"Here we are, born to be kings, we're the princes of the universe!"

Ok, but how did it become fashionable to tie an onion to your belt?

Are either of those like Plutonian Niborg?

They exist.

You forget rape. And, I sadly suspect, Catholic Priests were and are affected by this. Both in recruitment and retention, as well as ending up in jail.

I'm not sure that there is a two class system by design. That is certainly true for desert societies, but come cultures are MUCH more complex than two. Even Marx's comrades were three classes, also in Brave New World.

I'm for distributed sustainable energy budgets for high tech cultures. That means your energy budget depends on the climate you find yourself in, and is somewhat outside of your control. Cheap fossil fuels are nice for a time, but their regeneration cycle is too long to be sustainable over the long term.

However, every inch of this planet has plenty of ambient energy lying around, just not necessarily in a usable form. Getting it into a usable form is NOT a one-size-fits-all mass produced solution, and can't be. Anybody who says, just end the use of fossil fuels tomorrow, has not looked at the cost. I'm blessed in the Pacific Northwest with four major sustainable sources of energy at different times of the year, and with the new batteries, we can do even better.

As for climate change- there really are only two sustainable strategies- adapt and use the changes in weather to generate usable electricity, grow more food, store excess carbon in our graves. Or try to fight with outlandish ideas like eliminating fossil fuels, putting powdered aluminum in orbit to throw energy away, or the stupid carbon tax that will never work anyway.

My money is that cultures and species that adapt instead of trying to fight, will win out in the long run. I place that bet due to the history of this planet- when conditions change, species that adapt to the new conditions live, everybody else goes extinct.

Thanks. I had a feeling this was the case.

My error in conflating that and utilities, so apologies. But my impression is that's what's been behind Net Neutrality, to effectively turn the pipes to the Internet into a regulated utility. And to make broadband a basic human right.

Yes, but a closer analogy would be ATT or other phone companies, or Western Union. Different type of utility, still as necessary to business. But what if say, the electric company could say "You are small fry, the local aluminum mill pays us more for electricity, so you get no service at your house today"?
 
 

How can govt. second-guess a business's motives when a business charges more for carrying something that costs them more to carry. Without degrading into govt. effectively dictating their pricing structure.

 
You know as much about TCP/IP as I do. Exactly how does a bit from one source "cost more to carry" than a bit from another source? All bits coming in from the backbone are the same. The only question is the size of the pipe coming in from the backbone, not the content of the bits. So that explanation simply doesn't hold.
 
 

They don't go far enough, regulation-wise, for you?

 
Or with freedom. The regulation should be towards maximum freedom of association- a company *should* be free to block traffic from a source they don't want to do business with, or slow down any packets for content they don't like. Discrimination and bigotry *should* be legal, be it baking a cake for gays, allowing black people at the lunch counter, or restricting netflix from eating up the common internet pipe.

I'm too lazy to do the math, but how likely is a sample of 48 from the population likely to turn up that kind of accident rate?

Common carrier laws don't determine either how much you'll charge nor how much you'll make, they merely dictate that you can't discriminate in what you carry.

As in, you can't choose customer A over customer B just for the hell of it.

Now, personally, I'm against common carrier laws because I'm against freedom of communication and against dictating required associations, but that is an entirely different matter than money as well.

Yes we should. We should adapt our lifestyles to *local* conditions, where possible. That means diversifying our culture by geographical regions, and gasp, paying attention to natural weather sources and barriers.

'Old'? I bet our European friends will be laughing their asses off at this descriptor.

I feel fine.