The same way, if I remember correctly, that he was "sure" that the Citizen's United ruling wouldn't lead to a massive increase in private/corporate money influencing the US election system...

Uhm, they already do. Here in Chicago, we call it the south side.

You're right, but not for the reason you list. Charlie disbanded in '76 after the fall of Saigon and unification of the North and the South.

If what is said in the summary is true, we're past the point of a "strong risk" of it not ending well and are well into that being a reality. Apparently, this genius radio engineer was also causing interference for the two-way radio systems used by first-responders.

He's screwed because he's a complete moron. He's just another asshole with anger management issues and/or delusions of grandeur who decided to grant himself law enforcement powers. Not only did he block cellphones but, apparently, he was also interfering with the radio communications of first-responders. It'd be like someone driving up onto a busy sidewalk for a chance to get photographic evidence of someone jaywalking...

Not that this has anything to do with the actual topic of this story, but I don't think that's an accurate description of the situation. We're not being bred for slavery because (even if they were morally willing to) the ruling class no longer has a need for slaves in the long-term (the only time-frame that a "breeding program" would actually be useful). Automation will be the new "slavery" without all the nagging ethical issues of real slavery. It will leave only the most "interesting" jobs remaining (before strong AI, if it's actually possible, replaces even those jobs) which the small portion of the population comprising the ruling class will be able to perform as hobbies to feed their intellectual curiosity/egos.

If anything, we are being obsoleted and the present struggle is between those of the ruling classes that have ethics/morals and those that don't over what to do with the excess of humans that will soon no longer be needed. The ones with ethics/morals will push for more socialization, education, and birth control adoption while the ones without morals/ethics will be more inclined to focus all excess resources/energy towards personal profits and ego driven vanity projects while letting the masses starve. They'll push for the use of highly automated police/military forces to put down any civil/political unrest.

The No Snodens Agency.

What in the world makes you think a criminal background check isn't relevant? You want convicted sexual predators driving taxis around? How about people that have been convicted of fraud? You want them being responsible for operating the meter in an honest manner? There are enough issues with slimy/fraudulent practices in taxis services as it is, now you want to do away with the criminal background checks entirely? You're nuts.

Also, you seem to have completely ignored the third issue at stake here: insurance. Personal auto insurance != commercial auto insurance. The moment your insurance company finds out you were driving people around for profit at the time of your accident they will, completely legitimately, refuse to pay out any claims. While it's completely fine that you don't get paid after committing insurance fraud (which IS what you're doing when you violate your CLEARLY WRITTEN insurance contract to drive for profit) the important thing here is that anyone you've hurt (such as your fares and/or whatever/whoever you hit) are now left with no way to be compensated unless they can squeeze the money out of you. Since it's unlikely that people like Warren Buffet or Donald Trump are going to be Ubering in their Bentley, this means that those people are almost certainly screwed.

Probably for the best, Ms. Piggy is violent enough for the two of them.

Since it's a math problem instead of grammar, would that make you an an arithmetic Nazi?

Actually, it's an even worse comparison than that. Not only does it not disrupt major industries that employee large numbers of people and, more importantly, keep a large number of wealthy people wealthy but the nuclear disarmament process has provided a source of plentiful, already mostly processed, fuel for the nuclear power industry. For a while now, many US nuclear plants have been running off of fuel sold to them by the Russians and gotten from dismantled nuclear weapons stocks (though, last I heard that supply was finally running out). This means that, unlike with the global warming debate, the entrenched industry types have a good reason to actually support the process rather than work to stop it.

Rather than Ponzi scheme, the proper term for Kickstarter would probably be "confidence scheme" or "confidence trick".

There's always "Au jus"

Use MongoDB, it's web-scale. They produce kick-ass benchmarks by piping all your data to /dev/null.

If it's just genetic diversity you're worried about, why send the people themselves? It seems to me that sending that many people would be a massive over-expenditure of resources. Why not send much more manageable number of people to run the ship and build the initial settlement along with preserved genetic material for a massively larger population. Breed, predominantly, through artificial insemination for the initial generations until you are back to having the desired diversity in the actual living population.