Choice is good - many would not even be willing to offer that sort of choice... but why limit it to just two? There are a lot more potential arbitration/protection systems than "the state's" and "none at all"; it borders on a false dilemma.

Companies theoretically have a moral duty to pay taxes according to the spirit of the law.

Neither the letter nor the spirit of a law creates a moral duty.

I too would like to see someone take you up on this, and since I don't have mod points now, perhaps this response will produce something of a bump.

I also feel compelled to ask you, sir, why you hate roads, want your house to burn down and/or be attacked by roving barbarians/British troops, and prefer to eat food which would indubitably kill you and everyone you have ever met instantly were it not for government food inspectors (blessings and peace upon them for-ever)?

I'd rather pay and use fair courts, or at least ones that pretend to it and can compete on reputation (hah, government "justice" system) and a protection service that doesn't spend most of its time and my money harassing people for using drugs and passing yet more laws against victimless "crime" to enrich public/pseudo-private prison owners/operators - but that same government "justice" system doesn't let me opt out of its depredations.

If his customers use the roads, let his customers pay for them, and don't extort him.

"You were robbed by a mugger, and he's threatening to burn down your house and rape your dog if you don't keep paying him? He's using the money he gets from you to mow my and my friend's lawn every Tuesday - we voted! - so SUCK IT UP!"

"Modern economics" does not make demands. And the idea that businesses are colluding to produce unemployment is silly. If a businessperson can hire someone that will add more to his bottom line than they cost, all things being equal, they'll do it. But demand for people, especially at minimum wage, is limited. There are plenty of people who cannot add even minimum wage to a company's bottom line: and companies are not charities (or if they are, they still want efficient employees). Already, a clue has been given as to one of the causes of unemployment: minimum wage. If a person is willing to work for less than minimum wage, and they provide over that amount of value, then they can be profitably employed - but that's not legal, so the company and the potential employee loses the value they could have gained (note that nowhere have I stated that a person can comfortably support a family of eight on minimum wage, nor that minimum wage is the only cause of unemployment).

And again, it is not "when a resource becomes short its value rises" - values are individual and subjective. If you fix that to prices rise, it's about right, but the usual term used is decrease in supply (and an increase in demand tends to have the same effect). It requires no conspiracy for there to be no buyer for a particular good or service - or worker - especially at a given price, and again, when a price floor such as minimum wage is in effect, it's easier for there to be a lack of a buyer. If a particular used car commonly goes for $3000 - that is, it is valued at $3000 by knowledgeable buyers, compared to equivalents etc. - and there is a price floor in effect requiring it to be sold for at least $3500, it will not sell as well, and not because customers are conspiring not to buy it to avoid the price being driven above $3500.

Consider Japan, which is very much in the situation of having higher demand for minimum wage (untrained) workers: did they just keep cranking up minimum wage until highschool grads can make the equivalent of $100/hour? No; they invested in robots for things like homecare for their aging population. There is no conspiracy against paying present minimum wage workers $100/hour; it's just about the value they add to the business. Even if there is reduced supply, businesses are not going to be able to pay more than the value gained for any resource, including employees, and stay in business for long. That's even more fundamental than economics: it's basic math.

Ah, yes, the magic social contract, wholly undefined and signed by nobody, but always hand-waved at when someone wants to justify plunder or harm of any sort - followed closely by asserting things that "we" agree to, where there is no such agreement in evidence.

I take my hat off to you, sir - no sarcasm intended. I know from your journals that you have a lot of haters modding you down; this post above is at -1 for no rational reason, and yet you keep posting insightful comments. Know that people do read them.

They randomize which proxies get sent to which random parts of the list (see what RTFA gets you?). Granted, the Minister signed up enough accounts hed' probably get them all (unless they got suspicious at all the requests from evil-commies.cn). Still, harder than one central website.

No - that was about Spamhaus (which is mentioned again in this current writeup but not the main point); this scenario is about Hotmail/Yahoo! having (he believes) a shared secret domain blacklist that applies to the content of emails.

Um... wow, it's sorta sad that I have to explain this.

Imagine you're the Chinese Minister of Censorship, or the flunky that manages the Great Firewall. You learn about a website with an RSS feed with a continually updated list of anti-censorship proxies. What do you do?

(On the other hand, you haven't blocked Hotmail or Yahoo! or other email providers, because, well, riots are bad for business.)

If "society" wants more kids, let people voluntarily donate to help out those that want to have them, and leave the government (and people that don't want to donate) out of it. I say society doesn't give a flying crap about it; and as a species we're in no danger of dying out.

In terms of needing people to work, left alone that's a self-healing problem too: as supply reduces but demand remains the same or even increases, prices can increase too and people will move into such jobs as the pricing mechanism signals.

God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. —Jefferson

Perhaps if any webmail client handled gpg encryption securely, I'd consider it. None do.

Pick the one you otherwise like best and start a conversation about it in their forums, or (if you write code) offer to contribute? Or perhaps chip in some cash to someone willing to fix the problems you identified?

We recently switched to Roundcube (from Horde, which I had never liked but it worked decently with IMAP) for home email. Using IMAP (courier-imap and qmail) at least makes it easy to switch between clients. I never used Horde myself (preferred Mutt; I installed it for my wife) but I've actually started using Roundcube as my primary client. Very easy to set up and has all the functionality I need. I use maildrop on the server to filter incoming mail, and can switch to Mutt anytime it's more convenient (which is rare) or act directly on the maildir files (e.g., advanced grep expressions or move a set of messages by attribute) if necessary.

When you work for the government, you work for the People.

No. When you work for the government, you work against the people; you are a parasite upon the people. The military in particular is far too big, costs far too much ("we" spend what, more than the rest combined?), and hasn't defended American freedom for decades, and was iffy even then. Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep at night, but don't expect the rest of us to accept it. When you work in a job where people can choose to buy your services or goods or not, then you work for the people (that buy your product).