If it is easier for a municipal company to get access to existing municipal infrastructure, then the municipal must be making it harder for private companies to do so. This is an example of the local government standing in the way. Remember, I said they need to get out of the way.

Financing through municipal bonds is another example of government cheating, because holders of municipal bounds are exempt from federal income tax. Also, any extra "sense of legitimacy" that a municipal has is probably based on the assumption that a municipal company will be bailed out with tax payer money if necessary. Once again, if residents want high speed internet, can't it be provided by a company that follows the rules of every other private company?

As far as easements, I've never liked the idea of governments forcing easements on private property. I think the existing easements that were created by governments are immoral, and should be retroactively converted into a leasing agreement, in which property owners allow private companies (cable companies, power companies, etc.) to rent easements for a period of 5 to 10 years for some agreed upon yearly fee. That way, the relationship is more like landlord and tenant, instead of master (i.e. government) and slave (i.e. property owner).

Then why not start a private company? Why does it need to be a municipal company?

If the residents of these cities want fiber internet, can't they just pool their money and start a privately owned ISP? Not only would the early investors get the internet speed that they want, but they'd make a profit as well after their company takes off. Or, if they want to, the early investors could even run the ISP like a cooperative. All that the city would have to do is get out of the way.

Now, if you tell me that that can't happen because customers would not be willing to pay enough money for their service to make the privately owned ISP profitable, then that means most residents don't actually want high speed internet. Right? If residents truly want high speed internet, then they should be able to make it happen without using any coercion.

It's not as if there is a free rider problem here; no one is getting internet service without paying their fair share. So, if you're telling me that we need taxation to "solve" this problem, then you're tacitly admitting that residents aren't willing to put their money where their mouth is, unless they are forced to.

If you want to really see the effects of minimum wage, you should look at teenage workers. Teenage workers tend to be the most untrained, and therefore, the workers most affected by changes in the minimum. When you look at the effects of the minimum wage on teenage unemployment, the evidence is absolutely damning: In both the UK and New Zealand, teen unemployment rose strongly after a teen minimum wage was introduced.

Now, if you want to argue that teenage workers should be unemployed, go ahead. But if you're willing to admit that the minimum wage increases teenage unemployment, then you're going to have to do some serious mental gymnastics to believe that the minimum wage does not have any negative effects on those members of society who are older, but also relatively unskilled and/or untrained. The study referenced by slashdot proves nothing, because it is focused on the general unemployment rate, rather than the unemployment rate of the least productive members of society.

It probably isn't practical, because there are ways to anonymize coins, such as Dark Wallet. But if bitcoins could be black listed, then they would no longer be fungible. Therefore, any company who attempted to do this would probably be shunned by the bitcoin community. In short, a blacklist maintained by "the powers that be" is fundamentally incompatible with the philosophy of a decentralized currency such as bitcoin.

If a person is "affected by" out of context information, that simply means that other people decided to act differently towards that person based on that out of context information. You may not like how these other people decided to treat that person (i.e. refused to offer him or her a job in a particular industry), but these people are human beings, and therefore, entitled to make their own decisions, even in situations where you believe they are not fully informed.

By suppressing information because you believe it is "out of context", you are infringing the right of the speaker to spread the information, and you are infringing the right of others to make decisions based on that information. The fact that others made decisions based on that information that you don't approve of, does not prove that the information should have suppressed. If you believe that information is out of context, the correct response is to add your own voice to the conversation, so that you can provide context. And, once again, if others choose not to listen to you, that is not a good argument for censorship.

The fact that your crime is not forgotten does not make it a life sentence. We all know that George Bush plead guilty to DUI when he was young, and yet, he was still able to find gainful employment (i.e. president of the US), because most people were willing to forgive him for something he did in his youth.

The fact is, the knowledge in my head is mine, and, assuming that I didn't sign a contract to keep it a secret, I have every right to make that information publicly available and searchable on a search engine. You, on the other hand, seem to believe that if my knowledge is about you, then we should act as if you own my knowledge, and thus, you should be able to override my freedom to disclose my knowledge about you.

The so-called "right to privacy" is not actually a right at all; it is simply what people call it when one person interferes with another's ability to share his or her memories and thoughts with the rest of the world.

ability to [Y] != desire to [Y]. Assuming that every [group X] should have equal representation in [profession Y] is to assume that every [group X] has roughly the same number of members who want to do [profession Y]. Also, examples of countries where [group X] has equal representation in [profession Y] do not prove this assumption, either. For all we know, it may be that [profession Y] is merely seen as lucrative, and therefore members of [group X] are willing to do [profession Y] to make ends meet. They only way to truly know what members of [group X] want is to see what they would do if they had enough money to pursue whatever interest they want. And if different groups pursue different interests, it is not sexist to say that the differences in interests may have a genetic basis.

You can protect bitcoins with multiple passwords. So, you could set up a system where the bitcoins in cold storage are only accessible if a certain number of owners and/or trusted employees are present. Now the bitcoins are invulnerable to hacking (because they're in cold storage), and they can't be stolen unless all of the trusted individuals decide to break the law together. With a system in place like that, only the small number of coins in the hot wallet are at risk.

In a free market, there would be far more exchanges to choose from, and so it would have been much harder for a poorly-managed exchange like Mt. Gox to rise to the top. The reason that there is a scarcity of bitcoin exchanges to choose from is not due to too little regulation; it is due to too much. The anti-money laundering laws in the U.S., for example, scare most banks away from anything that is related to bitcoin, and that makes it very hard for law abiding citizens to start an exchange in the U.S. Why do you think that Coinsetter, a NYC-based forex trading platform, does not offer a way for U.S. citizens to deposit dollars? It is not because they are scared of competing; it is because they are scared of what the U.S. government will do to them.

That being said, even in a free market, there would be failures. No one really thought that Mt Gox would manage to lose all of the bitcoins in its cold storage. That's just breath-taking incompetence. But the flip side is, people have learned a lesson. Unlike the modern banking world, there are no moral hazards here, and that's a good thing.

How do we prevent a Mt. Gox style collapse in the future? By having auditors come in and making sure that companies are actually following security best practices. For example, storing bitcoins in cold storage (which makes hacking impossible), and protecting those bitcoins with multiple signatures (so that no one person inside the company can steal them). If the government would just give out of the way, this would happen naturally. But most people expect the government to act as the referee, so the government will probably mandate the regular auditing of exchanges. The government will take credit for making the bitcoin world safe, when in reality, the government was never needed, and, worse, they facilitated our current situation by making it tough for good actors to enter the market.

Actually, there's talk of fixing this problem with more crypto-magic. gmaxwell, a core bitcoin developer, has proposed a way to let individual customers verify that exchanges really hold the Bitcoin funds they claim to hold on on behalf of their customers: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yk4nv/please_ask_your_favorite_exchange_to_prove_that/

Perhaps a potential competitor could ask residents to help fund the initial cost of building the infrastructure. Perhaps the company could promise that every resident who offers a certain amount of start-up capital will receive free service for some period of time upon completion of the infrastructure. Or perhaps the competitor could offer stock to the residents, so that the residents could make their money back over time if the company is successful. Either way, the municipal should stay out of the negotiations.

Of course, if a company makes residents an offer, and the residents decline, that simply proves that the residents are not willing to put their money where their mouth is. Sure, it costs more to serve rural areas where the residents are more spaced out, but that makes perfect sense; it costs more because it takes more resources. If the residents want the municipal to step in, then what they are really saying is, "We want someone else to pay."

As an analogy, if I live in the desert, then I'm going to pay more for air conditioning. I don't expect the government to come in and help me because my air conditioning costs are higher than the rest of the country. Why should it be any different when it comes to deploying fiber in urban vs rural areas?

Yes, single payer would fix some problems, but it would also create a lot of new ones. The problem with a single payer system is that if the government pays, then the government sets the price. Therefore, advocating single payer is the same as advocating that every health care service be price controlled. The problem with price controls is always the same: if the price is too high, we will have a surplus, and if the price is too low, we will have a shortage.

The government, in order to keep taxation levels from skyrocketing, will probably set the prices too low and create shortages. These shortages are likely to be exacerbated by the inevitable increased demand that comes when people no longer have to spend their own money. People will have every reason to consume as much healthcare as they can get their hands on, and they will have no financial reason to moderate risky and unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking and overeating. In summary, we can expect many shortages (i.e. rationing, wait lists, etc.) in a single payer system.

The fundamental problem here is that the government has coupled health care and employers together. For some strange reason, the ACA did not fix this problem. We need to decouple health care and employers by eliminating the tax break that employers get. If we do that, then we'll no longer care what health care plan our employer offers, just as we don't care what car insurance plan our employer offers.

How often are these things "sudden"? The process of automation is not developed and deployed overnight. It is up to you, as a worker in an industry, to stay informed of the threats to your job security by new technological advancements. As the possibility of automation gets closer to reality, you should be preparing for your next job while you still have a stable income, as opposed to sticking your head in the sand and hoping the world doesn't change around you.