The problem in requiring people to kneel and get permission from government to do things IS the primary problem differentiating economically powerful, free nations from those bogged down with kickbacks required for a dozen different actions per day.

It matters not why the government block occurs (good old corruption or Jesus appearing in the sky claiming how awesome-O the regulation is), economics are hindered.

If a free society wants some regulation, it should be from agencies more responsive than this. It's taken a freaking year for them to "permit" tthis, and that reflects massive popular pressure on elected officials. Remember the mantra of Obama's regulators when they took over: "Wedon't have to care about things like this. They were fucking proud of it.

Lois on couch: Peter, it was like that time you participated in Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Cut-Away Peter: G'day, mate! I'll have some beer and backbacon, eh?

Peter on Couch, sad: I...I don't know how Icelanders talk.

Sigh. A refresher course on terminology.

This was indeed a mafia-like protection racket, but it did not subvert the democratic process. It subverted freedom. It was an example of the democratic process, which subverts freedom all the time.

I am not speaking of using it to form a more orderly society straying from anarchy. Rather, democracy's use in practice often involves setting up special favors that are the opposite of a free market.

"partly because the world has no clear process for expediting drug approvals."

The vast majority of drugs should be fast track. The number of deaths that occur with letting a drug out early (before full problems are realized) is vastly smaller than the numbers of deaths that occur because drugs are held up ten years.

The FDA is built on a mathematically false premise. But you konw, a dead guy from some drug, boy can those politicians decry "unconscionable profits".

How many are standing up to decry the ten million worldwide not saved becaise some good heart drug was delayed 6 years?

Such taxes are politically non-viable because they void the reason politicians seek power: to weild it, getting in the way or things, so they can get paid to get back out of the way, bribes legal (political donations) and illegal (kickbacks, hiring relatives, a hundred other things.)

Hell, for that matter, the US Congress is considering cleaning up the tax code by closing loopholes. Congress has done this several times in the past.

All it does is allow them to hand out the loopholes again in exchange for more "donations".

No, Libertarians piss off both the left and the right. That's how we know we are correct.

Your respective quasi-religions are laughable to us...if they weren't so dangerous to freedom.

As usual, what never enters into the conversation, or your mind, is the simple observation that there never is a "fair tax". No, not for the reasons your memetic programming is giving you an itchy typing finger at the moment.

Rather, pay their fair share" is a sliding goalpoast meme used to justify ever greater spending as the years and decades drag on.

You could set their "fair share", and some years from now another politician, coveteous of power bought by lavishing bread and circuses, will re-introduce it as argument to increase taxes yet again.

Your soiled underpants are showing, dude.

Nah, he spelt it right. But it's not really an upgrade to Windows, but to the NSA backdoors built into Windows via the NSA PPP(tm) Panopticon Partnership Program.

That would probably be the fastest way to shut down this idiotic legal threat -- "This is a breeding competition, not a cloning competition. That set of genes in a horse won in the past. Congratulations, good job, breeder! Let's see what the next generation product of these breeders yields.

"We just assumed a base historical background fact, no need to define it further because it's so obvious, of breeding horses as given, and no more foresaw cloning than a Star Trek teleporter creating a duplicate that someone might want to enter."

They are loaded with the "blood" of various champion animals through recorded provenance. They just don't want to allow clones into the competition, or for people to claim they are selling the genes of a horse which won, which didn't.

It's a breeding competition, not a cloning competition.

No, but I'm fine with them listening in to public microphones people voluntarily step up to and yabber into.

You'll be ok as long as you don't name it the Mycroft 3000.

Strike that. Please name it the Mycroft 3000.

Well, you can't wait for people to actually be harmed because at that point it's a rat race to sign them up, and your law firm probably won't win.

No, by preemptively suing for damages because you are so scared you might be hacked, they are playas!

Rats hoisted by their own profiling petard.

Microsoft issued a statement, "Oops."

In a completely unrelated story, federal government threats of anti-trust prosecutions of Microsoft are at an all-time low.

And yet other studies show thinner people prefer sweeter concoctions and fatter people less sweet, greasier ones.

They were probably promoting longevity at the cost of a few cavities. Anyone ever study cavities vs. obesity?