First, there's all the rules that make sure rules first go to minority- or female-owned companies, or to companies in at risk zones.

Next there's all the regulation.

Next there's government slowness. It's not market responsive.

The result is that people who are interested in running a business go away, UNLESS their business model is making money off government by charging it extra for all of its special demands.

It's no wonder the DC area is growing faster than anywhere else and salaries are higher there.

Like many political ideas - most noteworthy being communism - they sound good when you think about them on a local scale, where everyone knows everyone else personally, but once you start adding in layers of detachment the rules break down very quickly; the "best and the brightest" aren't likely to win very often when fighting sociopaths.

Maybe we need to localize then. Divide up into units of 150 people and make those part of a pyramid all the way up to someone at top.

If only there was some system of government in history that had done this...

There's a difference between "good enough" and "elegant" when it comes to design.

Our society is a chaotic blast of all sorts of noise, from physical sound waves, to electromagnetics, to sheer ugliness.

It doesn't reflect a consistent design philosophy.

The high number of electromagnetic wave emitters inevitably creates other problems as well. But we're so focused on "good enough" that we ignore this.

Step 1:

Get rid of all regulation.

Free market, yo.

Step 2:

A young girl is murdered and rape in a cab in a horrific fashion.

The democracy demands solutions!

Step 3:

Regulate. When that doesn't work, regulate some more.

Step 4:

Prices are high and a de facto exclusive license exists. People notice this is bad and want deregulation.

Before people get in and start "social engineering" and applying "universal morality" in order to make a perfect world to fit their neurotic needs.

If we're lucky, these cosmic Dark Ages will rub off on earth.

that racist group

Democrats?

US police are woefully underfunded. They might get a bunch of SWAT stuff from the government, but actual basic policing, substations, and other items needed to process all but murders and attempted murders are not funded. Most cities are far more interested in making sure the professional sport league has the latest and greatest stadium so they won't move to a city that would. So, blame the city councils that deny adequate funding to city services, not the people who have to decide between catching the perps from a drive-by shooting versus some guy who lost his cellphone.

The unpopular truth is that "We The People" don't want to vote for the actual funding required for police departments, because that would require us to admit how much crime runs among us and take a more seriously look at certain egalitarian illusions.

Instead, we've made police dependent on and drunken with money from traffic tickets and drug forfeitures, which is a dishonest way of doing things.

Given the choice between a complex truth and an easy lie, voters (as a group) always pick the lie.

Don't blame cops for what the voters did.

If Android tablet sales are so far ahead, why are Android tablet use figures so far behind?

They were all bought as gifts for baby boomers.

My guess is that many people who bought those are Android phone owners, and ended up using those instead.

Introduce a product near the top of what people pay for tablets, have some imperfections, incompatible with other market leaders, and plan to improve it over time.

You've got nowhere to go but up.

Then again, 6% market share is pretty good considering the above. MSFT's policy is to get an entry in the market and slowly improve it until it has everything the competitors do and innovations of their own. v1.0 is always bad, v2.0 chaotic, and v3.0 starts the war machine on its path to dominance.

IRC for people who like GUIs?

The internet age: giant companies with huge pots of money, searching for a direction.

Google wants to fix the world. So does Bill Gates. Yahoo wants to be Netflix. Netflix wants to be Amazon, and Amazon wants to be Google.

It seems the money came too easily and too abundantly, and there was never any plan past the basics: Microsoft, unify the desktop computer; Google, search engine; Netflix, streaming video; Amazon, tax-free products online.

Here's the full Bundy statement, in context:

http://disinfo.com/2014/04/une...

Here's the extended Sterling transcript which shows his lady friend attempting to bait him into saying something out of bounds -- note the leading questions and that she brings up race first:

http://deadspin.com/exclusive-...

westerner pretending the problem is poor people having babies

Our population is stable and has been for some time. Further, those statistics (and the source, the tape-doctoring NYT) are suspect.

Social Darwinism isn't going to make conservatives appear less sociopathic

It's not social Darwinism, it's just Darwinism.

Why do you deny science?