Rich people pay more in taxes... If not, maybe you should address that... But let it be a separate issue.

I'm constantly surprised at how Americans manage to see the bad in every government service provided. In most other modern countries services such as this is what enables poor people to climb. It's the thing that reduces negative social heritage (you have a lot of that in the US)..

Note, just because a government makes it easier to climb out of poverty does not make it trivial. I've never been poor, but because tuition and living expenses was covered for me during university, doesn't mean I didn't have to work hard to earn a degree.

In most places it constitutes fraud... Prosecuting it is hard (and often impossible), but it is still illegal to commit fraud. Or sell a product under false advertisement which is what they do here, the product being a license to the work that is allegedly infringed.

Fraud, false advertising, etc... call it what you want, lying is rarely legal.

Yeah, because people are more likely to use the gun successfully against an attacker, than getting shut by their kid while browsing walmart...

Ha, ha, That's good advice, along with: "try not to look so black" :)
Or when in a bad neighbourhood: "try not to look so rich"...
All sounds advice, we should all abide by :)

Can you prove that your teenage kid is sentient and fully autonomous?
Actually that an interesting question :) And at what age does this happen?

Lol, that is so American... Let's just punish more - instead of trying to help :)

Adding to your already over-populated prisons isn't going to do anything.
Instead try with awareness campaigns, interlock devices and/or put people on antabus :)
If you must punish for no reason go with community service (cheaper and less invasive than prison).

Drunk driving is mostly a crime of stupidity, locking people up won't help them or society... It's much cheaper and effective to use less invasive punishments; ideally something that helps people too: ie. allows them to keep their job and remain contributing members of society.

Btw, no where in the "rest of the industrialized world" employs prison sentencing like the US. You're better at locking people up than Stalin; maybe you should rethink your approach.

True.... But on the other hand, just because some people thinks is cozy to send telegrams doesn't justify that the government keeps a telegraph network running :)
Well, some countries does have things like a ministry of culture, that subsidizes theaters and other useless things...

With regard to the whole risk thing... I don't know.... The US is remarkably bad at being rational about that... Just consider the excessive airport/plane security vs. poor car standards, shitty roads, lack of driver education, crazy traffic laws and poor enforcement, etc... Or how you violate human rights (on many levels) in the fight on terrorism, while allowing people to own guns and refuse to talk gun regulation after a school shooting.
Just saying, the discussion of risk in the US is very irrational :)

Well... The public roads aren't for joy riding. It's infrastructure for transportation. One might very well argue that you do not have the right to subject other people to unnecessary risk, just because you want to have fun.

Luckily the US has plenty of desert and car-crazy people, so if public roads were closed to human drivers, I'm sure there'll be lots of race tracks and open areas were human drivers are still allowed, etc...
Why should public roads be a government subsidized joy ride arena?

That's not the worst that can happen... When wages goes down, there will be a lot more projects that will suddenly be feasible to implement.

Sure it's possible to float the market... but it's not likely that we'll get enough people interested in CS anytime soon :)
CS is still a very boring field, and you can't sell it as anything else...

There are two sides of that... If you let politicians throw mud the way it's done in the US, you get a political system where all the politicians contemplate how to make each other look bad. Take a look at US politics, it's not like anything gets done...

Crazy baseless accusations and non-scandals/mud should be forgotten...


Note, I certainly see the right to be forgotten as an let's call it interesting experiment... We'll see how it plays out...
Either way, please don't claim that all EU politicians are conspiring to control the internet so their sex scandals can be deleted from public record. That's crazy talk...

Yes, let's use windows on the server, ha ha :)

Please don't categories ISIL along with Russia and China. Neither Russia or China is interested in a conflict with the US, but both of them do have some resources. ISIL is pretty much the opposite...

It's easy to forget just how much waste there is the private sector too.
Mostly because when a private company waste money, the general public doesn't care all that much...

But look at the crazy start-up investments made in Silicon Valley (VC for an app like YO).
I could go on, but I'm sure we all have stories about waste in the private sector.