Nonsense. What Hoover actually did while on office indicates his "underlying philosophy", which was far from "leave it alone". In any case, regardless of any philosophy, the fact is that he intervened to an unprecedented extent, with predictable results.

You said that Hoover "let the free market work on its own". Hiring someone who believed in that approach and then proceeding to ignore their advice does not constitute letting the market work on its own.

There are varying accounts regarding the Panic of 1837. Quoting Wikipedia:

So van Buren wasn't re-elected, but that may simply be due to unfair perceptions and public sentiment in spite of the recovering economy, rather than any real problem with his policies. In any case it didn't turn out like the Great Depression, where the economic downturn dragged on for over a decade.

History says otherwise. The free market improves the welfare of the vast majority. A few benefit more than average, and a few benefit less, but the effect on the median is positive.

Without the market most of the people alive today would be dead of starvation, with the remaining few engaged in subsistence farming. The only people who aren't better off are those very few incapable of participating, in general due to a severe physical or mental handicap. Even those considered very poor are better off with the market than they would be without it.

Fiscal policy is central planning. It amounts to price controls on money, which have far-reaching effects throughout the economy.

It sounds like you're arguing for the pacifist position. While I would agree that there is never any good reason to start a war, nor to escalate one, I have to say that simply laying down and dying on cue when an enemy attacks is not a particularly attractive option, nor one I feel anyone is obligated to accept. As a universal principle it would inevitably be self-defeating, as the more ethical side would always be wiped out, leaving those inclined toward war to dominate by default.

It may take two sides to fight a war, but it only takes one side to start it. The victim of an attack has a right to proportional self-defense. I moreover have no objection to others voluntarily choosing to aid in that defense. The key point is to consciously limit yourself to just stopping the attack, as decisively as possible but with a minimum of collateral damage, without becoming the very thing you're fighting against.

The question no one seems able to answer is this: how do you "give everybody enough money to buy basic food and housing" when no one is producing food or housing for sale? Coming up with extra money is trivial; getting goods onto shelves so people can spend that money on things they need is the hard part, particularly if you don't intend to resort to forced labor.

I have no doubt that people will find ways to occupy themselves and perhaps earn some extra spending money for luxuries, but there are plenty of hard, dirty, unpleasant jobs that no one would choose to do if their basic needs were already met for free, and they can't all be automated with near-term levels of technology. I foresee a glut of artists and entertainers, and precious few farmers, janitors, and sanitation engineers.

Between increased inflation, new public works projects, the Federal Farm Board, immigration restrictions, tax increases, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Bacon-Davis Act, the Home Loan Bank System, pressure enacted on the NYSE to block short selling, and various other examples of interference from 1929 to 1932, I don't see how you can possibly say that Hoover "let the free market work on its own". In hindsight the New Deal was really Hoover's creation, not Roosevelt's.

Laisse-faire had been the policy prior to 1929. It's no accident that 1929 is remembered as the start of "The Great Depression", in contrast to previous events such as the depression of 1819, the Panic of 1837, and the depression of 1920-1921. The Great Depression is the first case where the federal government tried to end a depression by decree and regulation and public spending rather than taking the hands-off approach. The result was a disaster, from which they seem to have learned very little.

America's Great Depression

The free market may not operate under a mandate, but it has the effect of improving the general welfare. Government, by contrast, has the mandate, but is incapable of carrying it out. Interference by central planners just makes matters worse. This is a case where principles and pragmatism are in perfect alignment.

There is a big difference between "war should be considered as a last resort to get our way" and "war shouldn't be considered at all except as a way to prevent something even worse" (where the list of things considered "worse than war" is extremely short). Whether war is justified at all is a more important issue than where it ranks on a list of options, though I do agree that other options should always come first.

While you did know that you'd find ads, that doesn't imply that you "intentionally loaded Slashdot to get ... ads". You just wanted the news & discussion; the ads are an unwanted side effect, impurities in the data stream. You agreed to accept whatever the site sends you in response to your request, but that doesn't imply you have to display it, run embedded code, or follow the links. A good web-browser with plugins like Ad Block will help to refine the signal from the noise, simultaneously improving both load times and security.

The logical place to deal with this issue would be higher up in the stack, like with SCTP's multihoming support. Rather than advertising multiple routes to the same IP address, you let the other endpoint know that you can be reached at multiple IP addresses. If one ISP has an outage, you transparently switch the traffic over to another address.

Unfortunately, this requires updating applications to use different protocols; there is no backward-compatible way to retrofit this form of multihoming into TCP or UDP.

IPv6 is intended to change how routing is done. The larger addresses make it easier to allocate prefixes hierarchically, as opposed to the smaller blocks which must be joined together for IPv4. For example, top-level prefixes could be naively assigned by combining 8 bits of latitude with 10 bits of longitude to create 256k /18s each covering approximately 800 square miles. Each /18 would have room to allocate each of up to ~1 billion customers a /48 prefix composed of 64k /64 subnets, each having 2**64 unique addresses. The resulting routing tables should be highly compressible; for example, there would probably be a single preferred route from a given location for all packets destined for a particular country or state. Only the closer destinations would need individual routes.

People agree to pay for things outside of their control all the time. Consider the contract you have with your auto insurance company, for example, in which they agree to pay in the event that you get into an accident. If you agree to the terms of your own free will, in the absence of fraud or duress, you should assume that they're binding, at least morally if not legally. The real problem would be if they were trying to fine the people posting negative reviews directly, when they weren't a party to the contract.

I see no reason why this contract shouldn't be considered binding—which is not to say that I think it's a good idea. I find it a bit surprising that they still have any customers after pulling a stunt like this, which was a clear sign of desperation in its own right. One doesn''t go to such lengths to suppress negative reviews unless one has something to hide.

In that particular case, perhaps, but they have their own interests and obligations outside the case which may be harmed by turning over the documents. For example, in this case compliance with the order could conceivably place Microsoft in violation of foreign data privacy laws, which this court cannot grant immunity from as it lacks jurisdiction.

Given that you're compelled to comply regardless, under threat of more or less whatever punishment the court happens to deem fit, there isn't much scope for negotiation. The court holds all the cards. You can ask for consideration, but there isn't much you can do about it if they refuse.

In case it wasn't obvious, I am wholly opposed to dragging third-parties into a case against their will when they haven't even been accused of any wrongdoing. That includes both compulsory testimony and the involuntary production of evidence. The courts exist to resolve disputes and protect rights, not to create new disputes and violate rights.

That sounds like a great idea. Since you're coding for the least common denominator, you obviously get none of the benefits of the target language, while still suffering from all of its issues, plus whatever additional issues are introduced by your under-spec'd and idiosyncratic "meta language" and "meta compiler".

To top it off, no one else will ever be able to maintain or build on what you write, so you're stuck with that job forever, unable to move on to something better—or at least until TPTB wake up and realize that it's far more trouble than it's worth and throw it out in favor of something which is properly idiomatic and standardized and which doesn't make them wholly dependent on you and your "meta compiler".

No thanks.

I'm not sure that's exactly the same thing. First, perhaps I'm just reading too much into your wording, but it sounds like you would have to admit guilt, as opposed to the court ruling against you for failure to comply while you continue to maintain your innocence. Second, and more importantly, only the defendant can "stipulate in court to the prosecution's allegations". What about subpoenas issued to third parties who would otherwise not have anything at stake? Like Microsoft in this case—they aren't the defendant, they're just holding the data.

The only reasonable way to handle this, so far as I can see, would be for the court to order the actual defendant in the case to direct Microsoft to turn over the data, or in extreme cases to do so in the defendant's stead. Microsoft would then be following the directions of their customer according to the terms of their contract, and not under the duress of a court order.

And this is pretty much the entire problem, right here. The very concept of "contempt of court"—arbitrary punishments handed out by judges at their sole discretion, with no consideration for proportionality or due process—runs counter to the principle of rule of law. I have no problem with a court saying that if you refuse to turn over relevant documents then they will be assumed to be as damaging as possible to your case. I do have a problem with them saying that if you don't turn over the documents you'll be subject to potentially indefinite jail time and fines in excess of whatever damages you were accused of inflicting on the other party.

Well, that and the fact that they seem to be trying to apply subpoena rules to a search warrant. A search warrant doesn't impose any obligations beyond staying out of law enforcement's way while they search the place. A subpoena, on the other hand, is an order for someone within the court's jurisdiction to testify or produce evidence. This is being described as a search warrant for reasons that are not at all clear to me, but the court apparently wants the company to perform the search itself and produce evidence as if it were subpoenaed.

I agree with you here, but as I see it, people weren't manipulated into panicking; they were manipulated into thinking that there was a fire. The panicking and its consequences were a separate matter, and their own fault, not that of whoever shouted "fire".

I agree, but much like free will itself, I don't see that we have any real choice except to extend people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are in control of their own actions, even if it seems likely that their response was more or less "automatic". If you take away someone's personal responsibility, you also take away their right to self-determination, reducing them to the level of animals. So long as people want to be treated as people, they have to take responsibility for their actions, even if those actions were driven by instinct rather than logic.