No. No. No. No.

Not even close.

The noble class was NOT declining in wealth and power at the end of the 11th C. The rise in cities does not indicate a concomitant loss of power in the noble class as you put it.

There were a lot of reasons for the crusades. One minor reason was that Jerusalem was held by Muslims. Of course Muslims would have no problem if a foreign imperialist power like say, Britain, had conquered Mecca and didn't allow Muslims to do their annual pilgrimage. Why would you not think that Christians would be offended if a foreign power controlled Jerusalem and that they weren't allowed to go there.



Now it gets more involved than that. You can see local Muslim powers allowing a few bands of Christian penitents to have access to Jerusalem but as Europe gets wealthier and more people go then it gets more problematic. It gets even more problematic when nobles go there (either out of personal piety or as punishment for a deed in which saying 3 hail marys just didn't cut it) and they bring their entourage. It get's even more problematic when a large part of this entourage are not penitents themselves. You can easily imagine scenes where a lord marches through a town with scores of bodyguards and servants and there is a dispute with muslim locals. Have enough problems and you can see why muslims started putting limits and then bans on travelling to the holy land.

Nonetheless the claptrap that the crusades was simply an attempt by the European noble class to ... blah, blah, blah ... is just that - claptrap.

The Inquisition. You mean the 2,000 - 10,000 (at the most) that were killed over a period of 300 years; with the overwhelming majority done over a few decades in Spain?

Compare that with Hitler 11,000,000 and Stalin 20,000,000+, and Mao 40,000,000+ and the Inquisition begins to pale in comparison.

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?