Socialism is doing just fine in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Canada and anywhere else it's really been tried, thank you very much.

Fascist dictatorships who borrow socialism's rhetoric to excuse stealing everything for themselves (China, USSR, North Korea) don't work so well, but then again they're not socialist, so it all evens out.

NASA did all the really hard work (the basic design of space rockets). You know, the Basic Science that costs billions and doesn't pay off for decades. You see, private companies are too focused on short term profit generation to basic science. That's why it's done on the public dime.

As for gov't inefficiency: it's a myth brought on by a few high profile pork projects (the US Military comes to mind) and underfunded DMVs. Go to a modern well funded post office some time. They're incredibly efficient. Also, go work in management for a large (private) corporation sometime and tell me again how amazingly efficient they are compared to government.

you can't install properly configured red light cameras. As soon as you do people start either a) driving around them or b) stop running red lights. They seem to work too well, and then the revenue drops like a rock. Whatever else we want debate about how effective they are they're there to generate money for cash strapped cities not allowed to raise taxes; Safety may or may not be a byproduct, but one thing is sure: less light running at the intersections their put into is. And sooner or later to keep profits up they have to game the cameras to give out more tickets...

And you're right, fixing safety is really, really simple. Just run a yellow for a few extra seconds to make sure the intersection is clear. It costs nothing, but it also doesn't generate any revenue.

his insurance isn't likely to pay you for the full value of your car. As someone who's been rear ended twice in my life I've never once gotten the real market value of my car from an insurance company...

There's always libertarian paradise (Google it) , but I've noticed a running theme with libertarians; whenever the market doesn't behave the way they expect and/or want it just wasn't "free" enough

For those laws, and its not Just to keep bueracrats employed. those laws exist to prevent very real abuses by employers. There's tons of documentaries on the subject. Unions came to power right around the time film cameras were getting affordable

Let's go live there. Here in My world capital owners get bailed out. Public losses private profits.

the way I see it is the rich are going to screw me. While they're busy screwing me over something as trivial as this they might give some ground on something that actually matters, like health care. In the States we have a (by our standards) fairly liberal president who's managed to get a (very) few health care reforms though that will benefit me and mine. To pay for the campaigns to convince American's that health care is something they want we get crap like this. Is it a horrible and unpleasant compromise? Yeah. Is this the way the real world really works? Also yeah. I'm no longer so naive that I believe it's going to change...

Microsoft just pays a few (very cheap) net programmers to track them down and then sends the DOJ after them. Like they did with the bot nets. Then your tax dollars do the real work. I suppose it's a good thing (law enforcement and all) but basically when you start costing a major corporation money and/or it's reputation then there's no end to the resources that will be put towards bringing you down.

It's not about revenue, it's about shady resellers. Steam was cheerfully ignoring your Russian buddy gifting you games for ages until a few high profile cases of shady resellers selling bad keys. As has been pointed out in the rest of this thread you can still buy a game in Russia and play it in the US. You just can't gift them anymore. Steam is killing of the key resellers so that ppl knew to Steam and computers don't get ripped off by them.

We could just let 99% of the world's population descend into horrifying poverty while 1% has their every desire fulfilled. As near as I can tell it was like that for 2000+ years in the age of kings and queens...

and if it can solve a problem without discomfort and struggle why the hell not? Christ, it wasn't long ago that we expected the plague as divine retribution ya know...

and cares about 16% better performance from Bioshock Infinite? I've got a GTX 660 in a 6 year old Athlon XP 6000 and it kicks that game in the fanny.

What I want is stable drivers. I bought an nVidia because I still don't trust AMD after my last experience (admittedly from 3 years ago).

that there are several Journals doing pay for play. In that context the summary is fine.

States that Edna has a Masters from Bryn Mawr College, so I'd say she's more than qualified to get published. Now don't you feel silly?