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Comment by senthil_rajasek | Hacker News Reader

You could say the same about any rent collector.

No you can't. How many rent collectors do you know have put no monetary investment into what they're renting?

It happens often enough that there is a term for it -- slumlord.

Even slumlords at some point in time had to buy their property. This tribe is being paid up front to be transferred the patent, not the other way around.

They are providing a different form of value is all

The commenter was just simplifying.

By "doing nothing" what they really meant was "by not doing all that much work".

Compared to people who, you know, actually do hard, serious work for (much less of) a living.

You might also look at "doing nothing" in a broader context of "doing nothing" in the face of the genocide that occurred to pave the way for the United States.

So, this is one of the small benefits they can enjoy as a result of not contesting the authority of the US government to occupy the USA.

A small benefit they can enjoy while providing an enourmous benefit for Allergan. Did Allergan experience a genocide too? Let's look at who has more to gain here.

Exactly.

And you are envious of the useful idiots instead of the corporation. That is thinking small...

Indeed. It's exactly this kind of "doing nothing" which makes the world turn on its axis, pretty much.

You are making some mental gymnastics to ignore the historical oppression and continuing fight for legal rights.

By your flawed logic, someone who inherits a building also have put no monetary investment on what they are renting. You might as well also say that holocaust survivors won the lottery, by that logic.

Indian tribes, and every minority that managed to gain any stop-gap benefit, have to invest a lot of effort and time in maintaining their immunity/rights/etc. And this obviously greedy move, make that work harder in the medium/long term for them and every other tribe. So in a way they are putting in a investment.

Rent collectors aren't equivocal.

But legislative and tax loopholes and corporate shelter nations/jurisdictions are.

Except landlords pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a property and hope to make a profit from it. The renters could destory the place and pay nothing.

Or the landlord/owner could go bankrupt and own nothing because it is all shielded under a corporation... What is exactly your point?

If they go bankrupt they still lose their initial investment. That isn't shielded by anything.

Writing it off as a tax loss only covers a small percentage of the loss and assumes you have another gain to offset.

And the landlord can get insurance to protect from the renter destroying the place.

And require tenants to pay for their own insurance so that the landlord doesn't have to pay if anything happens to stuff the tenants own or if they cause large amounts of property damage.

As a former landlord, I don't think this is an accurate comparison.

There are plenty of people who own the mineral rights to land that it applies to.

Yeah, residential real estate isn't the best example, but it's not as though there isn't any pure rent-seeking out there.

I would, if it was an interesting use case. You don't see people being handed $15m a year ("for free") every day.

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