[PFARS-devel] And a pile of books was occupying the other. Danley quickly g

[Balk <ma...@kr...>]

Pace. Besides, asteroid metals were cheaper than metals mined on Earth.
To induce the colonists to remain in the Belt, no income tax was levied;
the income tax was replaced by an eighty per cent tax on the savings
accumulated when the colonist returned to Earth to retire. "They
resented even that. It was explained to them that the asteroids were,
after all, natural resources, and that they had no moral right to make a
large profit and deprive others of their fair share of the income from a
natural resource, but they insisted that they had earned it and had a
right to keep it. "In other words, the then government bribed them to
stay out here, and the bribe was more effective than they had intended."
"So they stayed out here and kept their money," Danley said. "Exactly.
At that time, if you will recall, there was a great deal of agitation
against colonialism--there had been for a long time, as a matter of
fact. That agitation was directed against certain industrialist
robber-baron nations who had enslaved the populace of parts of Asia and
Africa solely to produce wealth, and not for the benefit of the people
themselves. But the Belt operators took advantage of the anticolonialism
of the times and declared that the Belt cities were, and by right ought
to be, free and independent political entities. It was a ridiculous
assumption, of course, but since the various Belt cities were, at that
time, under the nominal control of three or four of the larger nations,
the political picture required that they be allowed to declare
themselves independent. It was not anticipated at the