Quote:
Originally Posted by schex86
My question is, where are your interests in this social contract? If you chose not to pay the tax once you learned its origins, would that be considered "theft" and if so, who would you be depriving of "property"? If you had enjoyed the garden, and even taken thousands of pictures of it, "hoarding" them in your own photo album, would that somehow obligate you to accept the conditions of the "Parks and Foliage" tax without question?
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It's an interesting analogy, but there is one key difference from the situation with contemporary content creators. In the terms of your analogy, many gardeners created their gardens with the understanding that people would pay to see them, according to an established social contract. Subsequently declaring that viewing of gardens should be free from now on, and gardeners may not erect walls and charge admission, nor forbid photographs, is a violation of the social contract the gardener entered into when she invested all that time in her garden.
That being said, if walls around gardens are allowed and even expected, and someone peeks over the garden wall early in the morning, and even takes pictures for their own personal use (not for sale), can that really be called "theft"? Do we view this differently if the peekers are children, or indigents, who would never be able to afford the admission fee?
But another way to look at your original analogy might be: suppose the bill to consider the garden a "public work" was not slipped into some council vote, but was publicly discussed and put to a popular vote, and passed by an overwhelming majority. Can a dissenting citizen choose not to pay, because he doesn't like gardens? Or is that considered part of the social contract of the community, because other citizens pay a share of things the dissenter does like (e.g. public statuary), even if they don't use them?