Some people are crazy enough to think that the government should only dictate how we act when our actions harm others.

I don't understand how you can compare someone talking in a (presumably) normal voice to someone using an artificial noisemaking instrument.

Is it just that you can't eavesdrop on both sides of the conversation? Is that what bugs people about other peoples' cell phone usage in their vicinity? Because I've gotta say, I'm at a complete loss here. I don't understand the issue at all.

And how is this a legitimate function of government?

To the extent BTC can be compared to gold, then perhaps it is best not considered a currency at all, deflationary or otherwise, but rather a basis for other currencies. That suggests that new currencies will emerge that are pegged to BTC, just as the US dollar was formerly based on gold.

All of your objections are valid, but they also apply to gold. Gold mining is mostly an occupation for large organizations with access to large amounts of machinery and energy. It is hard to cash out without taking a financial beating from back-alley dealers with "I Buy Gold!" signs. It can be forfeited to the government, and in fact has been declared illegal for individuals to own in the past. The origins and history of a given sample are traceable to some extent through modern spectroscopy and radiometric techniques. Gold, too, lends itself to criminal activity in many respects. It would be time-consuming for individual merchants to confirm transactions in gold, given thousands of years' worth of counterfeiting tricks. And it has massive scalability problems due to, well, its mass.

Yet few people deny that gold has value as either a basis for a given currency or as a hedge against one.

(Shrug) So what else is new? Bill Gates has the same problem.

What's the incentive for the company to sell their ASIC miner, given those numbers? They would make more money just by plugging it in, wouldn't they?

How to tell if someone is a wacko: is he a medical doctor who doesn't accept the underlying principles of modern biology? If so, then yes, he's a wacko.

That doesn't mean he's wrong with regard to economic matters, but it does mean you don't want to blindly hitch your intellectual wagon to his.

I's a fallacy in a logical context. Trouble is, people, and governments, are not logical entities.

I have nothing to hide, but I still don't post my name here...

As if that's even the slightest inconvenience to the NSA.

... of less healthy people, who probably experienced more malnutrition and disease in childhood, might explain it.

More likely it's just a bug in the survey's methodology.

... After all, they apologized and fired the Bertelsmann exec responsible.

Oh, wait, no, they didn't fire him. They promoted him to the position of President of Global Digital Business, US Sales, and Corporate Strategy.

Sony customers deserve their own entry in the DSM-V next to sufferers of Battered Spouse Syndrome.

If the answer involves giving money to Sony, you asked the wrong question.

It's far from clear that airbags are a net safety win for drivers who wear their seat belts. They're certainly profitable for the manufacturers, though.

It's an engineer-driven company. The earnings are complex numbers, but P/E is real. Wall Street just hasn't caught up with the newest GAAP guidelines yet.

I thought of this. Easy way to turn $80K into a few million, assuming you can borrow that much TSLA or buy enough call options.