Strip club dancing is not a bank. Some problems don't need perfect solutions. (But see above for a near perfect solution they could use if they decided it mattered.)

Certification is not necessarily licensing. You wouldn't even need to require the certificates -- just use them as an easy way to prove girls are over 18. If you don't have a certificate, get one after the fact. Government policing of dancers has very limited public benefit, and dancing is free speech. The government should tread very lightly.

If releasing the records is a privacy or other rights violation, then the recording the information to begin with should be the same violation.

Its not very important. But it's easy to provide anonymous authentication. If you really cared, you could store a key of some kind to validate the certificate. The key would not need to contain any identity information for the dancer -- it would just be used to validate the certificate, like a password hash.

At some point, it's a lot easier to find 18-year-old dancers than to forge complex certificates and fight the authorities all the time.

The same person who checks it now. Police or some bureaucrat. Once someone proves their age, they get a certificate that they've proven their age. If there's any question about their age, they present the certificate. No public records or occupational licensing are needed.

You don't need to maintain dancers' license records to check someone's age.

You can check someone's age without licensing them.

If releasing the records to the public is a privacy or other civil rights violation, then creating them should be the same violation. If we can't make the data public, then find a way to regulate without collecting the data, or forego the regulation entirely.

Someone who doesn't care enough to vote probably doesn't care enough to find out anything about the candidates either. If you drag them into the polls, they'll vote based on whichever guy had the most ads run against him. Unmotivated voters give money more influence in elections, not less.

They just need people like Lessig to tell them they're stupid and/or evil more often. Then they'll be convinced to vote for Lessig's priorities instead of their own.

It's not just the tree-hugging. The anti-oil-pipeline people are essentially the same. An oil pipeline is better for both people and "the Earth" than train cars loaded with oil. But it doesn't seem to matter.

Then there's anti-nuclear Greenpeace.

Then there's the anti-fracking crowd. Because coal is better for people than natural gas?

Then there's the anti-GMO people. GMOs require regulation, but when they are regulated, they are good for people. And they're better for "the Earth" because crops can be grown with fewer pesticides and less energy use applying pesticides.

How many examples before it's a pattern of disregard for humanity?

Also reality is important. If you're saying environmentalists never choose animal habitats over people, that's not reality. You're just telling stories, even if you believe them yourself. Anyone can make up stories to justify anything.

Environmentalists usually choose animal habitats and wilderness for wilderness' sake over what's best for people.

Only to a point. Cleaner is better until you get to clean enough. After that, benefits to people don't justify the costs to people.

And making poor people poorer is never going to give them the extra resources it takes to clean up anything.

Because voters are only allowed to care about one issue.

I'm for helping people be freer and better off, not pretending to save the planet while making people worse off. When helping people be freer and better off is also good for the environment, then lets do that. When helping people be freer and better off is arguably worse for the environment, then a realistic cost/benefit (cost to people, benefits to people, animals and trees and rocks don't count at all) analysis is in order.

Prosperous people take care of the environment. Struggling, desperate people don't. Maintaining prosperity is necessary for a clean and healthy environment. Expanding prosperity is necessary for us to be resilient to any huge challenges in the future.

My attitude is that we should focus on making things better despite climate change consequences and work on creating a future where we'll have the resources to cope with whatever problems come our way. We should be free and prosperous and bold, not poor and afraid.