Snippet of a recent conversation:

Friend: "...and people are even 3D printing houses!"

Me: (skeptical look)

Friend: "It'll work!"

Me: "I have no doubts that the technology will function just fine. But in this case, it's not the technology that's the problem. We could have cheap housing all over the place, presently, and solve a million housing problems. But the problem isn't the technology."

Friend: "Well what else would it be?"

I explained about Seattle City's law that you can only have 8 people living in a housing unit, regardless of the size, and that this is on the liberal end of things, as far as most cities go.

I explained about zoning, and restriction, and neighbors.

I explained that if you could snap your fingers and make floating or underground housing, for absolutely free, either above or below the city of Seattle, people would rage with anger and complain of crime, undesirables, unsightlys, and plummeting housing values.

The middle class stores most of its wealth in its houses, and so everybody has a gigantic freak-out if anything happens to cause housing prices to go down. We hold as a society the notion that a house is an investment vehicle, and will do anything in our collective power to make sure that housing prices go up, up, up, faster than the rate of inflation. We'll talk about "quality" and "community" and "clean neighborhoods," whatever it takes, to make sure that the next generation spends more on our houses than the generation that came before.

What use is a 3-D printer that can print houses with ease?

What use are robots that can programmatically generate great housing in a for-loop?

I mean, besides becoming "the enemy of all humankind" and having all federal, state, and local laws applied against you with every bit of scrutiny that can be mustered?

You "study the humanities" not so that you learn some kind of scientific truth about the human being. You study the humanities so that you aren't naive, and waste the investment everybody's put into you.

Drive a motorcycle. You'll either be driving, or you'll be dead. I promise you won't be texting (for very long)!

It is weird how so many anti-freedom people like yourself are so quick to claim majority support for what Eich did. Sure, a slim majority were anti-gay marriage back when he tried to enshrine his religious dogma into law. But the overwhelming majority did not support "the cause" enough to spend money on it. By his own actions he revealed himself to be an extremist.

Furthermore, the whole idea that being part of a majority somehow excuses a person from judgment and consequences of their actions is itself morally bankrupt. The civil rights movement was a struggle against majority opinion too.

BTW, the freedom to restrict another person's freedom is freedom in name alone.

> I'm not sure what the exact charges are.

Racketeering.

Because every time an HP leader breaks the law the employees must take the training.