No it's not. "Province" in the context of China has a similar meaning to Canada; it's an integral part of the country. When China calls Taiwan a province, they don't mean they're a colony, they mean they're the same as Beijing and Guangzhou.

It's more like if Yorkshire had its own currency and government.

There are still parts of Mongolia under Chinese control, and Mongolian is still an official language of Chinese. The Mongols from Inner Mongolia are indeed considered Chinese — just not Han. Of course, we're not so big on that distinction in the west.

Here here! I'm sick of hearing "ooh, constitution", "ooh, will of the people", "ooh, rights" as if these make a difference. Might makes right, and anything else just being polite. "Will of the people" is no different today than it is under kings and caesars and autocrats: if the people don't like you, they'll try and kill you. The government will govern as selfishly as they can while still making that unlikely.

The medieval serf had a much better excuse than "information brokers" and "gatekeepers": stomachs. The "information brokers and gatekeepers" as you call it were following the best science available at the time. They didn't have as much prosperity to allow the luxury of huge numbers (in absolute terms) of researchers and teachers. This meant that the gatekeepers and information brokers didn't have enough time to find out what was wrong with their techniques to make them better—and, by the time they did, then they did and we changed and that's how come the west became modern.

Today's much worse. Conspiracy theories are common knowledge. People who think they're wise generally believe huge numbers of early modern era myths, particularly about how people think and act, and this makes it even harder to correct. And the arrogance of our age is without comparison.

So you're right, future generations will consider as a dark age greater than the medieval period, but you're wrong, it's much much worse than you think.

A lot of science has no patentable outcomes even in principle. Science is finding out how things work, not making things work. Consequently, you missed a possibility:

Think of an idea, see if that idea works, if it doesn't run a different statistical test and see if you get a p 0.05. If after two or three tries you haven't, keep adding subjects/test cases until you find p 0.05. It shouldn't take more than about twenty tests to get the desired outcome. Once that's done, omit most of the details and publish the result. Proceed to get ignored by most of the world; but don't worry, if you had've done it properly in the first place you would've been ignored too.

It is funny, but it's precisely because of the reformation that Galileo was punished. Just like today, there are evangelicals and fundamentalists who are critical of Rome's opinion on creation and evolution—and it was a Catholic priest who came up with one of the major pieces of the scientific account—also in those days, protestants were critical of Rome's lack of concern about heliocentrism—and it was a Catholic priest who came up with one of the major pieces of the scientific account. But in those days, the Catholics had secular power, paid more attention to the opinions of protestant fundamentalists, and were basically fundamentalists too (albeit in a different way).

So it was for political reasons that they did evil things. Which remains to this day a good and popular reason to do evil things.

At this point in history, it is a bit difficult to advance science in the garage. Not impossible, but quite difficult.

(a) That's only true if you have a very narrow definition of science. A few thousand dollars buys an eyetracker which will give a cognitive science hours of trying to understand all these basic things we fundamentally don't know about how people think. And considering that almost everything we do involves how people think, this is a massive advance—most people, most scientists outside of the field even, have a level of knowledge of human cognition that's on a par with geocentrism. Of course, university campuses are great for having an easy supply of people who will rock up for credit or $10 for an hour; you can't replicate that in your garage.

(b) Even if that weren't true, do we need to advance science beyond the point where you can't do it on your own?

Why is it that Americans keep coming up with this? "Democracy" and "Republic" aren't in opposition. The United States is both a democracy and a republic; North Korea is a republic but not a democracy; Canada is a republic but not a democracy and Saudi Arabia is neither democracy nor republic.

Yes it is. You can tell, because the people who have enough power for that to make a difference, act like the constitution is a blacklist. You might think that the plain interpretation of the document sets itself up as a whitelist, but your interpretation isn't binding; the binding interpretation belongs to the powerful.

You're never going to get privacy protected by the constitution because it's the same people who are choosing to abuse it who would have to give it to you. That being said, if it were to happen, the people who wrote it would know what the Supreme Court have done with almost all the rest of the protections, and express it as clearly and precisely as they could.

So, unless it was just a bone for the dogs, to shut them up for a while, the protection would largely achieve what it's supposed to. But it'll never happen, because it would be people who are abusing you agreeing that not only are they abusing you, but it's also wrong for them to abuse you and that they should be stopped.

Plus, they can't even agree on a budget, which needs two 50%+1 majorities. How could they get two 2/3 majorities plus seventy-five 50%+1 majorities? It isn't going to happen.

(Incidentally, I know some people think that rights naturally exist and the government/constitution/congress/parliament/whatever doesn't give them to you; I'm not such a person, because the people who get to abuse them aren't such people either, and so we have to recognise reality for what it is.)

Why should someone without a family be able to with someone who hasn't? Why is it immoral to stop them? Families and future generations are very important for society, in particular to care for older people. It's certainly not prima facie evident that societies should subsidise single people who choose not to get married and have families, and your assertion doesn't change that.

Also, we need to make capitalists, use more comma, like William Shatner. Every comma you use, helps small children, get the food they need.

Mind you, I don't think, that I agree, with the principle of authority.

I think, that if someone wants to take what I have, and keep it for themself, that's their right, and I can't do anything about it, unless I'm willing to be as bad as them. "It's better to go into life with one hand than into the fire with two." But consequently, I don't think, I can have anything to do with politics and voting and taxing and stuff.

Also, even if I granted your principle of authority, I don't think, it would be a good idea to patch the problem with a tax, because then people would say, "well, to make this more perfect, let's get rid of the tax". Instead, if there's a problem with the system, you should change the system entirely for one that's less sucky. I don't advocate one, but I would prefer to hear an argument without a tax-patch. Maybe eliminating for-profit corporations, and restricting the ability to charge interest, would be a better idea. That way, our economic system would be, more like a mediaeval european one, sans serfs (if you'll pardon the pun). I don't know, if that would be, better, but at least it's not tacked on.

(Last night, after I wrote this—but I forgot to submit it—someone said something like "if you have to redistribute wealth to make sure everyone's got enough, something's wrong and you need to change the parameters of the initial distribution". That's nothing like a direct quote, it's my translation, but the point stands.)

"The rest of the world"? Your definition of the rest of the world is strangely narrow; I live in outer suburbs and I don't have a car (I ride or catch the bus to work and ride or walk home; occasionally, a co-worker offers me a lift home if it's pouring). In huge parts of the world you need to be considerably rich to afford a car.

Some Western countries, mostly the English speaking ones, and some developing countries have made choices to make cars necessities, not luxury items. And, granted, a society that has chosen to do that now has to pay the price, which includes subsidies for the cars of the poor (although it would be better not to require poor people to live outside of walking distance of working places, and to let rich people have a choice, instead of forcing everyone to subsidise the choices of the rich and powerful).

But that doesn't change the fact the world doesn't begin in California and end in Maine. or that these were choices, and (I think) quite bad ones. Consequently we could make other choices, and other parts of the world definitely have.

I will grant your first paragraph, more or less. I don't have any reason to believe modern education will give much practical knowledge of farming without pesticides and modern fertilisers and pumps to move water around; but, equally, I suppose, I have no reason to suppose that they don't—just reason to be sceptical that having a lesson in history is enough.

But when you say:

"Today's graphic designers are better educated in absolute terms than 140-years ago farmers because anyone with a degree of any kind is supposed to understand things like chemistry 101, basic economics, and climate - aka how fertilizer works, why crops sell for what they do, etc. In some ways, a graphic designer today is more educated about AGRICULTURE than farmers of 140 years ago were. At least, the degree plan says they are. Tomorrow, I may ask a couple of graphic designers about how economic factors affect crop prices and see if they actually absorbed that education."

I think, (a) your degree plans look like nothing I've ever seen (b) I seriously think you're overestimating the effectiveness of a completely disused education. If you do follow up on that plan, I'd be interested to hear the results, but I'm not sure economic factors and crop prices in the hi-tech twenty-first century have much bearing on mid-tech nineteenth century food production.

otoh put a phd in a 140-year-old farm (with 140-year-old technology and no stores or cars to drive there with) and they'd quickly starve to death. it's probably better to say we're educated differently. more specialised, less useful if push happens to come to shove.