Soldiers happen, but they are rare.

They choose to be that way.

It doesn't really have anything to do with anything, it is just an interesting comparison to understand scope. It is like, "the U.S. spend so much money on X per year that if you stacked dollar bills on each other, the stack would reach the moon." What do dollar bills and the moon have to do with each other? Nothing. It is just an amusing comparison for people who have a hard time grasping numbers and their true meaning.

I would say that needing to swear because someone uses the percentage of gays in the US in a comparison probably indicates a problem. Are you unhappy with how many gays there are, or how many soldiers there are.

For the record, I think we have just the right amount of each. Otherwise the market forces would cause more to be created.

Hmm. Now I'll have to go consider what market forces could cause the creation of addition gays...

But it is so much more fun putting new stuff together and seeing what happens. Besides, it makes your boss think you are doing something and are valuable. This assumes your boss isn't smart enough to understand the value of quality, and that each phase gate you go through makes mistakes cost 10x more to fix.

Sadly the American people are like an ignorant boss, the vast majority only understand "doing something to help me now" instead of understanding the wider ramifications of a particular idea.

As a semi-off topic example, both parties appear to fail to understand the wide ranging ramifications of failing to protect property rights of shareholders in FNMA and FMCC.

Excellent post. I disagree with this one conclusion,

"It follows from this that because all forms of "government", and all specific examples of those forms up through the present, operate by coercing the populace, and therefore all known forms of government are unethical and should be stopped."

A form of government that merely enforces NAP could be 100% libertarian in nature. I think most libertarians of any mixture are suspicious of the possibilities of a government that would enforce NAP and not grow. The commerce clause if out of control. The same human behavior that caused the commerce clause to grow would likely cause the enforcement of NAP to grow also.

Great post.

Getting a vast majority of the vote doesn't prove them to be competent. It just proves there hasn't been a better option for a long while.

I'm a FNMA investor. The government's treatment of private shareholders is atrocious. This is coming out of both parties, but for separate, and opposite direction political reasons.

I wish the libertarian party could be taken seriously. That is what I would like to vote for.

Consider this:
At the two extremes, you have can a government that tells you exactly what you can do, but also takes care of you, or you can have a government that lets you do whatever you want and lets you reap the rewards and consequences of your actions. Republicans and Democrats are both fascist in what they tell people they can and can't do. The Democrats have additional socialism mixed in. We need the libertarians to step up so we can have our liberty back.

How about a voting captcha?

Captcha ideas:
1. I am who I say I am.
2. I am a registered voter.
3. I have not, and will not vote twice.
4. I understand what I'm voting on.

This may not be very thorough, but it would at least get some of the complete moron votes removed. Ideally there would be enough captcha questions that you couldn't give a complete moron a list of what to vote for and be able to provide the answer to the captcha also.

How serious can they be when they've forgot about the 3rd dimension?

This is like not opening email attachments to emails with spelling or grammatical errors but for engineers.

"Anonymous coward is where I draw the line."

A good portion of the world's (well the US's) religions aren't ready for Evolution. Of course they are not ready for ET.

Let me guess, you don't have very much money and you aren't sure why. But the cause of your lack of money couldn't be because you believe everything about economics is a fraud.

Check out the difference between Republican and Democrat convictions for fraud or similar problems by politicians. This controls for many more variables than a comparison between E and W Germany, but gets you a similar outcome in terms of a correlation between believing in socialism and being willing to cheat to get what you think is right.

Correlation isn't causation, but it is at least a better study.

So I really want to be a male prostitute. The problem is that most males want to be having sex most of the time. This means that there isn't much market for the services I want to provide. Not only can I not give my product away, I have to pay people to take it.

The technology we've created has democratized the creation of art, writing and music, in this case. People who want to can. It may be sad that your favorite writer isn't getting rich, but it is great that any idiot who want to try can publish an album or book, even if it never ends up being profitable.

We are heading in the right direction.

They are like real estate agents. There are more of them chasing the same pie. Markets forces will win eventually and we'll get fewer new books because that is what the market is asking for.

Don't blame this on Amazon.

I love this idea. The problem is programming/CS is too much of a mess to be able to engineer anything to a PE level. I suppose one could argue that NASA can do it. A PE quality programmer could do it on an extremely simple processor and tool chain, but having PE quality software isn't where the market is at.

Sometime back someone stole the formula for the electolytic and sold s bunch of it. Sadly the didn't get the formula right. The world is still suffering the consequences. Replacing the barrel caps is usually the right answer. You could open a service store and only know how to solder and order caps and probably do OK.