Direct democracy and especially referendums are fraught with problems.

Switzerland does OK.

The people's will is not being respected, their call to have their choice confirmed is being ignored. The people are being denied an opportunity to express their will. If it's the will of the people to leave the EU and they haven't changed their minds, they'll vote the same way again.

The only place this reasoning leads is perpetual elections.

Look at it another way - ~16 million people voted to remain. ~4 million signed this petition. So only about a quarter of those who voted remain could be bothered to "confirm" their choice.

"You'll vote, and you'll keep voting until you get the right answer" isn't democratic.

Cloud providers have vastly more redundancy requiring much more raw space.

I'd be interested to see any real numbers if anyone has them, but my guess is it's a wash.

You're talking about a scenario without property rights, Government, and laws. What relevance has "consensus" ?

No, it's control over the resource that makes a monopoly possible.

All you need to maintain that is bigger sticks than anyone who would try to take it from you.

Whether you wield the sticks or someone else wields them on your behalf is semantics.

This same logic makes authoritarian dictatorships A-OK, so long as the majority of people are unaffected by their harmful actions.

Or just sending someone out in the middle of the night to burn their factories (or whatever) down.

That's what a real "unregulated" market looks like.

But we all know what people _really_ mean when they write "unregulated" is "regulated the way I agree with". Just like a "statist" is someone who thinks there should be one more law than they do.

Rubbish.

A dominant market position facilitating the destruction (or outright prevention) of new entrants requires no "government protection", neither does sole control of a unique and necessary resource.

If you control the only source of fresh water on a desert island, you have a monopoly.

Drug test their children.

Who is *really* the victim of this?

Everyone.

While I'm not exactly a fan of Gawker, nor do I think Hulk Hogan's lawsuit was unfounded - the problem I have is that a very rich person basically paid lawyers to find problems and subsequently destroy a media entity that he didn't like. This is somewhat dangerous precedent - don't piss off the rich.

Now, regardless of the degree of truth or confidence a journalist may have in their story, they and their editors are likely to think twice before reporting on anything involving the very rich. "Remember what happened to Gawker?"

Libertarianism writ large. Nobody should be surprised.

Remember, it's equality cuz everyone is subject to the same laws !

Why wouldn't everyone exchange them for real goods and/or services ?

Because they can walk up to a replicator or a robot and get either whenever they want. Without money.

Money is a legal construct. It only has value and utility because of the law. Take away that legal construct - the hypothetical Federation that doesn't use money - and...?

Money is a legal construct. If the law says there's no such thing as money (per the supposed Federation not having money), then there's no such thing as money.

What people might barter between themselves is a different issue. But that's generally not something you see in a functional society and, of course, it carries no legal weight.

A reference of some nature to your unique input into society much like your bank account does today [...]

No, my bank account is a record of my money transactions.

Many scifi stories use "credits" in the abstract this way.

Who creates these "credits" ? Who accounts for them ? Who uses them ? Why do they have value ? Why would anyone exchange them for real goods and/or services ?

Where does the money in your examples come from ?