The trope that a successful businessperson should "give back" as if they've taken something is an evil perversion of the American economic system and of capitalism itself.

A thief? A country that worked hard to give him a chance at his dreams of success - are you kidding? It worked just as hard for you - why don't you pay a few hundred million dollars in taxes, as Saverin will? The "country" didn't work any harder for him than it did for you.

Facebook created billions of dollars of wealth - $96 billion or so - out of nothing, and created thousands of jobs and far greater pleasure and wealth and utility for its millions of users and customers and affiliates. Facebook and its founders have no need to "give back" - they've already done the giving with their great ideas and brilliant execution, and $96 billion is very precisely a measure of how much they've given.

You mention all that infrastructure - but that infrastructure was not bought with income or capital gains taxes. Gasoline excise taxes pay for the roads (except when they're looted for blackhole "green" projects). Airports are funded by airlines and concessions and gate fees. The mail system is mostly paid for by user fees, and should be entirely so. Public education is paid for by property taxes which have nothing to do with Saverin.

Don't confuse taxes with social good. Warren Buffett and indeed Mark Zuckerberg (if not Steve Jobs) are giving large pieces of their fortunes to charities not because they want to "give back", but because charitable gifts allow them to decide how to spend it, and allow them to keep politicians from squandering it. You happen to mention fire departments. Not too long ago, fire departments were funded by insurance companies or by annual subscription. And in those days, the local fire chief didn't make $250,000/year (as one nearby chief does) or get $700,000 annual pensions (as another does).

These programs deserve a more thoughtful response... Social Security is a transfer from the young to the old. My mother (who didn't really need it) thought it was the greatest thing in the world until I pointed out that what she received was roughly what her three sons were paying in taxes - while we struggled to pay the bills and make homes for her grandchildren. Now I am about to receive my own Social Security payments, but I hope to be able to give all that money back to my own children. We can afford to help the needy elderly - but do we need this blind transfer from young people to old? As for Medicare and Medicaid - again, we need a system that helps the truly needy. But we also need a system that puts a price tag on health - it can't be free, and the consequences of bad life choices should also have financial consequences. Why should taxpayers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for LVADs? They'll buy granny a few weeks in agony, sedated in the hospital... You have to say yes if it's "free" but what if the hospital asks you for a $100,000 cashier's check in advance? We need skin in the game, not bureaucrats deciding for us.

Do you think people who left East Germany in the 1960s - or North Korea today - should be "lynched as traitors"? If you believe in freedom in the tiniest way, you the you will believe that people are free to leave. The United States does charge an enormous exit tax - you have to pay capital gains taxes on the market value of all your assets, even if you leave them behind. But don't you agree that a key factor of freedom is the freedom to leave? And not be vilified for it?

Lookchem says that the CAS registry for oxiran is 99932-75-9, but no suppliers have stepped up. Maybe preparing the MSDS would be too onerous.

But... very few light bulbs are turned on that many hours per month. Sixty cent incandescents are the most energy-efficient solutions for closets, laundry rooms, attics, and other spaces that are lit rarely. CFLs and LEDs have a higher manufacturing energy content... Sure, many consumers make bad decisions -- but we're all worse off when heavy-handed government tries to make good decisions for everyone. Do you think you're smart enough to do that?

I have a couple of $40 light bulbs, provided by the local (City of Palo Alto government-owned) electrical utility. They're on a timer-controlled circuit and burn about 1,000 hours/year. They replaced a couple of CFLs - which means they save about 10kWh/year or $1.50/year. In my opinion, the exercise was a stupid waste of money. Jevons Paradox tells us that with more efficient light bulbs, we'll want to use more electricity for lighting.

People qualify for Medicaid because they can't afford to pay for their own medical care and haven't arranged for any insurance or other third party payment... so perhaps these hacks won't matter because these Social Security numbers aren't worth anything.

Judging by Marmot's public statement on this - http://marmot.com/content/sopa - many of the companies on this list do not support SOPA specifically but merely took a public stance in favor of some protection for intellectual property rights (which surely we all support).

In his June 4, 1984 "Inside Track" column in Infoworld (p.95), John C Dvorak wrote this:
        "Apparently there is an advertisement in one of the munitions magazines that goes something like this:
        "The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance. The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition.
          "The owner of the Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered - and delivered on target - in less time, and with less effort.
          "All for $795. It's inevitable.
          "If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 - or any personal computer - he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines for the Uzi are available in 32-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied into Ethernet or other local-area networks.
          "What about the new 16-bit computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with Winchester backup, they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what Unix means.
          "Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi - and come home a winner in te fight for office automatic weapons."

This was written 27-years ago, before deranged individuals with firearms shifted this from ironic humor into tragedy. But at the time it was very very funny.

Great question... But my hypothesis (and I admit that's all it is!) would be very tough to test. For one thing, it can take lifetimes before we discover that published results are wrong. Also, most "capitalistic, fully performance based" research tends to be kept secret, so we can't compare (%wrong)/(%published) across domains.

I want to toss out another point. The Ioannides paper highlights how weak statistics and badly designed studies (e.g. "puffery") are used to obtain sensational, publishable results - without any fraud or other truly improper behavior. Some puffery will happen in "capitalistic" research... but the market cost of retracting a false corporate boast is far worse for the business entity than the retraction of a scholarly paper is for the individual. When no fraud is involved, the academic keeps the PhD and professorship (with tenure!) and of course the grant money, but the corporate researcher gets fired and the entire enterprise may suffer for years.

> So, a capitalistic, fully performance based (with results being the performance metric)
> environment does not seem to work well for science. / Surprised? / Me neither.

This is a gratuitous, cheap shot. These problems appear only in scientific research that is funded, managed, or supervised by government agencies or academic review committees so that bureaucrats will grant money, or full professorships, or licenses to sell drugs. Hence the crack that if you want to study squirrels in the park, you title your grant proposal, "Global Warming and Squirrels in the Park."

There are "capitalistic... performance-based environments" in science - but they're the corporate R&D departments that are seeking marketable innovations. There isn't much intellectual corruption or fudging of study results in, say, pushing the limits of video card performance.

I was referring to T-Mobile's Terms and Conditions: "17. * Misuse of Service or Device. You agree not to misuse the Service or Device, including but not limited to: ... (e) "spamming" or engaging in other abusive or unsolicited communications, or any other mass, automated voice or data communication for commercial or marketing purposes; ..."

I'm sure T-Mobile could have worked out who EZ Texting was, if only through their use of the 313131 code.

In that case, T-Mobile should have notified EZ Texting that the shutdown was because of complaints about unsolicited texts, which are a violation of their terms of service and of Federal law. I'm sure there have been complaints about EZ Texting - I'm a T-Mobile customer and have called them to complain about unsolicited texts. I've also filed 1088's with the FCC.

Blocking a spammer wouldn't create this lawsuit or publicity.

EZ Marketing's brief assets they do only "opt-in" marketing, with strict controls on who gets their offers. If that's true - and they're asserting it under penalty of perjury - then T-Mobile is censoring essentially private messages between consenting parties based on message content.