Thanks!

And don't worry, I do the same thing. #aspie

No arguments here.

True that -- the only problem I'd see is that it behooves us in the interest of efficient government to ensure that it's simply not serving the economic purpose of subsidizing risk while simultaneously privatizing the profit.

I agree with this stance. Hopefully I'm not taking too many liberties with your thought process when I interpret this to mean that if someone takes the risk, they should make a profit, and if it's truly life/world-changing, it should be co-opted by the public. The people that took the risk make their money and reap their just, earned rewards -- just not in perpetuity, which seems to be the case nowadays.

As far as the voting bit? I'd hope so. Politically, I like to view myself as a pragmatist first, a liberal second, and someone who votes Democratic not because I think they're always right, but because I often just feel they're less wrong, or at least more likely to fuck up in the people's favor. At the end of the day, though, we have to compromise sometime if we're going to go forward as one people rather than two diverging nations. I think too many people on all sides of the political question get caught up in either treating it like a team sport, treating it like a religion, or treating it as a panacea for society, where in reality, no idea or ideal works 100% of the time, no -ism has all the answers, and one-party rule generally leads to worse outcomes than power-sharing in some shape or form.

I'd like to think that people in our respective political positions are far closer to each other than I am to the far left wing of my party or that you are to the right-wing...and both of us probably about the same distance from libertarians as well.

Outside of pedantic quibbles that have little to no bearing on your post (it's still a natural monopoly if government run, it's just subsidized so that profit is no longer a factor), I have zero disagreement with your assessment, and I'm a bleeding-heart California liberal that views capitalism like Churchhill viewed Democracy. It's the worst economic system out there, except for everything else we've tried.

Mod parent up, please.

Yes, but that would kill the joke, dude.

Any proof of a subadditive function will suffice, mathematically.

The more precise answer is that a natural monopoly is any market where increasing output decreases the average cost per unit because the marginal cost doesn't increase as the firm produces more output for all reasonable values of output, and introducing competition ruins the economy of scale where that is true, thereby increasing the cost per unit if competition is introduced.

In the case of telecommunications, adding capacity to a pre-existing network is far, far, far cheaper than building out a brand new network, which is what any competition would have to do, and the overall addition to total network capacity lowers the cost per bit delivered for the original monopoly company.

Just because food is plentiful here doesn't mean it's plentiful everywhere. If you can't afford food, you steal it, steal the means to acquire it, or expire. Fortunately, we generally don't let people starve here, much like we don't deny them health care when they're acutely ill.

The issue is hardly providers in health care -- the bills get run up on acute issues or illnesses requirement expensive treatments, not visiting your GP for a checkup. Being acutely ill also severely impacts the amount of supply you can access -- it's not like you're going to change ICUs once you're in one, or frankly, that you give a shit what you're being charged as long as you live.

If you do have such a monetary price (or, even easier, a percentage of your income) that you're unwilling to pay to keep yourself or a beloved family member alive, please let us know what it is.

If there isn't one, thank you for making my argument for me.

The only way the government is at fault here is by not requiring Comcast to allow competitors to use their lines (thereby bringing a market back into play) or strictly regulating profit due to the lack of natural competition. It's less about protecting us from companies, and more about the idea that in any competition, there needs to be a referee. Adam Smith realized this, and while government in this role sucks, there hasn't been (and there likely isn't) a more effective option. Beyond that, I make my living at a corporation, I have plans to start one here in the near future, and in areas of the market with acceptable risk involved, they are by far the best option available for their spot in the market. Finally, it's a matter of governments, in many cases, not a government, as the franchise agreements are signed by municipalities, and city councils are relatively cheap to purchase.

He doesn't have a case against his employer unless they were stupid and gave a reason for termination. He likely does have a case against Comcast under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, as the company is not allowed to contact an employer about a debt or matters relating to it. Since this is Comcast we're talking about though, they'll settle, claim this settlement was never recorded in their system, not pay, make the plaintiff call 37 times, then apologize to the plaintiff, offer him 3 months of HBO for free, then charge him in triplicate for that and the amount of the settlement.

Natural monopolies, which utility services belong to, absolutely are a product of capitalism, and they require regulation to prevent predatory practices due to their position in the market as a natural monopoly. One of the biggest issues with the Austrian school of economics is that they ignore the mathematical proof of certain monopolies being more efficient than a competitive market.

I'm a firm believer in the power of capitalism as the most efficient market-sorting mechanism out there, but in order for it to work correctly, one needs to recognize the areas where it breaks down, either due to unlimited demand as in a health care market, which is effectively buying life, on which there is no price too great to overcome the natural will to live, or natural monopolies where first to market/mass market is more efficient due to the significant infrastructure (and therefore capital costs) necessary to compete.

I think systems admins would care a lot less about systemd if it didn't take over a ton of other things beyond booting, to make gains on boot time, when that's something that a sysadmin should be doing rarely (and in a cloud infrastructure, once per instance). systemd is fine for the desktop. It's great software for that. My issue is with the project managers for the various major distros that make this the new normal going forward and sacrifice stability and tested software on the server side for the desktop.

Thought I stumbled into r/TheRedPill.

I think the world as we know it serves as sufficient proof of that concept, no? Ethics and law are frameworks to resolve said conflicts without the use of force.

You've got it. There isn't an objective "right". This does not mean all systems of ethics are equal. As societies, we set standards via law backed with the threat of force. Sometimes, just the threat of force.

Yep. Thinking you're right doesn't mean you're acting in an ethical fashion. Also, I wouldn't use this line of argument:

...you're not going to like where that leads, since I'm sure we can all name the atrocities done in God's name. Finally, I certainly hope you're not arguing that you, yourself, would immediately begin doing things you consider evil just because there's no God telling you that they're evil. That would make you a sociopath and an overall terrible person, belief in $DEITY or not.

Need? Nobody. Being able to auto-generate a shopping list based on the contents of your fridge and cupboards, or order said list for delivery from Safeway/Amazon Fresh/etc.? Timesaver. Hacking someone's smart fridge to order random embarrassing things as a prank? Priceless.