Well, yeah.

Frankly I don't see the problem with merely owning any of the aforementioned items. The problem comes when you point them at other animals, or the things that other animals care about. What's so inherently wrong with using a weapon on your own property without harming anyone?

I'd like to see laws constructed such that the moment you intend to cause harm with a weapon, regardless of how big that weapon is, you have committed a misdemeanor. Actually cause harm, and you get upgraded to a felony, with various names and punishments proportional to the actual harm done and the potential harm the weapon could have caused.

Unfortunately, laws are not structured that way. Rather, they're built around knee-jerk panicked responses to the latest horror. I blame the legislators, and the scared people who pressure them to make bad decisions.

And that was, and continues to be, the single biggest mistake of optimistic utopian predictions. Not the "more leisure time" part, mind you, but the "enjoy" part.

If you want to live at a standard set by the 1920's, you can... Living with cheap goods, no electronics, and an hourly factory job, you can meet those basic needs pretty easily. If you're working only a few hours per week to meet those minimal expenses, however, your copious leisure time will be quite boring by modern standards. Knowing what else is available, it takes quite a lot of discipline to maintain that nice simple life.

We realized that we like advancing progress. We like our iPhones, laptops, Internet, movies, and TV shows. We like these things so much that we're still willing to work a full-time job to have them.

This is the single biggest mistake of pessimistic dystopian predictions: The assumption that somehow we're sitting at the absolute maximum of progress, and the precariously balanced economy will topple down the hill on the other side.

The reality is that human nature has not changed. We always want to have the best the world can offer. If that means working just as much as our parents did for a low wage, so be it. At the end of the day, we'll still be able to go to our air-conditioned home, turn on the trillions of transistors in our gaming computers, and play a video game that runs more computations in five minutes than were executed during the entire Apollo 11 mission.

We don't have any more leisure time than we did when those "world of the future" exhibits were built. What's happened instead is that both our working and leisure time have become more effective. At work, we do in an hour what would have taken a team of people several days to accomplish, because our tools are so greatly improved. At play, we routinely spend our time doing what once would have been once-in-a-lifetime activities, because our toys are so greatly improved.

Utopia? We are living it and don't even see it

Either way, the legislature, being comprised of representatives of the jurisdiction involved approved such an action. By extrapolation, that means that the entire jurisdiction approved and agreed to pay taxes to benefit others in the area.

That's how a republic works.

Which really means that the cost of the system doesn't double, but rather that $65/month of taxes are going to this project's costs, rather than building that new skate park, nature trail, or a new sign for city hall. Again, the represented constituents chose (likely indirectly) to spend their budget this way.

And I will happily pay my 30-cent share while those Massachusetts guys help cover the cost of my town's badly-needed $100M school renovation. You see, a long time ago, our two states (and several others) decided to unite to help each other improve their collective lives. Now referred to as the "United States", each member state's citizens pay some taxes into a pool to go toward projects throughout the entire aggregate society.

The total cost of the system will be less than it would be if the $90M only covered a single town. It's impossible to say what your non sequitur is trying to prove.

Good.

Honestly, I'd rather see more stories edited to be less inflammatory. Most of the crap we get on here seems to be pushed to the extremes of "hate these guys" or "love those guys". It's nice to see some small attempt at real journalism, even if it is fueled by corporate politics. I'm hoping it will spread.

As was Lego Creator before that.

This is not Lego's first round in the "creative game" genre.

Right, and that's why I excuse my double standard.

Considering the poor quality of the submissions, and the flood of nearly-identical comments on other stories, I'm suspicious of the intent. It wouldn't be the first time Slashdot has been used to slander others, and the irony of having one Dice subsidiary embarrass another Dice subsidiary makes this a particularly appealing attack.

I saw several submissions, and frankly, not one of them was decent journalism. I voted them down.

Copying a juicy bit from the article and saying "Link to original source" is not a summary.

If I rearrange the letters in that first sentence, I can't make the latter one. I end up with an extra "eeefgghhlmtt", and still need "aiopsvwy".

Lying is evil too, right?

I'll point out that even reporting the money's use doesn't really mean anything. They just report that they entertained potential donors, and their big party is a perfectly cromulent expense. Of course, they have to show that the fundraising was somewhat successful, so they'll be sure to invite a few retired politicians who kept their own PACs and run their own parties. It's all a big cycle, where the money and champagne keep flowing.

The main difference between libertarians and liberals is in their preferred solutions.

Ultimately, the liberal philosophy is that society can and should take care of everyone. The libertarian philosophy is that everyone should only be required to take care of themselves. From an antagonist perspective, liberals have their heads in the clouds, and libertarians have never heard of the tragedy of the commons.

Both are able to see problems in the government programs that Sen. Paul spoke against. When it comes time for a solution, however, the libertarians would fight to abolish the programs entirely, reducing the size of government and ultimately the burden on citizens to support what little benefit the programs may bring. On the other hand, the liberals would usually rather fix the flawed programs, to preserve that benefit while removing the harmful details.

For completeness, we should discuss the conservative position as well: Government should only be involved when someone can't take care of themselves. If someone is able to manage their life without dealing with the government, then the government shouldn't interfere with that. The offending programs should be fixed so that their flaws are covered or resolved, but ultimately don't interfere with society's operation.

The libertarians are mocked because they throw the baby out with the bathwater. The liberals are mocked because they just keep making the system bigger. The conservatives are mocked because they rarely actually fix the problems. Welcome to America, where the most common use of free speech is to complain about someone else.

[citation needed]

I used to work in medical data, and SSNs are actually explicitly prohibited in a number of states. I never encountered any state that required them. I'm also particularly skeptical of your "ANY care" comment, as that would prohibit care for foreigners, vagrants, emergencies, and many accidents.

Unfortunately, it is true that many doctors' record systems require the field. I quickly lost count of how many different patients apparently had 123-45-6789 for their SSN.

Isn't it the whole point of society to improve people's lives?

Recently, improving my life meant making some major renovations in my hometown... Repaving roads, clearing an old nature trail, awarding scholarships, and the like. One particular city official started making those things happen, so he got my support when he ran for mayor. I suppose from one perspective, he bought my vote with my own tax dollars. From my perspective, my taxes were spent on very worthwhile causes.

The GDP serves as a reference point, because it's independent of demographics. It provides a scale for normalizing other ratios, so the numbers that come out of such analysis can be applied usefully. It also avoids the issue of whether production comes from individuals or corporations. If you want those numbers, you can derive them pretty easily.

Do you have any evidence of this generalization? The politician's I've dealt with usually want to maximize GDP, but maximizing a tax/GDP ratio would suggest they'd be better off decreasing GDP.

And that is precisely my point. The world was different in 1940, in many ways. Why should we, as tompaulco suggested, treat 1940 as some ideal standard for running today's government?

I think the basic standard of living has increased somewhat since 1940. Just guessing here, but I suspect that today we have a few more roads, better schools, better healthcare, better law enforcement, and of course, we can't forget that in 1940, we didn't really worry about ICBMs, orbital weapons, or instantaneous ethereal attacks from the other side of the planet. We also didn't have satellites, global surveys, or anywhere near the level of scientific study we have today.

Sure, we can probably keep 300 million people breathing for far less than we spend today, but our lives aren't the same as they were 80 years ago. The equivalence is false.