If %G is good enough for Twitter, it's good enough for me!

It's Capitalism 101.

While the general snark in this comment is evident, I have to protest about conflating private ownership of the means of production with government agencies wasting money doing useless tasks (to say nothing of the risks associated with it).

Perhaps the inability to differentiate these two is actually something that's common these days, though, which would explain a lot about modern discourse on the topic -- likewise the conflation of "jobs" and "wealth" (the former being a means to an end).

I have switched from air to train travel in Europe because flying has become too uncomfortable for tall people.

From my preliminary understanding of things, you wouldn't be using Qatar Airways for flights within Europe anyway. They're more of a long-haul hub-and-spoke model airline that could take you from Europe to Africa or east Asia with a one-stop trip. For intra-European air travel you'd use a different airline, and probably a different model of airplane, optimized for fuel efficiency on shorter-haul trips (and possibly a narrowbody plane, if the airports in question aren't so busy that they're trying to max out every landing slot).

Open up a map and check out where Qatar is. It's kind of smack dab in the middle of the Eastern Hemisphere's inhabited landmasses. This makes for a really nice hub-and-spoke model air service.

You know, some day some group is going to rise up against a crony-infested system designed to funnel money to the wanton rapacious capitalist elites, and will replace it with a crony-resistant system -- instead of just replacing it with a differently awful crony-infested system using the leftism de jure.

the perennial favorite thermo-nuclear war. Though the last one would actually be pretty boring. The players would have to do nothing to compete.

The real problem with thermonuclear war as Olympic sport? The only way to win is not to play.

Every nation has a currency. The US economy is just as prone to stagnation, deficit, over, and under valuing as any other currency.

See, you used two words in that sentence. One of them is economy, the other is currency. They're related, but they're not the same. The thing that matters to most US residents is the economy -- specifically that it will be growing enough that it's possible to find a job in it which will secure a certain amount of output to secure one's well-being. (Residents saving for retirement benefit from both). The thing that matters to someone who borrow or lend or hold dollars isn't the economy per se, it's the fact that he can use that dollar in the future to buy a predictable amount of goods and services: price stability. (Stability is better than an increase in value of those dollars, because borrowing and lending need to balance each other out... besides, if you really wanted returns you'd find a real investment, not cash.)

The US has flirted with price stability issues in the past (look at the 1970s and early 1980s), but not to the extent that Russia is experiencing right now. Russia has issued additional rubles through the state-backed Rosneft bond offering (a bailout averting a bankruptcy for one of Putin's top cronies) which was the proximate cause of the ruble free-fall, and because of sanctions, falling oil prices, and general economic decline outside of the oil sector, the ability of a ruble to purchase valuable goods and services (like oil) in the future is in question. China, meanwhile, has its own set of currency controls (hence a thriving black market in RMB-USD) and central-bank interventions of a scope and magnitude which make QE and QE2 look small.

So what else are you going to use? Euros? No way, I thought you were worried about stagnation and deficits and stuff. Gold? Oh, yeah, obviously it's been an absolute MODEL of price stability lately, hahahahahahahahahaha... Bitcoin? Makes gold look good. Pounds sterling? Mmmaybe, in a pinch. Then most of the other currencies are on the small side, so it's harder to use them in high volumes.

Perhaps there's something to the pervasive media narrative about Silicon Valley after all. Not only do they have no ability to relate to the non-asian and non-white crowd but they also have no ability to relate to whites that aren't rich enough for east coast boarding schools either.

Wait, boarding schools? I don't think that's Silicon Valley you're talking about, my friend. I could see Wall Street being accused of that, maybe...

The taxi drivers feel like they own the customers. Not the whole customer, mind you (that'd be slavery). Just a little piece.

"Canadian jobs"? Do Canadians own those jobs? Perhaps this should be better-codified, then! I mean, there are places in the world where people own jobs and are legally entitled to sell the job or pass it on to their children. Mexico teachers' unions come to mind. Of course, they're also a textbook case of dysfunction and an entitlement mentality trying to dignify itself with the trappings of leftism.

Anyway. Essentially what I'd like to get at is that this is a hideously ugly form of nationalism which doesn't really deserve any of the dignity of the idealized socialist struggle (CS workers as the proletariat, ha!) and miserable economic policy to boot. (no nation in history has ever become prosperous by isolating itself from trade.)

Of course, the real question is why the US needs to launder these workers through Canada and doesn't just let them in directly (we're clearly letting in plenty of unskilled workers, after all...)

Why are people so quick to go to the sci-fi stories of the army of robots rising up to destroy humanity when there's still ample room for exploration of the robot's masters subjugating Earth to their will (a far likelier prospect, to boot?)

Weak. Cliché.

$10.69 in 2014 dollars, but it's worth noting that was at its peak and so a uniquely misleading selection if you're comparing the current minimum wage to historical norms.

Because different faces, or parties for that matter, tend to pursue similar policies?

Right! If we'd elected McCain instead of Obama in 2008, the Affordable Care Act as we know it today would still be more or less intact, we'd still have withdrawn American forces from Iraq on the same schedule, and we'd still be shaking hands with China over a miniature climate agreement. In smaller matters, the Keystone pipeline would still be in limbo (just because that's easier than killing it explicitly). Et cetera et cetera.

With all due disrespect to Uber's extant valuation projections, you've used airlines as an example. Besides the fact that people travel on the ground more than they travel through the air, airlines are notorious for having razor-thin margins, spotty track records of profitability and a tendency to go broke on short notice. Their capital stock is a double-edged sword. You may have heard a joke: "How do you become a millionaire in the airline industry? Well, you start out as a billionaire..."

The real questions about Uber are how big the new market they want to build actually is, and why some competitor won't grab substantial portions of that market from them.

Another thing about that spending, too -- election advertising this year ran about $3.7 billion overall. This is real cash, but it's about real issues and the future of our nation is at stake and many policy proposals could make a significant impact in the nation's $3 trillion-a-year economy. Proctor and Gamble spends about $5 billion a year advertising for the likes of laundry detergent, Nyquil, and diapers.