Time to start giving your friends one time pads on physical media.. a few GB worth should provide plenty of encrypted chat time, though you will have to get the key to them in the first place.

My bet is it has more to do with social mobility and education than any racial element. A rich white person is much more likely to associate with a rich black person than a poor white person.

I'm a big proponent of the Nordic system, which constitutes primarily of emphasizing social freedom, well-regulated markets, and low income disparity. This is achieved not by adherence to political ideology, but rather by analyzing empirical evidence and employing the scientific method to determine the best ways in which to promote these goals. Take healthcare for instance -- Nordic countries have publicly funded universal health care not because a bunch of people voted in a bunch of freebies for themselves, but because it was cheaper and more effective than private health care. Likewise, they went with restrictive immigration policies because they can't maintain these benefits if they have an outside group willing to work for cheap. It's not about right or left (though it mostly leans left, since that's where the best benefit to cost ratio usually lies), it's about creating a high quality of life for the people of your country.

We should allow it, honestly. There's no compelling reason not to.

It's not, it's just much more prevalent in India because the culture there has not attached a negative social stigma to being a tech worker.

"The problem with enforcing property rights is that its always at someone else's expense. Why should I pay for police who only stop me from taking the nice stuff my neighbor has?"

*Everything* is at someone else's expense in some way or another, because contrary to what you believe, no man is an island. So put down Atlas Shrugged and go learn about life.

No, it doesn't. For the sake of argument, let us assume that the probability of global thermonuclear war in 2014, 2015, and 2016 is .001, .0001, and 0 (zero chance) respectively. So our chance of surviving 2014 is 1.0 - 0.001 = .999. Our chance of p(2015) = p(2014) * p(2015) = .999 * .9999 = 0.9989001, which is less than the .999 of p(2014). Even if p(2016) is 100% chance for survival, 1.0 * 0.999 * 0.9999 = 0.9989001, which means our chances of surviving have not increased, they have merely not decreased. And as long as the chance is non-zero (and it always will be), the chance of our survival for n+1 years is always lower than the chance of our survival for n years.

And non-smokers will?

Mod parent up. I wish American libertarians could mentally grasp the fact that "liberty" is meaningless in the absence of economic security.

As the span of time reaches infinity the probability of a global catastrophic event approaches 1. It *will* happen eventually.

Move your HQ a few hundred miles up to Portland and you'll find no trouble filling those spots. People don't always mind relocating, but they want to move somewhere that they can one day buy a house, and that is not the case in the bay area.

It's called reductio ad absurdum and it is a valid form of argument showing that a line of reasoning leads to a ridiculous conclusion. In this instance I'm attempting to show that interpretation of the right to weapons, if unlimited, leads to absurd results, and thus specific limits need to apply. The anti-gay marriage argument, on the other hand, is a slippery slope argument attempting to show that consenting marriage between adults will lead to child brides, bestiality, denderphelia, etc., without showing any clear circumstance in which it could lead to that.

I agree, but there's little chance of that happening because we treat the Constitution as a sacred text (we're even supposed to capitalize it!). Honestly it seems clear that half the country (on the coasts mostly) wants something different than the other half (middle of the country, mostly). I wish we could just have a clean break, no hard feelings, and we could all be happy with our respective governments.

You're right in that such incidences are very hard to prevent, and would require drastic legislation for marginal effect (like the Australian rifle involuntary buy-back. it worked, but it would never fly here). Where a registry does help is with the numerous murders and other gun related crimes committed by career criminals. As it is, it is nearly impossible to trace a gun because we've put up massive legal barriers to doing so. If we merely kept better track of legal weapon purchases, we could not only solve gun crimes more quickly, but we could also go after "rogue buyers" who purchase weapons for criminals at a markup.

This is the point I'm trying to make.. There's a debate to be had on what a catastrophe is, and a unilateral "you can take my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" approach is not a constructive or rational argument. Guns are not different in effect from tire irons, knives, machetes, pipe bombs, napalm, nukes, etc. They are, however, different in both availability and in destructive capability. There's a debate to be had about how much is too much, and the second amendment does not clarify the limits of that right, and is ambiguous in who it pertains to. Going even further, the founding fathers did not believe the constitution should be set in stone (hence all the early amendments), and the philosophy of John Locke (whose writings inspired most of the founding fathers in the first place) outlined "life, liberty, and property" and the inalienable rights. It is not all clear that the founding fathers would have supported gun rights today, and I think that needs to be taken into consideration when we talk about what is or is not a "right".