Yeah - they'd have to skate between the government and investors, and I'd bet that's a razor edge. Subsidiaries wouldn't protect someone as they'd have to pay on their "gains" based off of the main corps. "loss". Off shore holdings wouldn't work either since that's still going to be reflected in the corporations market value. The main philosophical problem is taxing what's already been taxed, unless you only tax based on the change in market valuation (also possible, but more volatile).

Absolutely correct. Just like a good pecan pie, nobody lets a pile of money get stale on the counter - it all goes somewhere. Finance is zero sum - everything else if figuring out the optimal way of getting work out of that pie before it's processed and flushed. If you do it wrong you either have a situation where the baker doesn't have enough energy to make more pie or the baker gets fat while everyone else starves - at least until people can't afford pie anymore, then the baker starves too.

Not a bad idea, but you'd have to find a way to tax vertical monopolies/integration. A value added tax system may help with that... but I've never figured out how that works with service companies (i.e. what's the valuation of entropic reduction?).

I just wish the US would get on board with this - or something like it. For public companies perhaps a flat corporate tax on market valuation...? In the current system companies have to evade taxes to be competitive with the rest of the tax evaders (i.e. everyone) - but if we close the loop-holes (globally) then corporations can become good citizens again (and help police their peers WRT tax evasion).

Wow - a limited monopoly for a service necessary for modern life like telephone, power, water, and sewer? Sounds like a public utility to me.

And it's the idiot bully's trick at that; the clever ones don't provoke the playground monitors.

And now, I would like to sincerely and heartily thank Verizon for the initial lawsuit provoking the playground monitor that made net neutrality a reality. I strongly encourage additional attention and noise to the issue for full on public utility regulation. Here's to moving the US into a First World nation with First World utilities like power, water, and real broadband - wired and wireless.

This is the problem inherent with a small sample size. For years everyone thought Temple of Doom was the outlier and when another in that vein came out they also called it an outlier - but that makes two outliers out of four. However, the larger the sample size the more representative an average will be of the series. So as much a fan of the series that I am, I must objectively conclude that the series is of less quality than I'd previously thought. I don't have a problem with that. While I appreciate gourmet desserts, I'm not so stuck on the purity of culinary art that I can't enjoy fast food milkshakes. I think the same applies to Dr. Jones and to Decker as well. That said, I'm hoping for sprinkles and a cherry.

You've got a good point, but the implementation of said conditions have a different intrinsic suspicion. Discussions on encryption will only get you put on the NSA watchlist along with everyone else. Conversations about OPSEC may get you a little bit more. For example - getting revealed as someone who sends encrypted messages to your friends is either in that category of nerdy or slightly suspicious. Getting revealed as someone who passes parcels to others via dead drops will probably get your door kicked in by the DEA shortly followed by a long line of other three letter groups.

PS - I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to use the word "intrinsic" without thinking of eating leprechauns or quantum mechanics. Does anyone else have this problem?

Especially since bears already have the right to arms.

Suffrage for animals!

You've got a lot of good points about the limitations of a male pill - especially about the danger associated with unprovable accusations. Where I think this may really help is that men can be responsible for taking risks again. I don't mean with the risk of pregnancy or any of the other unwanted consequences of sex - but the risk associated with birth control.

There's plenty of down sides to the pill - emotional effects, cancer risks, permanently altered sex drive, etc... But with a male version, the man can risk the associated side effects (perhaps they'll even be more mild than the pill). This could be a boon to committed couples who want to have a couple of years between children. The permanent solution will still be a vasectomy*, but for the settling into the marriage phase, or the wait between kids phase, this could be great for people.

*Based on the relative risks, it's a cowards choice to let the woman go through her version of that surgery unless the doctors are already in there for something (I'll allow rare medical conditions to be excepted from the cowardice charge - just because I'm not aware of any doesn't mean they don't exist).

Was in Berlin recently and saw that they had figured out a solution to the modern pay-phone dilemma. Pretty much every pay phone I saw was also a wi-fi hotspot. For example the T-mobile pay phones were also free hotspots for T-mobile subscribers but also sold bandwidth to anyone without a T-mobile SIM. I don't doubt that the telecoms used these strategically to extend coverage and also compete for customers.

Of course comparing internet/mobile between the US and anywhere else is... well about as stupid as the way mobile networks work in the US.

Water's water - given the diffusion time we're probably all drinking King Tut's piss today (not to mention plenty of other peoples/animals).

It'd be a lot more newsworthy if it was a journal with an extant impact factor. Neither of these even show up on search.

Yeah - Scratch is designed by the MIT media lab for this very purpose.