It actually does mean exactly that. If a state wishes to assert legitimacy, the onus lies with the state to ensure that justice is uniformly and fairly carried out. The state is ultimately accountable to the citizens, not the other way around. Justice is far more important than the unchallenged authority of the state.

Of course, there can/will be consequences for taking the law into your own hands (which can't often be said for agents of the state). Of course, a regular process for determining guilt and dispensing retribution is preferred.

While it is in many ways (far) less than ideal, there is an easier answer: vigilantism.

One man can solve his "justice" problems by himself, but one man can't change the system by himself. If society at large decides that vigilante "justice" is not something that we want, then we can change the system together. There is a recurring progression to these things that isn't easily short-circuited.

What is the best thing he could do, then? Vigilante responses only start to look attractive when official responses are withheld. If police actually investigated crime that is important to citizens, rather than wasting their time going after drug users and speed limit violations, vigilante responses would be less attractive. The police magically appear at the corporations' behest when someone tries to report a security vulnerability; where are they when citizens need them?

Or you're being paid by the annoying-headphone-wire-lobby to keep sales from dropping. Or the deleterious health effects caused by headphone wires are still being suppressed for their huge impending class action suit. Wow, this is easy...

Silent Circle was partially founded by Philip Zimmermann, so that's supposed to lend some credibility to the operation. The company, and PZ in general, still operate on the premise that trust in them should be enough for anybody, so the operation will be opaque and the source closed.

I really respect a lot of what Zimmermann has done, but we're finding out more and more that our trust in institutions was ill placed. I don't think his model works in our current world. Finding out in twenty years that Silent Circle was an NSA front wouldn't really surprise me that much, despite Zimmermann's involvement. "Trust me, I'm one of the good guys," doesn't fly anymore.

I really appreciate the removal of the left sidebar, actually. This new layout, as totally fucked and buggy as it is in so many ways, at least gives ample room to the comments. Deep comments are still not handled well, where after ten comments deep the nesting gets screwed up.

Bugs aside, this is a huge improvement over Beta, which basically ignored the fact that the comments are the only thing that make this site worth visiting. A little testing would help, though. This layout is broken on every browser I try. What browser are the devs testing it on?

Testing phase? That's a clever idea...

Wow... speaking of full retard.

You've clearly got some assumptions that you're basing all of your little tirades on, so why don't you just share them upfront instead of expecting us to infer them from your breathless ranting.

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OK, I went back and reread the thread and see what's going on now. You're not talking about robots replacing human labor like everyone else in the comments for this article. I accidentally stepped into the present day, nothing to do with this article, libertarian/anti-libertarian thread. I'll show myself out.

They're barely even trying to hide it this time, though. I mean come on, "Spartan". Yeah right. Without the PR, their true colors show through!

The same NIST that pushed the adoption of Dual_EC_DRBG even when it was evident that it was flawed? I mean, even the organizations that nobody trusts, like the NSA, publish helpful guides and information.

So who comes and murders the hot dog vendor to death for operating a stand in his private park without giving up his cut? Where does this homeless person sleep while he's raising his capital and picking himself up by his bootstraps. Your entire argument is predicated on the existence of land that is free to use by others.

What do you base this on? If everything is privately owned and they have nothing to offer but labor, which is devalued or valueless in our hypothetical robot-run world, where do they get this money?

If he's starting with nothing, he's only got a few weeks to build up the capital to start his hotdog stand, while diverting some of the money to food, water, and rent (there is no public land, remember). If he fails to raise the money or misjudges his market, he starves to death, right?

I assume that in a world where labor had little to no value, you'd never be that homeless man, right?

[To keep this discussion on track, I'm not some authoritarian statist or communist or anything. I'm only pointing out that your solution to this thought experiment isn't very well thought out.]

Well, it's a good thing that your opinion of the case determines its merit.

Look, I'm sure that you've done more research into this case than I have, but not siding with Pao doesn't mean that someone is motivated by all of the generalizations that your post claimed. How about you lay off attributing everything to the conspiracy of the patriarchy and actually explain the relevant facts of the case if you feel compelled to post something. What you're posting now contributes nothing positive to the conversation at all. You don't win arguments by just calling people names.

You're looking to let her off the hook based on a strawman generalization that nobody's making but you. Nobody here is talking about women sleeping their way to the top, but about Ellen Pao specifically, who seems to have a sketchy past and questionable motives.

Just because you think her case has merit doesn't mean that it's settled. Others think her case doesn't have merit and disparaging them as misogynists doesn't make you automatically win the argument. Your entire post is just one big ad hominem attack.

And why is that? I gave very real examples of what our government can and does do to its citizens. To quote the poster you originally responded to, "For my government, it's as easy as sending a patrol car or two." And I noticed that you never addressed the identity theft part...

Yes, I believe a newspaper article about something that hasn't happened falls squarely in the realm of fantasyland. We have contingency plans to nuke them as well.

You mean like that recent case where the police stole a woman's identity and used it to build a cover as a prostitute?

Or are you referring to all of the people in the US who have their assets seized without trial? Now with parallel construction, it can be done with even less justification than before.

Has China ever done any of this stuff to us, ever? Because the US has done this stuff to its own citizens plenty of times. So why should I be so afraid of China, when the biggest danger my wellbeing comes from my own government?

The rest of your post is fantasyland wharrgarbl, so there's no point in addressing it.