Yup. You could also have a reputation system. Set the expectation that cars are kept clean and in good repair, and have cameras inside. If your car shows up and it isn't right, then you hit a button to get a new car, the old car sends itself for servicing, and somebody checks the recordings to find out who gets to pay the bills and fines.

I was thinking more of a Canadian travelling to the UK being covered by the UK NHS, and a UK citizen travelling to Canada being covered by Health Canada.

As I said, I have no idea if this is the case, but it would make sense for me for countries with similar levels of coverage to arrange for reciprocal benefits like this as it just makes things easier on everybody without really incurring any net costs.

That's just the march of technology.

Take an autopilot for a drone, strap it to a rocket, and write some software with an ADS-B decoder and $20 SDR and now you have an anti-aircraft missile capable of targeting airliners by name. Or you have rocket artillery with fairly high precision. Before you know it Pumpkin Chunkin will involve an accuracy class with the goal to be able to hit a tin can with a trebuchet and guided pumpkin from 200 yards.

Fast forward a while longer and people will be able to make fission weapons in their basements.

Sooner or later we need to come up with ways of handling conflict in society that don't require keeping weapons out of the hands of the public, because that is becoming harder and harder to do.

Plus, it really eliminates the need to own so many cars. The car can do multiple duty, and borrowing a car is much more practical when it can pick you up at your door (whether it is shared between neighbors or is actually a taxi).

Parking becomes much easier to optimize when cars can drop and pick people up anywhere, and park themselves. There is no need for parking locations to be within a short walk of every destination.

You can also split up cargo vs personnel transport. Passenger vehicles could be smaller and optimized for passengers, with cargo vehicles being big boxes on wheels. You could take a bus to the grocery store and send your 12 bags home in a cargo vehicle while you take a bus back, or a 1-person car, etc. People don't need to own a vehicle large enough to make that trip they make once a month - they can rent for that.

Endless possibilities for transportation when you don't need people in the loop.

Well, why don't you go build one? Just spend a few billion of your own money - I'm sure you'll make a profit in no time, despite not being able to charge your full costs due to the presence of an established company that has paid for these sunk costs.

I agree that one of the best ways to use regulation is to create competition, thus minimizing the scope of regulation.

However, I don't think the origin of the monopoly matters at all. Obviously if a monopoly resulted from poor regulation that should be fixed, simply because it is poor regulation. However, all monopolies will tend to use their position to block competition and extract maximum economic rent. That is just the nature of business. It is only the fear of regulation that might cause companies to avoid it at all. If they didn't do these things in the US the directors could probably be sued for it.

Moving to Canada as a refugee is a far more involved process than moving to a different state in the US.

I can just pay for a hotel room in another US state, move there, and claim residence as long as I live out of that hotel. Nobody has to approve my residency, there are no border crossings, etc.

A tourist visiting Canada and staying in a hotel is generally not eligible for their nationalized health system. They expect payment/etc just like most other countries would. I don't know the details, but I wouldn't be surprised if they offer free healthcare to citizens of comparable countries that reciprocate for emergency conditions/etc, which would be fairly logical.

We can't even get an NHS passed by simple majority. You'll never see another constitutional amendment within your lifetime, unless it is for something like the Patriot Act.

You'd have as much success trying to turn the US into a parliamentary system with proportional representation.

Mass doesn't have a single-payer heathcare system, basic income, etc.

What is called socialism in the US is not what most people in the world would call socialism. I'll agree that it is a matter of degree, but there really is only so much you can offer when people can freely shift income/wealth outside of your taxing jurisdiction and those who have needs can freely move into it.

What! You left out the best part: slavery!

Err, rather, the contracted sale of persons into a mutually beneficial arrangement where their owner obtains the benefit of their labor, and the worker obtains the benefit of not having to worry about feeding or clothing themselves, or having to repair the bars on their windows when they wear out.

The concept of stealing something requires a recognition that it was yours to steal in the first place. Legally it isn't - the tax dollars belonged to the government the moment they were "earned."

Even the word "earned" isn't completely appropriate. It suggests that you received your income purely on the basis of things that you provided through your own efforts. However, the fact that you are able to walk, talk, and think is in no way based on your own efforts, nor is the fact that somebody took the time to teach you how to read and write, and so on (assuming that you're even able to do those things - many can't).

I can't say that I've earned my income any more than I can say that some mentally retarded and physically disabled orphan earned their life of destitution. Thus, I have a responsibility to ensure that they are cared for, and this responsibility includes using legal means to compel others to support them as well.

It is impossible to have socialism at the state government level because states are not permitted to levy tariffs or control immigration.

You can't have socialism without both of those. If a state were to offer free healthcare paid for by taxes, then the unemployed who need healthcare would just travel to that state, while employers would move to other states where taxes are lower. That doesn't mean that single-payer healthcare can't work - just that it can't work in the context of a US state. In a country like Canada you can't just move there for six months to have your cancer fixed, and anybody from outside of Canada selling goods there is subject to tariffs which are intended to help ensure that the cost basis for producing those goods is somewhat comparable.

I've heard the whole laboratory for experimentation argument about the role of the federal/state governments, but it really only allows for experimentation on fairly minor things and for the most part is just a race for the bottom. Look at what companies do when they negotiate their taxes while threatening to move operations.

Only time can clear you of it. The most you can do is put a protest letter in your file, which everybody will ignore. Everybody who accesses your credit report plans on behaving just like Comcast did in this call anyway, so the fact that you stood up to them is hardly going to inspire them to give you a nice deal.

Nah. They will point to the fact that some areas of business are just natural monopolies. Don't get me wrong - regulatory capture makes it even worse than it would be otherwise, but even though it is fairly free from regulation and many of the last mile problems I don't see 47 companies offering satellite cable.

The corporations are doing what they always do - charge whatever the market will bear. Regulation is required anytime you have a monopoly, no matter how it got there. Obviously regulation that encourages competition so as to minimize the need for future regulation should be preferred.

I'd argue that the best solution is to break up the vertical integration. Have a traditional utility (cost-plus basis) own the last mile wires. Then let anybody sell services over them. The service providers would not be allowed to own the utilities, but otherwise they would be free from regulation. The utilities would just charge you a monthly fee to maintain the lines, and would charge a flat rate to anybody renting rack-space to provide services - they wouldn't be in a position to choose winners/losers/etc.

The idea is that regulation of some things is necessary, but we should try to structure regulation so that we minimize its scope.

I suspect your score is indeed lower, and that companies will take that bad report into account (and ignore your protest letter).

Your credit history doesn't just impact your ability to get loans - it also impacts the interest rate you pay on those loans. So, disputed charges can cost you real money - quite a bit of it if you're talking about a mortgage.

Big companies don't care whether you had a legitimate reason to dispute a charge. When they want to impose some illegal contract change on you they don't want you legitimately disputing their charges either.

My point was more that I can understand the logic behind the approach. I just tend to not favor those kinds of approaches. I'd rather change society so that somebody who can never get a job doesn't starve to death in the first place. Another improvement would be changing privacy law such that nobody has a clean reputation, forcing companies to resort to hiring people with bad reputations. I think as a society we need to get to a point where anybody can pull up a video of their boss getting dressed in the morning and not really care enough to bother to do so.