Does it matter that the consensus of scientists and scientific studies is that GMOs are safe? Or is "science" just a rhetorical tool -- a line in a script that the players must speak when they're performing for the crowd, forgotten the next day because there's a new script with new villains?

Personally, I'd say it doesn't matter any more or less for GMOs than for anything else. I support GMOs in general because I support technological progress and individual choice. If individuals or farmers choose GMOs because they think they'll be better off, governments shouldn't stand in the way unless there's a compelling non-FUD, non-bogeyman, non-witch-hunt reason. Same for anything else.

Are you OK with totalitarian dictatorships as long as they're not genocidal?

What's the dividing line between "big government" and "totalitarian" anyway? How do we keep a government with few limits from becoming a government with very few limits or no limits? Wishful thinking?

The current government is already spying on us all and sending the IRS after political enemies. Farm policies, defense spending, tariffs and import restrictions, immigration policies, financial regulations, clean energy loan guarantees, and environmental regulations are already for sale for campaign cash or non-cash campaign support. This is big government. This is what happens.

Do you think you can somehow magically get all the good things and none of the bad things? If you have the magic power to bring about this utopia, why aren't you using it?

And you're defending corruption and graft and repression. Because "efficiency" and what if bogeymen come?!?

Plus you skipped the part of "history" where governments slaughtered 100s of millions of innocent people and enslaved tens of millions more.

Your local governments made sweetheart monopoly deals to get cable money. Now you think the solution is for your local government to make a different kind of sweetheart monopoly deal for municipal internet access?

Open up local wired infrastructure to competitive use instead. The wire is in the ground. End monopoly access to it. Let companies compete for subscribers.

Big leftist corporatism gets a pass. Because leftists aren't really against corporatism. Corporations and corporate power are just a bogeyman used to scare the rubes into giving away their money and their personal autonomy. But leftist corps will save you from the bogeymen. See the difference?

More thoughtful insight. Congrats.

Why would they want to reduce profits? They're for free markets, not lower profits.

That's what the judge ruled.

You're basically selling a really terrible system by making up FUD about the bad things that might happen if there are any changes. What branch of government writes your paychecks?

Let's see if any Democrats get voted out in primaries. My guess: No. Democrats in safe seats are guaranteed lifetime re-election.

You're trying "to be fair", obviously. Instead of trying to understand people, call them "batshit crazy". Insightful. Also tolerant and open-minded and thoughtful.

Free markets are the opposite of totalitarianism. Tea Party supports free markets vs. Republican allegiance to big corporate donors.

The balance of power between Washington vs. the rest of America has improved slightly.

Republicans were able to stand up and beat a Washington insider in a primary in a safe seat. Will Democrats ever be able to do that? Or are Democrat incumbents in safe seats guaranteed lifetime reelection?

Just because something occurs, that doesn't mean it needs to be governed at all. For the most part, people can live their own lives without a government mommy watching and second guessing everything they do.

And are you really trying to claim our huge central government is "efficient"? It must be really, really efficient for all that efficiency to outweigh the corruption.

Economies aren't "run". Individuals make individual choices.

Standardization regularly happens without government edict. The government didn't write the standard for email, for example, but there's still a more-or-less universal standard. It was all done without threats, without police, without graft, without government hearings, without bailouts for the losing technologies, and without paying an email tax.

...died and their empire crumbled. Their centralized government didn't save them.

I do appreciate what they do. It's just not worth the cost. I appreciate a good hamburger. I don't want to pay $2000 for a good hamburger. I don't appreciate being policed and regulated and threatened and spied on and otherwise oppressed in return for the opportunity to get on a waiting list buy a good hamburger for $2000.