Sounds like a couple of marriages I know of.....

Exactly. But of course, how can you have truly loving relatives when it takes multiple incomes to maintain a household? Or worse yet, when you've sacrificed your children (either through abortion or contraception) to build wealth in the first place?

In the US the federal government has no property taxes, usually that is a state tax. States vary but where I live property taxes are for real property which is essentially real estate. We also pay a tangible tax and an intangible tax. The tangible tax is for hard physical assets the company owns such as PC's, copiers, vehicles, etc. We also pay an intagible tax for intangible assets such as patents, trademarks, goodwill, etc. So we pay taxes on patents and copyrights but they aren't called property taxes, they are called intagible taxes. Every state probably has different rules, this is just how it works in Florida.

In essence companies do pay taxes for copyrights and patents, they just aren't called taxes, they are called fees. It can't cost anywhere near what the fees are to obtain and maintain a patent for a patent clerk to review an application.

And contrary to jailbreaking, rooting an Android phone is not illegal. =)

"The government should end all subsidies, including allowing industries to pass external costs to others"

That would be a step in the right direction, but I don't think it is enough.

In addition to all the other factors stated in posts above, we have to consider the massive infrastructure in place to support the status quo.

Without subsidizing alternative energy, it might end up taking 50-100 years to completely replace all the infrastructure that currently supports coal and oil.

If I were to try to compete with series of coal-->electricity plants by building up a series of say, wind farms, I'd face pretty large obstacles that coal does not face.

Where to store the energy for later use or low wind times?
Not being able to build near existing lines if there isn't wind there.
Power grid not designed to handle spikes in power,
etc etc etc

Likewise if I wanted to start an electric car line. No 'recharge stations', no bulk battery makers, battery technology research needs to be furthered, etc..

Subsidize should be used to encourage industry to move in the direction the benefits the public. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be used in that fashion very consistently.