Corporations are, after all, a charter granted by the government

Semantics. As long as people are free to associate and work together on something, such groups may as well be called "corporations" (or "cooperatives" or "collective farms"). And no, they don't exist on government's sufferance.

Government is a monopoly — and its pretense to "care" is being shattered in Baltimore as we argue — and I don't mean only the still-investigated death of a miscreant in police custody, but the mayor's orders to police to stand down and not protect citizens and their property from the rioting scum.

legally obligated not to care

Nonsense. They are legally obligated to maximize shareholders' value. This makes them care for my money and the only ways for them to get it is to offer me something I want. Government-run service-providers (such as police or Amtrak) don't have these ugly concerns for so base an object as "money" and consequently care not. All you can hope from them is the pretense of caring...

doesn't seem like a good trade.

I would've left you to your follies, except your decisions to hand over more and more control over your life to the government empowers it to take the same control over mine.

There's always limits on freedom due to conflicts, eg the classic conflict between my waving my fist and your right not to get punched.

Sure. Now please explain, how this truism is relevant to the issue at hand. Whose "nose" and whose "fist" are we talking about?

Staying on topic, there is limits to how many Individuals can erect telephone poles and how many wires/fibers can go on the poles

There may be a limit, but we are far from reaching it. FiOS cable runs to my house from the same pole, from which Comcast's cable runs to my neighbors. I think, the same pole can handle 10 or 20 more such cables easily.

the collective can put up the poles, run the fiber and allow anyone to use them for a reasonable fee

You must be a real fan of our collectively-run roads ($2mln per mile!! where I live) and public transit, but I am not. Just what is it, that makes the normally monopoly-abhorring slashdotters all weak in the knees, when it comes to governmental monopoly is beyond me. It is the worst monopoly imaginable...

there's also a limit on the number of roads that are possible so they're run by the collective

First of all, I do not accept the "cables are like roads" analogy — they aren't. But even roads can be private and competing. If Tokyo has privately-owned competing subway lines, why can't New York?

Moron.

Please, don't hate.

In a free country, businesses don't get massive government subsidies and de-facto monopolies.

That's absolutely true. And Libertarians fought those things tooth-and-nail too.

But a government's folly of subsidizing a business does not give us the right to take it over. We don't own Internet infrastructure any more than we own Tesla's wonder-cars.

Also, in a free country, governments can decide no business serves their constituents well and decide to serve their constituents directly.

Huh? Can you elaborate on the logical chain that lead you to this statement? What sort of freedom is it, that allows the Collective to arbitrarily prohibit an Individual to offer a service?

I like this guy but he seems to come along with the occasional show stopper

Typical attitude of those, who only want freedom for themselves, while ready to trample that of others.

Hint: in a free country, businesses exist not because the Collective needs their services, but because their owners choose to pursue happiness that way.

Libertarians remember that and fight any attempts to coerce citizens into some kind of Greater Good[TM].

I've read it.

So cite the parts you find offensive...

The Conservatives are happy to kill innocents

Bravo! This sentence alone explains everything about you. Very well put, except for one minor nit: In such context, the word is spelled KKKonservatives. Otherwise perfect.

Or you don't know how studies are done.

I do. And one of the requirements for a scientific finding, is that it be reproducible .

The wording would make new analysis of 3rd party data illegal.

Citations?

It would shut down lots of legitimate science that's done on license.

Before we continue — citations?

there is room for debate

Imagine, for a second, the evil RethugliKKKans trying to mandate use of open source software by a government agency — and Slashdot opposing it...

If they're going to create such a rule for EPA, then it should also apply to NIH, FDA, DOE

You have to start somewhere.

If they don't make it universal, then they're showing an obvious bias

Even if there is such a bias, what of it? It is not like imposing this rule on the EPA today would prevent imposing it on other departments/agencies later.

Besides, the opponents of the idea do not oppose it on the grounds, that it is not going far enough. Obama is not saying:"I will veto this bill unless the rule covers the entire federal government! No way, no how!!"

It turns out that facts are, in fact, factual.

That's true about all facts, whether identified by denialists or alarmists.

If you'd like to talk about particular ones, however, please, see my challenge in the post higher up.

What exactly is your point?

The point is that the pontiff's — or, for that matter, any other non-scientist celebrity — agreement with a supposedly scientific argument, adds no more weight to it, than a disagreement by the same celebrity would have removed.

OMG POPE!

That's exactly the attitude I was ridiculing.

Oh, please. If he instead expressed skepticism, you would've dismissed him as a religious bigot, who believes the Earth was created 5 thousand years ago by a Deity and given to Man to control, and is not a scientist.

Now you are willing to praise him because he agrees with you. Bah...

Skeptics certainly have a clue — it an environment as hostile to skepticism as the climate debate is, any contrarian is always far more educated on the subject, than the following-the-flow crowd. They may still be wrong, but clues they have aplenty.

Why don't we play a game: can you cite two predictions made by global warming "alarmists", that actually came true within 80%? Each citation would have to include a link to the prediction and a link to the confirmation — with the two being 5 years apart or more... The first such predictions have been made decades ago — some are bound to have materialized by now... How about it?

You later get divorced, presently childless. She decides to try again and the implantation is successful. Can she come back for child support?

Yes, she can and she will. At least, you produced the sperm while still her husband and would-be father of her children.

If a sperm-donor can be hit for child-support, you would have not a chance. And not just in Kansas, Illinois too only makes exceptions for sperm donated "through medical channels involving a doctor".

It may work the other way too — a donor may get parental rights after an artificial insemination.

Presumably, with the rights comes a child support obligation as well — the two better be inseparable.

The provisions seemed rather common sense to me when reading through them: Maintaining a list of drivers, criminal background checks, sufficient insurance for commercial purposes, visible external marker on the car, yearly safety inspections, minimum age of 21, and a license fee for the privilege of this oversight, of course.

These might make sense for taxis, which are/were government-enforced monopolies. But for the viciously competing companies the regulations aren't needed.

And, like all regulations, they inevitably increase costs. That the Statists of Massachusetts will seek to impose such things is not surprising. That Slashdot would applaud them — that's more of a disgrace...