That's a good one. I suppose a couple of random fires caused by burning debris is what brought down Building 7?

Even a plane slamming into the skyscraper you're currently inhabiting isn't that big of a cause for alarm. An orderly evacuation is recommended, but any decent architect will tell you that those steel-and-concrete buildings are designed to withstand the impact of several 747s.

Actually, it is precisely Apple's fault. If they didn't make their formats proprietary, then the choice of operating system would not make a difference.

I think you've misunderstood the reasoning at work here.

This is in preparation for a continental biometric identity database, not to track alleged terrorists. The goal is to track everyone, regardless of who they are or what they've done.

The federal government is still pushing for it's Real ID program, and it has a few states on board. Most of the states want nothing to do with this, but I'm not sure how long they'll hold out.

Actually, Runaway makes a great deal of sense. The single greatest deterrent to violent crime is an armed and/or empowered victim. No after-the-fact police officer is going to make a difference, and prior performance does not necessarily indicate future action - in other words, identification helps very little in crime prevention.

This is why I'm not advocating anarchy. I'm advocating the government structure guaranteed to us in the U.S. Constitution, of a government that was bottom-up in design with no head; from the people to their communities to the counties to the sovereign states, with a legal entity formed by the contract between them to solve interstate disputes.

I've been saying for years that money is just a metaphor for energy, and I'd gladly accept 40 watt coins or kilowatt bills.

But how would you determine the creation of such money? Is it worth the amount of energy needed to make it? Coins would be worth more than paper, then, as there is more energy put into the mining of the metals, the smelting of the ore, the minting of the coins. Or do you think the power companies should simply print their own money instead of banks?

You could just go and say all currency should be based on sunlight, that countries get to mint currency each day representing the total energy gain from the light that falls on their lands. It's not at all fair, and would never be considered seriously, but it is the most logical form of currency.

The gold standard is something everyone can understand, is familiar with, and works. The only reason we ever broke from it is from running national social programs and wars at the same time. When we first adopted the Bretton Woods system in 1946, gold was at $35 an ounce. When we broke from the Bretton Woods system in 1971, Gold was at $44 an ounce. Right now it's around $844 an ounce. Does that help put things into perspective?

In a general sense, I agree with you; large corporations show a disturbing lack of collective morality.

But it needs to be understood, especially with today's transportation and communication capabilities, that large corporations are more protected from across-the-board business legislation than not. Indeed, often lobbyists or other corporate affiliates push for an increase in order to protect themselves from smaller newcomers who would be able to beat them out through innovation or superior marketing if not for the cost of implementing confusing and often unnecessary or non applicable regulation.

As for labor rights, I'm right on board with you there, but also realize that standards were improving on their own before government intervention, and that government intervention today is precisely what keeps wages low.

Let me pose this question to you; what would happen today, if a capitalist decided to start up an auto factory in the U.S. designing ultralight geodiesel hybrids that got 200-250 mi./gal? What if, instead of a single capitalist, we were talking about a group of individuals interested in starting a worker-owned company, just take take the moral ambiguity and the unions out of it. Do you think that would be possible? Do you think that, if it is possible, it would be harder or easier to do because of federal legislation?

Federal regulation oversteps its bounds and prevents innovation and competition. If it must legislate business, it should restrict itself only to public business (businesses with public stock), and leave private business regulation to the 50 sovereign states.

I would argue that the real economy does not grow much at all, only that living standards get continually better through advance of technology, and that the inflated economy we see today is a result of profit from a position of debt.

Ultimately, IANAE (Economist), and I don't have a great answer for you, other than many economists from the Austrian school of thought believe in a return to commodity-backed money, and the economists from the Keynes school of thought have got us into this mess in the first place and ought to be duly ignored.

Capitalism seemed to work pretty well until we gave up on it early last century (it was just too damn hard for large companies to compete in an open market). We could always try that again.

Anarchy would be no government. Small government leads to a situation known as freedom.

Actually the current situation is not as simple as that. While the bank failure can be immediately attributed to the repeal of the Glass Seagal Act (which, by the way, no one in legislation has bothered to reinstate), the real problems with the economy can be attributed to the creation of the Federal Reserve (putting banks in charge of the economy in the first place), and the dissolution of the gold standard (allowing the Fed to create as much money as it wants, without creating actual wealth to accompany it).

Government involvement has done nothing but harm the economy since at least the 1920's, when anti-competitive legislation first began rearing up. It's only grown since then - we really do need less legislation: the people and the states will pull themselves out of this mess much more easily without the federal government mucking things up.

Doesn't matter. Precedent from the Supreme Court states that the IRS has sovereign immunity and cannot be sued on any issue within it's own domain.

Precisely.

I'll even go one step further and name the evil means: the new cybersecurity bill

After the news has its fun with the "cyberterrorist threat" for a few days, how many people do you think will oppose this ridiculously overbroad bill? What do you think the majority will say to/about those few who still have the sense to object?

Well, there's bound to be a few rednecks who can use computers - I didn't say all of them couldn't.

Also, the site doesn't require a captcha to sign up (that I could find).