The Pauschalabgabe[0] in Germany, which also got adopted in other countries, implements a freely decidable flatrate tax on all mediums which can be used to create a pirated copy.

How much tax for a laser printer? Well it depends how fast it prints:

Up to 14 pages/Minute: 25,00 € Up to 39 pages/Minute: 50,00 € From 40 pages/Minute: 87,50 €

For every storage medium this tax has been paid, because of the possibility of making a pirated copy. Technically we all paid already to make pirates copies.

0. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauschalabgabe

Isn't this also what allows people to create copies for personal use, and what makes downloading pirated media legally clear, and only producing/distributing illegal? Sounds like a fine tradeoff, as fixing IP laws (and international treaties) is way too hard of a problem.

It’s the other way around the law got created because of the possibility of private copies and their fear of profit loss. A private copy is only legal if the source is legal. Circumventing copy protection makes it illegal. Pirated copies and temporary copies like streaming are afaik grey areas because the difficulty to prove and not a trade off.

It’s a silly world where people who never worked send people who only worked as mobsters to take money from people who work for a living. Then the first two groups share that money in 999999:1 proportion. They call it “taxation”.

It has upsides like having an army for defense, roads and other common things. But don’t forget the primary nature and motivation behind it. They just want your money, and your offspring to please them in various ways.