Or we can accept that not everyone values health and freedom the same amount. Some people valued freedom enough to die for it.

If federal law enforcement upset the judiciary, who would they go to for warrants? It not like federal law enforcement can just write their own warrants, that would be preposterous.

(PS also posting to undo accidental down-mod, apologies)

Let's see if you are allowed to own and use a stingray (which is basically a cell phone tower mimic). I wonder how innocuous the police will think they are then.

Wait. What? He called it a monopoly, not a conspiracy...

Wait. What? The US is a net importer, no one voluntarily builds manufacturing in the US...

Wait. What? We inflate money supply like sex toys, devaluing the dollar constantly. Almost any commodity is more stable than the dollar, unless you measure it against the dollar...

OH!! hahahaha you had me going. Ok you got me.

The word you are looking for is "Federalist", not "Libertarian".

It seems no one has explained to the slashdot viewers the nature of the US federalist government. You see, certain responsibilities are left to the federal government, such as military defense, coining money, and international trade agreements. Other responsibilities are left to state governments, such as firefighters, most law enforcement, and ROADS.

No the feds should not put any tax towards road infrastructure because they are not responsible for roads. They don't have the constitutional authority, and they can do a crappy job with no repercussions at all.

The real distinction of legal tender, I.M.O., is when you don't have to pay taxes on transactions or capital gains. That's why one could argue that capital gains tax on gold is unconstitutional, because it undermines it's distinction as legal tender. "No State shall ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts..."

Unless you are actually suggesting that a person suffers panic attacks in the perceived presence of something, then -phobia is not a correct postfix.

Arguments from this point of view are always wrong. Liberty is the default position. Anyone advocating the opposite should be obliged to justify their position.

Unless you are suggesting that the government not force the RepublicanParty to allow anyone to vote in their primary, which would be the position of liberty, which requires no justification, as it is the default assumption.

If the majority of patents are anything but stupid, why is prior art such a big deal? Why is "first to publish" such a race? If a creation is truly novel, then prior art or simultaneous publication should be an amazingly improbable newsworthy coincidence.

Patents are based on the idea that what you invent is non-obvious. I guess no one ever told most of the anti-free-competition crowd, but no matter how smart you are, there is always someone smarter. Nothing you create is non-obvious to everyone else. You simply aren't that magnificent of a person, no matter what the patent office tells you. If we really wanted to enforce non-obvious patents, there would be a law that no patent using technology created in the last 20 years is allowed to be used in a patent.

But that's not why patents continue. The reason patents survive today is because fake-entrepreneurs want to make money by buying a piece of the economy and suing anyone who competes with them. Listen to any meeting for an inventor looking for investors. The #1 make-it-or-break-it question is "have you secured IP rights for your product?". If the answer is "no", then consider yourself out of luck. Entrepreneurs don't want the trouble of having to compete. They want to buy a piece of the market, and sue anyone who dares to compete. Running a company and keeping up to date with progress is too troublesome.

Entrepreneurs used to be well informed businessman and managers. Now they are just Barons and Lords who use force to stifle competition.

Engineers hate patents. Software designers hate patents. Jonas Salk, the hero who eradicated polio saved a good portion of the world by avoiding patents. The only people like patents are lazy investors, and that's only because they profit by crippling progress.

I'm surprised to read someone who realizes that taxing a corporation is just a hidden income tax. Well said.

I disagree that there are good reasons for the Federals to tax corporations, because I recommend the Feds only being allowed to tax states directly, in proportion to their population and no other taxes, exemptions, subsidies or anything.

LOL...three main reasons...

Since some people feel let their moral affections and prejudice against rich individuals (sometimes deserved, sometimes not) cloud their judgement , I'm going to explain what's going to happen and why.

(1) EU Government makes a big deal about "cracking down" on rich individuals because it makes the general public happy and the general public doesn't bother to double check anything anyway

(2) Big ceremony with lots of speeches

(3) Meeting between large companies representatives and lawmaker's staff. They have one topic of discussion: "How can we lower your tax burden while making it look like we are raising it?" There are two main reasons for this (a) They don't want to lose campaign funding from the companies (b) They don't want the companies moving even more of their operations overseas (your personal morality be damned, no one who matters cares at all) and leaving unemployment and a net lower tax revenue (c) Rich people spend a larger proportion of their income on economic progress like starting new companies, you spend your money on beer and video games

(4) They will come up with a brilliant idea like larger taxes on repatriating corporate money (larger companies simply won't repatriate directly, but send the money to bank accounts first in the form of income) or a tax on company growth that sounds like it only affects large companies but only serves to destroy new competitors, or something brilliant like raising corporate income on income reported locally (except they already did that but got caught so they'll find a new trick).

In the end, if the game plays out correctly, low income individuals will still payer higher taxes, large companies will pay less taxes, but it will sound a lot like the opposite is occurring. You'll be happy and the economy will be slightly less screwed than if we listened to you and made companies actually pay 30% - 40% of their income directly to the treasury trough.

I completely agree.

It's not the unbounded tape that makes turing machines unrealistic so much as the constant time memory access. It's conceivable that we could build a machine that grows as it computes, and so has no upperbound on memory size. It isn't conceivable that the entire memory can be accessed from a common point without at least logarithmic overhead.