We could fund it the same way we fund class action lawsuits: By giving the lawyers a big slice of the penalty if they win, and nothing if they lose. That way Google would end up funding their own prosecution, and no tax dollars would be needed.

Google would also fund its own defence. I'm not sure if giving FTC effectively unlimited resources would be a good idea, since wouldn't it basically allow them to do the RIAA?

Also, you have to make significant efforts to lower your water usage to 200l per person per day? Gee, I wonder why you got an 8 year drought.

Water usage is unrelated to rainfall. It is, however, related to climate patterns which in turn are changed by climate change. Get ready for a lot more "worst droughts", "biggest floods" and other extreme weather phenomenom, as the water that previously went to California goes somewhere else. That's why it needs to be stopped, before everyplace is in crisis.

That's hilarious. Calhoun wasn't a member of the "political right". The fact that you associate some of those things with the right today, does not mean he was a "right winger" in his own day.

...That isn't really saying anything too nice about modern-day right wing, you know.

Lincoln did not like negroes.

But he still issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Calhoun issued the tripe we just read. That's their respective contributions to history, and is what they are to it.

You are blaming people for living in the day they lived, and for the society in which they were raised. Granted, it might have been rough and bigoted by our standards, but those were the best standards those people knew at the time.

Except the whole reason the Civil War was fought in the first place is that people did know a better way, but some simply didn't want to give up their unjust privileges. Perhaps it's unfair to judge Calhoun with our standards, but he also falls short of those of his own time.

And it's not like the idea of slaves and slavemasters - or serfs and lords - is gone. The whip and manacles have been disguised and integrated into the very structures of society itself, but still some do the work and others watch their coffers fill. And it's always the right wing which champions the rich and powerful against the poor and weak. Championing hierarchy and inequality is the very definition of right-wing politics. It's simply a milder version of dictatorship and authoritarianism, and like them, belongs in the dark past of human species, to become nothing but a bad memory and perhaps a museum exhibition.

And consumption without production doesn't help anybody.

A company without customers isn't going to keep producing anything for long. And once it goes belly-up, any employees it had will become unemployed, ceasing their consumption due to lack of income and thus causing the circle to repeat with another company.

Capitalistic economy has a boom-bust cycle precisely because supply is a time-lapse function of demand, and demand is a function of supply (since you can only generate demand if you have income, which is typically earned through working). The problem is, as technology advances supply requires less and less people, so the booms become smaller and the busts deeper. Simply giving people money in the form of credit has kept the whole house of cards standing this far, but the problem with credit is that it can't grow forever - or could, but at that point it's just a less honest name for citizen pay.

Future historians will also let people starve. Why would you think things will be different in the future ?

It's irrational and ineffective. Starving people contribute neither production nor consumption. They merely create a revolt risk. A system that provides at least subsistence-level income for all its members will outcompete a system that doesn't through sheer endurance.

Put another way, at some point the only way for a corporate entity - a nation, a company, whatever - to expand is to make the world effectively bigger by lifting people out of poverty so they have time and energy for nationalism, trade, posting on Slashdot, etc.

Also, with the ever-deadlier weapons even Joe Terrorist can afford, at some point the future historians either ensure no one's desperate or future history will end.

Why does the San Jose Water company care about this at all?

Water contains hydrogen. Drink enough, and you too can be a star!

And this differs from having children the old fashioned way how?

"The two morons have a right to procreate. So far, every attempt to curtail that right has resulted in material fit to inspire horror writers."

To claim that this process is necessarily going to be made worse by adding some human intelligence to the mix is problematic.

Not necessarily, but possibly. Whether the risks outweight the benefits is what the debate is about. Or at least the meaningful parts of it; I have no doubt there's people who are using it as a proxy for some other, unrelated issues.

But the debate should be about how to use this power wisely, not whether we should develop it at all. Someone will, and it's better that that happen out in the open than in some secret lab in $EVIL_NATION or funded by $EVIL_BILLIONAIRE.

True enough, I suppose.

And where does personal responsibility fit into your narrative? It's not the government or the nebulous "powers" causing the bulk of the problems in society it is the choices individuals make that determines their quality of life.

Your individual choices determine - or at least influence - the particular role you play. What roles and in what proportion are available is determined by the Powers That Be.

It's like a game of musical chairs: sure, who gets the chair and who doesn't is determined by the player's personal qualities, but that someone was bound to be left without is determined by the nature of the game itself, as are the consequences.

Storming the barricades will not solve any problems it would only result in a new set of problems that are much worse.

Much worse for whom? The increasingly small set of "winners"? Where's their personal responsibility for the fate their own behaviour is bringing ever closer?

Revolutions occur when enough people have nothing to lose but their chains. Whether they actually solve anything depends on whether these people blame it all on the current "elites" of society or see beyond that surface to the nature of the game itself - the "nebulous powers" you mentioned. Replacing one king with another won't solve anything, but replacing absolute monarchy with constitutional democracy does.

The use of outrageous hyperbole, lies of omission, and anecdotal evidence has also contributed to the problems we face today.

Insofar as these have all been used to blame social problems on their victims, yes. Time will tell whether those who excuse their selfishness with such deception can bear to put it aside while there's still time to save the nation and themselves.

Some countries are forced to capitulate to the Americans and their corporations out of tactical necessity. Weaklings like Mulroney and Harper *like* being vassals.

Every human being who has power is a vassal to whatever grants them that power. Mulroney and Harper are no different than US senators in that respect. In a democracy the Powers That Be are ideally interested in the wellbeing of their citizens, and instruct their vassals accordingly; but even in the most seemingly powerful dictator is merely riding the tiger, and will be cast aside and replaced - and likely devoured - if he ever gets fancy ideas about actually being in charge. Just look at what happened with Gorbachev for a good example.

Human society is a superorganism, a living thing in its own right. Human beings don't rule it. They can, at the most, hope to be sufficiently trusted agents to be allowed some freedom in how they act on its behalf. But even if you find a new political or cultural movement or something, and even if it's based on your personal convictions, once institutionalized the power rests in the movement and will wield you, not the other way around. Heck, even if you fund everything from your personal property, you're still only allowed to keep it as long as you conform to economic forces.

But that's a deal a lot of people are willing to make, either due to weakness or having some cause they consider worth the cost. But I wonder how many of them actually realized this is the trade they're making, rather than entertaining delusions about bending power to their own will rather than being its tools.

And the same thing can be done with electric cars. It's possible to make the charging software smart, and have it look at the spot price graph, user desired charge levels, and determine whether to charge the battery, wait, or even sell some power back to the grid.

So basically, I'm going to be paying for a larger battery than I actually need, which will also get more usage and thus wear down faster than it otherwise would, just so the electric company can avoid paying for that infrastructure. Oh, and the whole thing is going to be less energy efficient than electric corp batteries would be, since it'll be moving lots of electricity through long low-voltage lines back and forth, back and forth again. And of course I'll be paying for the resulting losses, too, as well as whatever margin the electric company wants for selling and then buying back power.

Oh well, I guess there'll be a market for command filters to sit between the car and the grid to stop these shenanigans.

That's the false dilemma. Why the hell do you have to get rid of all fossil fuels? Why does using one mean you can't use the other?

Even if a fossil fuel plant could be effectively idled - which current ones can't - who would pay for the maintenance? Keeping things on standby in case they're needed is not free.

If you want the grid to keep fossil/nuclear/whatever plants ready for a cloudy day, then it needs to charge a feed tariff from unreliable sources - such as current solar installations - to cover that. However, it might be possible to base this tariff on per-plant reliability (which can be mitigated for example by installing batteries) rather than generation method, and could perhaps be further mitigated by producers directly buying reliability from other providers or battery centers or whatever.

The core of the problem is that we don't currently have a good (dense, cheap) method of storing electricity, since our battery technology is insufficiently advanced. The good news is that with the rise of mobile computhing there's an enormous economic incentive to advance it. As of this writing, it's still not good enough; once it gets there, we can install intermediate storage everywhere and treat electricity like any other good.

I don't think the concern is lost lives, but either losing a source of intelligence or losing face.

And losing lives typically results in both. Unless you're specifically aiming for a brutal reputation, it's best to keep your secret service beneath the radar.

A baby made in a back seat by two morons who can't find a condom is superior, "ethically" speaking, to a baby with maladapted genes removed.

Which is bullshit. What's being debated is whether it's right to make experiments who's consequences a person who can't consent to them has to carry. If your attempt to remove "maladapted genes" ends up causing early-onset dementia, what are you going to do?

The two morons have a right to procreate. So far, every attempt to curtail that right has resulted in material fit to inspire horror writers. On the other hand, there's no fundamental right to perform human experiments on helpless victims.

Finally, even assuming realiable genetic technology, it's highly questionable whether human species is mature enough to take over trait selection from nature. Remember, it's these same morons who "can't find a condom" who get to custom design their kid. Do you believe the result would be an improvement?

Then it is just like many recent zoning battles. When the company name is 'Walmart' people come out of the woodwork to try to rezone/add limiting land use overlays/etc to try to stop one from being built.

And if Tesla ever reaches the power of Wal-Mart, it might be appropriate to make laws that apply to it and no one else, to preserve that precious market. Right now, it isn't.

Oh right. So when do you expect this "fall" to occur? Because there's not much sign of the three-letter gov agencies letting go of the world's private parts any time soon.

And why would they, when you're signaling right here that you're simply going to submit without a fuss? The NSA will fall when it goes beyond what US citizens are willing to tolerate. Since you tolerate your state killing you, I suppose it might get a while to get there. Or not, as this very story demonstrates.

I cite Obama's election promise of an end to mass surveillance, which went nowhere.

Right. So why do you keep voting for the Two Parties? They hardly have a reason to change when, for all your "citing", they can count on your support no matter how they treat you.