Therefore it is impossible to overpay for something, as long as you're willing! :)

Indeed! Now, it is possible for a buyer to have a "remorse" — realizing, his willingness was in error. In that case, he will no longer be willing and will have had overpaid...

"Market value" in this meaning only applies in aggregate given the prior assumption of a liquid market.

It is always better, when the market is liquid, but it is not a requirement for there being a market value. The definition I gave usually applies to houses, for example — which are all unique. Painting or other work of art, for another example, can still have market value — often determined by an auction — whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.

What good is going to do any of us if these guys end up [...]

Bzzzz! Stop that Collectivist talk right there — none of "us" is a party to the transaction discussed (unless you are one of them or an Uber stock-holder). It is entirely between Uber and the engineers in question. To assert any right to control, regulate or even criticize their decision is to make a first step towards slavery (and there aren't many steps to it)...

It is simply none of our business.

It makes no sense to speak of market value when someone has so much money they can simply buy the best of everything and let it burn just to deny the other barons (er, capitalists) the prize.

Why does not it make sense? I can't even figure out, whether you are envious of Uber over their having so much money, or the engineers over their getting paid so well. But some sort of envy is dripping off my screen right now and I need to wipe it...

When somebody is getting paid "too little", Collectivists get upset. When somebody is paid "too much", they get upset too. Clearly, the idea, that "we the people" must be controlling prices, remains alive and well...

Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.

Well, ask your grand-parents, why they replaced the icebox — for which ice had to be personally delivered by a human — with an electric refrigerator. (Bonus points for also accosting them over that refrigerator's use of ozon-destroying freon and climate-warming energy.)

Move on to discuss with your parents other appliances, which replaced household help: washer and drier. Every time you watch TV or YouTube, you are replacing live entertainment with impersonal machinery and soul-less electronics. Got it?..

There is no difference between the stone-axe put together by the first hominid and the latest robot — they are all clever implements meant to increase productivity and improve lives. To reject them on account of somebody losing his job doing things the old way is stupid...

Contrary to popular misconception, people (in any society), need to work not to make money, but to get things — both tangible products and services — done. If I can be driven to an airport by an automated car, I'll take it just as I am now taking automated dish-washing. And so — despite all your posturing — would you.

I'm not sure if it is market value. It could be at a premium.

There is no distinction in the two, much less difference. Market value, by definition, is what somebody is willing to pay. By offering more for what these people are selling (their labor), Uber demonstrated their willingness thus automatically raising the market value.

It could be a strategy, also used by MS, of poaching talent just to keep it from falling into the hands of the competition

It could be, but it still is a market value. And the "strategy", if that's what it is, is perfectly legitimate too. The people in question aren't slaves of the University and free to change employers.

Uber has poached 40 researchers from Carnegie Mellon University

Wow. "Poached" — as if the employees were chattels or animals in CMU's private reserve... Nice TFA...

if the sunset comes and the provisions are off the books, lawmakers in both chambers would be facing a vote to reinstate controversial surveillance authorities, which is an entirely different political calculation [...] That may reflect a calculation on the president's part that the surveillance authorities aren't important enough to lose political capital fighting to keep them

Can we, please, have all Federal laws automatically expire this way? All, except the Constitution, of course...

And I mean, all: including the laws, that created (and empowered) all the various Federal "agencies" and "departments" — from the NSA to the IRS, all the way to the EPA, and the Department of Education?

Those, that are still deemed a good idea, will be have no problem getting a rubber-stamp for another period (3 or 5 or 10 years — whatever the default expiration). Those, where we aren't sure any longer — as in the case of "Patriot Act" — will have a relatively easy way to disappear... Automatically...

There really is no chance otherwise — consider the example at hand: it is hard to imagine Presidents farther apart from each other than Bush and Obama, but one signed the law in the first place, and the other is calling for its renewal.

Earth has perfected organ transplant technology, so someone with access to transplants can live for centuries. The transplants are provided by disassembling criminals, because almost every crime is capital, and execution is by disassembly for transplant stock. Because every citizen considers himself or herself law-abiding, they believe they benefit from more transplant material... and would never become transplant material themselves. They think, "I'll never murder, or embezzle, or repeatedly violate traffic laws, so make 'em all capital crimes. Get rid of the undesirables, and a longer life for me."

Earth has a unified government and a world paramilitary police force: the ARM.

The ARM has three major duties: "mother hunts" (enforcing mandatory parenthood licensing, designed so that each normal adult is allowed to be the parent of two children only -- replacement rate reproduction only), suppressing dangerous technologies (in the hands of anyone but the ARM), and combating organlegging -- black market transplant providers who source their material by kidnapping and murder.

So, the presumption that you can't deny reproductive rights is just silly. You have reproductive rights, but if you're hunted down and killed for attempting to exercise them outside the constraints of a violently enforced law, what good are they?

Oddly, 22nd Century Earth of Niven's milieu isn't generally portrayed internally as a dystopia, because humanity has been conditioned into obedience and pacifism anyway. Most Earth citizens consider the status quo wonderful.

The SATs and GREs are not state tests. They are run by private companies.

Distinction without difference — in this case.

Besides, cheating private companies — if they are sufficiently omnipresent to be thought part of "the system" (you know, maintained by "The Man" to keep you down) — is part of Americana since, at least, the hippies.

If it is Ok to squat a bank-owned house or to loot and burn a pharmacy, then cheating on a nationwide standardized exam is Ok too.

Chinese students in particular can further legitimize their case by the racism of American college Admission Boards, which favour Whites over Asians (and Blacks over Whites). This article, for example, provides a table from this book, which calculates the SAT-points benefit/penalty for different races: if Whites are treated neutrally, being a Black gains you 310 points, while being an Asian penalizes you by 140 (out of 1600)!

Cheating to protect oneself from such mistreatment would seem rather acceptable...

People, who — like myself — have grown up under oppressive governments, see nothing wrong with cheating the State. They would not cheat a friend nor even a stranger, but government institutions are fair game. Moving to a free(er) country, we don't necessarily change that attitude.

Of course, the growing oppressiveness of American governments is not helping...

This is not meant to provide an excuse to the accused, but merely to explain, where they are coming from.

Well, Edison did have a point that AC is more dangerous. There is a dead elephant to prove it.

Topsy, executed for killing three men, was killed with the "evil" Alternating Current. But that, in itself, says nothing about it being less or more dangerous than the alternative (Direct Current). Edison realized it, of course, but the public — just as short on attention span as it is now — did not... Ehh, if only those people had the Internet! They would've argued with and trolled each other without having to bother with elephants or the like...

How funny is it, that the name Tesla will now be associated with the Direct Current, that Edison was pushing during the War of Currents?