That's not socialism. No laissez-faire capitalist would ever say that an industry should be given a handout. Now, mercantilist / corporate-cronists might argue that these subsidies are "needed" but that's one reason why laissez-faire capitalists are for less regulation. (Regulation can, and often does, include handouts to politically connected companies.

Removing these subsidies is PRECISELY what laissez-faire capitalism is all about.

And, to continue this, no Libertarian or small-government type of any stripe would consider this to be a raise in taxes.

But you know all this don't you?

And they were teaching before? How do you handle schools in which kids who cannot read are promoted? There are solutions. The simplest one would be school vouchers where parents can send their kids to the school of their choice. How would they choose? How would they select one over the over? How do people chose anything else?

So this cannot happen in communist or fascist or theocratic states. Right?

What makes capitalism unique and useful to the individual is that one can push back against a corporation by not buying their products. This cannot happen when the state does it. At that point it requires guns.

Capitalism gives an option of wallets that you can take advantage of before you go to guns.

From my perspective you're the brainwashed, monkey kissing idiot.

Pathetic? Are you mad. It's fantastic. Take a look at a graph of solar power production from the 1970s to today? What do you see? Exponential growth. It goes up at roughly the same pace regardless of political party or tax incentives or gas prices. We're now at the point where the exponential growth is being seen and you say 5% is pathetic.

Look at the growth rates. The future is very bright.

Yes but now privacy geeks like me will object to being tracked even more by Facebook and Google.

Good point. That could be a problem. :-)

Considering that pilots are not flying their entire lives but only in the years in which they are in physically good shape; considering that they are not literally starving or severly dehydrated the chances of a pilot passing out or fainting - and except for drug and alcohol use - is much less than once-in-a-pilot's-flying-lifetime.

But even if my vote did actually count, I wouldn't buy the limited government line. It's never going to happen.

The government was much more limited (comparatively so) 20 years ago. While I don't think we'll ever get to a government as promoted by von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard or Samuelson it doesn't mean that I should not promote the concept of individual freedom and actively promote those factions within the 2 parties that would help push the country in that general direction.

The people in power and the people trying to push the country in one direction or the other are not identical. There is a party in which there are some trying to limit the size of the party who have been elected to political office.

There is another party (including almost all of its supporters) which has contempt for limited government.

As to making the government smaller - no it is rarely done. But what would you have done? Nothing?

I guess you and I have different definitions of "conservative." What does conservative mean to you?

Which of the two political parties in America want to roll back Imperial Washington?
Which of the two political parties wants an ever larger, ever more powerful government and which one has a large percentage of people who want to go to a government with limited powers as enumerated in the US Constitution?

It will take root in professional services (surgeons, architects, etc...) and if it never makes it into the consumer market for one reason or another (say privacy concerns) it matters not. Google glasses (or some variant) has it use and will remain.

GPA != intelligence and never has been. A "C" in organic chemistry shows more intellectual work and more capacity to do work than does receiving an "A" in basket weaving.

The real issue is that this will require investment in research and that means not making a profit in the next 3 years, which is about the duration of how far a CXO looks.

And yet money is being invested. How do you account for that?

use taxes != socialism. As a matter of fact Rand, Hayek, Rothbard and other proponents of free markets were also in favor of use taxes.

What's next? The government is going to tell us what to eat? Or force us to buy services or products we don't want?