No. Patently, you're not. You are completely unable to deal with the very real problem of warlords stepping into any power vacuum, and all the abuses that come from that. You just happen to think that a) you'll be the one in power, and b) you'll be the benevolent ruler of your little plot land, happily living in communion with all those around you. Unfortunately for you, every single time a power vacuum happens due to the disintegration of a central state, your theory is put to the test, and it fails absolutely miserably.

What you utterly fail to comprehend is that there is always a power center. It can either be one in which the population is invested in and which can be changed without bloodletting, aka a republic of some sort, or it can be one that doesn't. Both will always claim to have some sort of legitimacy - even if for some it is just the barrel of a gun.

You're so adorable. You're main beef with the government is that you don't like its claim to legitimacy, and therefore think it's as bad as actual criminal organizations. Let me guess - white, under 30, never lived in an actual failed state. Probably come from some rich suburb.

Oh, right, the old argument that "if you're truly open and interested in diversity, you'll let me shit all over openness and diversity, including your own, and you will be happy about it."

Here's the dirty little secret that you're trying hide with that platitude: some ideas are objectively terrible, lead to social disaster, and go against everything the Enlightenment and the revolutions of the 18th century fought for. As a result, the people who espouse those terrible ideas should be called out and ostracized. And while you're right that no party has a monopoly on good ideas, there's only one party that is actively promoting anti-science ideas, segregation, and a general Galt's Gulch approach to society. As soon as the republicans stop being loony, I'll vote for them again.

In the meantime, stop shitting in my cereal and telling me that it is chocolate.

You might be able to use a dictionary, but you clearly lack reading comprehension. A prediction, to qualify as any sort of useful prediction, requires some bit of information that can be acted on. What they said was that the odds of Mt Fuji blowing up increased, but we have no idea by how much or how that would translate into an actual date.

Furthermore, they didn't say that it got close to an eruption, but that the odds increased. Put down the dictionary, and pay more attention to what you read.

There is paranoia, and then there is you. Here's the deal: if you're worried about backdoors in your routers, it doesn't matter what you use - your security is hosed. Same if you're worried about backdoors in password managers - what makes you think that your browser doesn't have one? Your OS? The instant you type in your password, even if it is a 50 random character one that you keep on a steel plate in a vault, it is gone.

You think you're being secure, but you're just being lazy. Specifically, you're being lazy about your security analysis, and actually have no idea what the ramifications are of something being insecure. To extend your analogy to your approach, you think that a padlock is bad, so you put all of your stuff into three separate bins that you then keep in storage locker that is protected not by a padlock, but by door and lock system. Congratulations, you're still making the same mistake all the password manager users are doing. Except you're not aware of it, and therefore much more open to getting exploited.

What - ocean acidification that kills off shellfish, warmer waters that kill off reefs, warmer climates that spread pine borer beetles to brand new areas causing billions in forestry damage and millions in local business damage, the current droughts in Texas and CA that have caused millions in agricultural losses - that's not enough?

Oh, right, it isn't. Some people will say that it isn't happening until the sea floods their house and their crops and animals die. It took famously seven plagues to convince the pharao that something was amiss. I'm guessing that we'll need our own seven plagues in a year before anything happens.

Then please tell me: how does this decision not apply to any other "sincerely held religious belief of a closely held corporation"? The SCOTUS might say that the decision is only supposed to apply to these particular scenarios, but I can't see how you can distinguish one sincerely held religious belief from another. Unless, of course, you let the government get into the business of deciding which religious beliefs trump which.

Then again, this is already happening, thanks to some enlightened congress critters wanting to legislate Baptist beliefs into government law.

The problem is that the only difference between your libertarian and your anarchist is that the anarchist goes to the logical end of "all government intervention is bad", and the libertarian just happens to support exactly the intervention that you like.

In other words, it's just another form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

The Hobby Lobby owners are not forced to pay for other people's contraception out of their own pocket. However, they decided to form a corporation to take advantage of a lot of tax and liability incentives. Apparently, the SCOTUS decided that incorporating is all upside and zero downside.

Can I form a corporation, and, because I sincerely believe that paying taxes is immoral (I'll even provide some documentation that I sincerely believe that), not pay taxes on any money I take in through the corporation?

Yeah, didn't think so. Don't hide your religious bigotry behind a legal construct.

The key word is right there: Presumably. Are they? As far as I can tell, most CEOs can be replaced by chipmunks for at least 6 months at a time, and absolutely nothing happens. What's more, I can think of quite a few high-profile cases where a chipmunk would have produced better results (hello, Carly). The only thing I know for sure is that the bigger the pyramid atop which the CEO sits, or the bigger the flow of money that runs across his (or, in much fewer cases, her) desk, the bigger the pay check. I see little correlation with actual productivity.

Since you're so wonderfully loading the question, I'm going to rephrase it a little bit. Does a civil engineer deserve less money than a marketing director whose sole job is to pump out pretty graphics to tell others what to buy and his bosses what that money went to? Because civil engineers, especially those starting out, make diddly squat.

You haven't met many CEOs, have you? Those that are CEOs or owners of small companies are indeed extremely busy. They also make shit money. Those that make the obscene salaries on the other hand have enough time for mistresses, hobbies and extra-curricular activities - far more so than any working drone underneath them.

False dichotomy. Your tinfoil hat is on too tight.

Most likely, they actually believe their drivel. The stupidity that is rampant even at well-run corporations would indicate that something far more susceptible to politics, theater and attracting the least qualified would result in positions like this. The TSA is utterly useless and needs to be abolished. Too bad that's only going to happen the day that we wholesale dissolve Congress, remove the POTUS, scrap all existing rules, and start from scratch.

You kinda got it right. Corporate social networks are there to promote the distribution of information. But for God's sake, do NOT call them "Facebook for the Enterprise", "Enterprise Social Network", or anything like it. Do not mention enterprise, do not mention facebook, twitter, instagram, or any other idiotic time killer. Call it what you want - "Acme's place for Engineers to comment on feature update requests from PMs", "Worldwide Information Sharing Platform", just don't use the Facebook analogy.

Second, employees are asking for tools to better share information. Sharing your latest beer run or cake social pictures is not information. Sales people want to know if someone knows someone at corp A, where they just got a meeting for. Support people want to know if anyone has seen weird behavior x that isn't documented anywhere, and hasn't been tagged in a case yet. Others want to know if there are some good presentations on a topic so that they don't have to create them by hand, or just want to get in touch with someone in a particular position but who they have never met. An enterprise social network helps that.

Here's the third issue, and this is where most corporate social networks fall down. It has to be used by the execs, and the execs have to show to everyone how to use it right. If they start posting pictures of their latest executive retreat where everyone has a Margarita in hand, or they start to talk about what movie they saw over the weekend, shit will irretrievably go in the shitter. Lack of adoption of a corporate social network is always and every time the fault of the corporate leaders. Whether the execs, or just the people everyone wants to listen to.

What's the problem with knowing that someone got charged for assault in a case that is very understandable?

The right to be forgotten is a terrible solution to the problem of people not being able to judge others properly.

No, not personal data. PRIVATE data. Plus, Google is handling other companies' data that has been put by them onto the public internet. Why the fuck is Google responsible for what is in it? Are you going to blame trash collectors for what people throw out on the highway?

You don't understand statistics very well, do you? Or how actuarial tables work.

When men don't get into 2 as many accidents as women. Sorry, but a corporate accountant has analyzed your criteria, and found that your penis is correlated with a higher rate of accidents. Enjoy your rate.