hello

to play devil's advocate, let me state the following.

the government forces everyone to pay taxes, yet clearly there are tax loopholes, or else we wouldn't have nearly as many tax attorneys and accountants. those individuals who are able to afford the services of these professionals are able to take advantage of the loopholes. certainly, if no one used the loopholes, then they'd never be closed. but what good would they be? people DO use these loopholes for their own benefit and once enough people use them, the government takes notice and may choose to close the loophole (depending, of course, on the politics involved).

thus, we have individuals who earn large sums of money paying very little tax. is it illegal? perhaps (depending on the methods). is it unethical? likely. take for example, plato's discussions on the republic. is it immoral? that's for every person to individually decide.

now, with regards to this specific matter. i follow the lead of MatthewClement and his post in the Only Randy Petersen forum with regard to milespy. HOW is this unethical? (me with my minor in philosophy) i'm interested in that.

it's interesting that this point is brought up. perhaps some of you who got in on the valuemags deal early have already started receiving Scientific American. there is an article in this month's issue about this exact issue, called "The Economics of Fair Play" (http://www.sciam.com/page.cfm?section=currentissue). Darwinian competition vs Darwinian cooperation. on the surface, it would appear that those individuals who wanted the most gain from this would go ahead and do it. those who favour the cooperative side would not do this in the hope that the ignoring the loophole will not cause the demise of FF programs.

in essence, it appears that the posts thus far have been heavily from those individuals who favour the "fair play" model of group micro-economics. but, then couldn't the same rationale be applied to the valuemags deal? if valuemags is doing this as a loss leader, then FT'ers who are buying huge amounts of magazines are in effect supporting the "selfish" model of group micro-economics.

i'd be interested to hear what others have to say. i would like to continue debate on this. if someone can figure out how i can edit my original post but continue on this discussion, i'd also be happy to hear! i'm more than willing to take the loophole down so long as we can continue to debate this topic.

kind regards
firefly