I didn't specify what kind of "discrimination" I am subject to, but it is more than age. I reiterate, I have no complaints about being discriminated against. Indeed, I wholeheartedly support the right of any private entity to discriminate on any basis whatsoever in its associations whether personal or commercial -- and that includes the right of those who discriminate against me even when I perceive their discrimination to be "unfair".

What I oppose is a system of government that taxes anything but property rights to pay for its primary service: the protection of liquid value of property rights (including collective property such as national territory) beyond those an individual would defend in nature (ie: his homestead including tools of his trade as well as any other capital assets such as land).

Floating atoll remediation of civilization's environmental footprint would, in addition to permanently rewilding agricultural lands and containing all urban population effluent (including CO2, CH4, N2O and CFC emissions) for 10 billion people at higher than US standard of living, sequester on the order of a teratonne of CO2 from the oceans and atmosphere.

The Seasteading Institute is being left behind by AT Design Office under contract to the Chinese construction firm CCCC, as they proceed with the pilot project to build a 10 square km floating city. What the Seasteading Institute has going for them is their association with Breakout Labs via Peter Thiel, as it supports fluid dynamics research for of the Atmospheric Vortex Engine. Although the AVE would be advantageous even with advanced nuclear technology, any radical reduction (less than 1 cent/kWh) in electric cost -- with or without the AVE -- will suffice to enable the rest of the floating atoll remediation. This is one of a few things that Marshall Savage didn't have the technical chops to address -- the other major things being photobioreactor technology and the notion of atolls unifying beachfront real estate demand with wave break for fragile (hence economic) PBRs.

At this point, it appears to be an entirely feasible economic proposition given the requisite lowering of cost for pollution free electric generation.

If the AVE experiments currently underway attest its economy, the Seasteading Institute can take the floating atoll proposal, package it up the way Mashall Savage should have, and present it to the Chinese. They'll bite.

Speaking as a 60 year old with a killer resume who has been programming for below minimum wage for the last 14 years, largely because of discrimination:

All discrimination should be legal in a truly free market. Unfair discrimination results in a competitive disadvantage that a free market will punish in exact proportion to the degree the discrimination is unfair.

However, we don't have a free market. We have a market that subsidizes wealth. The information technology sector -- in particular -- suffers from the free protection of network effect wealth such as that which built Bill Gates' operating system (hence tightly integrated applications) fortune and which is building Zuckerberg's. Network effect wealth is essentially wealth that accrues to the biggest regardless of whether they're the best or not.

There are those who claim this all evens out in the end due to the higher taxes paid on income, capital gains, value added, sales, etc.

Wrong.

The key to understanding the difference is in comparing the liquidation value of the wealth as opposed to the net present value of the projected profit stream. The liquidation value represents NPV of the projected profit stream adjusted for risk as perceived by risk averse financial institutions, such as pension funds, investment banks (that aren't socializing their risk), etc. On the other hand, that same profit stream, as perceived by gifted technologists and business leaders might be substantially higher because they understand best how to manage the inherent risks.

Where the network effect is the dominant factor in valuing an asset (as it was with MS-DOS the moment IBM started distributing it as the default OS on their 4.77MHz 8088 PC -- or as it is with Facebook as soon as the social status of Harvard was seen as driving the its growth to dominance over prior entrants such as MySpace) there is less difference between the risk averse valuation and the valuation placed on the asset by the "gifted". If, rather than taxing the profit stream, capital gains, value added, sales, etc. the liquidation value were the tax base for civilization, guys like Gates and Zuckerberg would be taxed out of their stranglehold _very_ rapidly, and more competition could enter the field.

Now, would that mean guys like me get to work for above minimum wage?

That I leave to the fair market.

Skills Shortage: The situation in which employers find themselves victimized by price gouging by employees with said skill in the form of demands for higher than minimum wage for temporary employment.

I was thinking about replacing the leaders, actually. Their party need to choose a new PM, real soon!

--dave
[How about the Pirate party?]

I don't think they ever were: it's the leadership that's ex-Reform, and who has been acting in direct contradiction to what they espouse to their electors.

I fear that corruption is starting to set in: the ex-Reform members who lead the current federal government used to hatewasting money. Now they're pissing it away it like drunken sailors.

Time for a change: either the party replaces the PM, or the voters replace the party.

Actually one "polices" them rather than "regulating" them. It's called the "police power of the state", and refers to a lot more than the cops. Anything that gets you dragged in front of a magistrate or board who can punish you is policing

Regulation is a technical term for bylaw-like legislation, is misleading as heck, and historically is a term that lots of people in the 'States and Canada viscerally hate.

Anyone who watches movies knows about the blond bad-guy and the blonde goddess. This blond gene apparently has pleiotropic effects that make men disgusting scum-of-the-earth and women the object of every man's desire.

Strange how that works.

My publisher has such a site and sells DAISY, ePub, Mobi and PDF directly. They cannot sell them via Amazon, however. The Amazon site sells only a kindle-specific variant.

The fact that someone as major as O'Reilly has to deal with Amazon, at a price disadvantage and with significant limitations on what they're allowed to sell is typical of a monopoly, or an oligopoly with one leading member and the others doing price- and policy-following.

Monopolies are barely legal in Canada (where I am), but oligopolies and price-following are winked at. Very occasionally the government or courts will whack a leading oligopolist, but only if they are enraging the whole cell-phone-using population. Arguably they're a criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade, but as they only communicate their evil plans with each via press releases, the "secret" part of conspiracy is technically absent (;-))

The question on everyone's mind that no one is willing to openly state:

Will this article get Arthur Chu a woman?