On the one hand, you say it's a "canard" that government is force. On the other hand, you say that government "needs" force, and that's a good thing. Which is it?

Of course government is force. That's what makes it government. The only difference between government and any other individual or group is that the government has the legal right to use deadly force to achieve its goals. That's what government is, period. The discussions of how is is moral or not that this force will be used is called "politics".

And I hate your claim that if it weren't for government then we would all be "anarchist barbarians killing and raping and stealing at will". I resent the notion that I would go out and kill, rape, and steal if it weren't for your blessed God Government telling me not to. If suddenly government told you that it wasn't going to enforce those laws, would you immediately go out and rape a baby to death? You sound like a conservative who claims that we would all be shooting up heroin if it weren't for God Government telling us not to do it. I am completely capable of determining for myself what is right, what is wrong, and what is appropriate conduct toward other people, and anyone who insists otherwise is an asshole!

Go read "The Tragedy of the Commons". You might also consider that farming lions is the best way to save the species. Disagree? Consider the populations of cows and chickens compared to the populations of lions and zebras. Common property doesn't work. Either someone owns it or nobody does.

Bull feathers and hen's teeth. Socialism, like Christianity, is entirely about denying self-ownership. In Socialism, you belong to "society" through a "social contract" (Accept it or DIE!). In Christianity, you are "made in God's image" and are "God's child". Both evil ideologies hate the notion of individualism and say that selfishness is evil, where "selfishness" means "not doing what I told you to do". As long as I am not depriving any other individual of their life, liberty, or property, then nothing I do is wrong or should be illegal. And it's rich of you to accuse other of "controlling public thought" when you know very well that socialism wants to control the way people think, act, spend, and live. For the good of "society" and the "social contract". You're no better than a fundamentalist Christian. It's the same evil nanny state with a different stupid God and the connected party members living high on the graft. You suck! I can't tell if you're a Boxer or an aspirant pig -- and go read _Animal Farm_ if you don't know what I'm talking about. Either way, I hate you.

How's that ROI going? Well, if the "R" in question is votes, then it's probably going pretty well.

This will come as a shock to many Boxers (but not many pigs or aspirant pigs -- read _Animal Farm_ to know what I'm talking about), but paying people not to work will incentivize them not to work.

"...should be required reading"? Check.
Freshly-graduated from college? Check.
What's good for me is good for everybody? Check.
What I don't prefer is excrement? Check.
Dismissive and angry in general? Check.

Yes, I bash (the shell, not the petulant behavior). Yes, I know regexes. Yes, I used E16. Yes, I was a zealot of class-A caliber. I see me in you. An angry, condescending, spiteful me. Slashdot is a back-slapping, high-fiving cesspool of that kind of me. It's why your very hackneyed post was modded up as "insightful": it validates very common anti-social, us-versus-them attitude that permeates this place. It's why my own post will be modded down as "flamebait", because I am refusing to validate this very same spiteful, self-satisfied group of people, as hungry for validation as I used to be. Am I better than that now? Somehow superior? No. Just less angry. More accepting of myself and different preferences in others. Less needy of punishing and feeling self-satisfied for having done so. More aware that happiness it the birthright and responsibility of every individual, and that computer UIs are a preference which exist solely to serve humanity's needs, and only after that are a technical (not moral) issue. Maybe when you see your two year-old child working an iPad you'll feel a little bit more merciful, but something tells me that parenthood is light-years away from your radar.

These kinds of stories sicken me. "No link". "No correlation". So what if there was? Correlation does not imply causation.

Yet "linked" and "correlated" appear everywhere in medicine. Why is our culture like this? I think it must be a kind of secular religion -- kind of like the faith we have in peer review.

Indeed. Quite opposed to corporations, trade unions, churches, scientists, public interest groups, police departments, community organizers, universities, charities, and individuals, all of which advance and defend their interests with 100% honesty and lamb-like innocence.

I was still in college and my becoming of a full-blown Linux nerd was a function of my seething hatred for Microsoft. Back then, "News for nerds, stuff that matters" was an anthem for my people. The nerdy ones. I wanted to be esoteric, abstract, intelligent, and I wanted respect for all the things that I liked that had been so commonly mocked and derided during high school. Slashdot filled that void in a very special way: it was new, it was on the web, it was underground, it was filled with people like me: young, male, nerdy. Who was I to know that "Lord of the Rings" would one day win best picture? Back then, "Revenge of the Nerds" was a movie I remember in the theater.

Watching Slashdot grow up wasn't as interesting as watching myself grow up. I became a parent. I learned how to cook. I stopped hating Microsoft so much (I remember feeling ever so slightly conflicted about buying an Xbox). I even returned to my "Apple roots" when I forsook my aging, whirring linux box for an iMac a few years ago. "It's UNIX", I told myself. Funny how priorities change. My coworker, who is in his mid-20s, calls me "old". I call him "post-Jedi", referring to the movie after which he was born. I saw Star Wars in the theater, but I was too young to remember it.

Slashdot is special and will always be. Thank you, Rob, for being there for all of us. And Emacs still sucks.

In 1998, I think.

When I want to feel nostalgic, I look at the BillG as borg logo, and remember when I truly did hate Microsoft and think they were such a terrible threat. I like to think about the Halloween documents and how exciting and subversive all that was.

I have asthma, too. Thankfully, it's minor (right now).

But it seems like what you're saying is this: "Since my asthma medication is effective and necessary, that means that 100% of all drugs everywhere are exactly like that, there is absolutely no graft or abuse in the prescription drug industry, and anyone who believes otherwise is simply stupid."

I won't call you an idiot. And I certainly won't discount the condition you suffer from. But words and terms exist for a reason. Words like "iatrogenic" and "ADR" ("adverse drug reaction"). Doctors and prescription drugs save people. Doctors and prescription drugs also kill people. And they do so for reasons of incompetence, abuse, and graft. Otherwise, the prescription drug industry wouldn't have to pay the BILLIONS of dollars in fines that it does every year to settle with the government for killing people. Strange to think that the government is punishing them -- doesn't the government, in the form of the FDA, regulate drugs and keep them safe?

No, the FDA is 100% complicit. Its members consist of former drug company executives. It's a rubber-stamp organization.

Indeed, it's all about wealth redistribution. Of course, there are some cases, even in "civilized" universal healthcare systems, where the rationing board will decide that you're just too expensive to treat, and recommend hospice care as a gentle alternative. After all, it's all about putting a limited resource (money) where it's most useful, and that means that we don't waste money saving people who are older than $current_threshold. And even if you try to make sure your universal healthcare system is designed only to help the very poorest with the most exotically expensive diseases, it certainly won't stop millions of people attempting to charge every single thing under the sun (cotton swabs, sunscreen, etc.) to the universal healthcare system. And they will succeed to some degree, because some vote-hungry MP somewhere will say, "But they neeeeed it!" and it will be approved because "It's not that much money after all." $current_threshold--;

There isn't enough money to provide universal healthcare to everyone. Some children will be left behind. It's a simple matter of math.

There isn't enough money to do that.

There isn't enough money to do even what the USA has right now (Medicaid / Medicare). Those programs WILL be slashed. It's not a matter of if, but when and how. There isn't enough money.

It's a simple matter of math. You can tax the rich AND the middle class at 100% and there still won't be enough money.

My rapist said the same thing to me.

Take it to the HNL with a shot of Triple Sec.

I would love to find a traditionally fermented, alcoholic root beer. Even dry would be good. Does that kind of thing exist?

Trappist has a magical caché. "Brewed by altruistic monks steeped in hundreds of years of ascetic tradition!" Makes for a nice sales pitch, doesn't it? God, something like that you just WANT it to taste awesome.

And nothing tastes as good as the thing that you WANT to taste good. People start tasting "glacial notes" in tap water when they're facing up against that kind of faith.

Sure you do. You call them "swimming pools" or "underground clear water caves", though.