Hi, can you explain what you mean by this, "Government should not be concerned with redistributing wealth (which is almost wholly unrelated to the legitimate social responsibility of caring for the poor and needy)."?

Also, progressivity has decines quite a bit in the US over the last 40 years.
  http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/...

and there are good reasons to want a progressive system https://www.aeaweb.org/article...

Ok, when did regulation help with communication. Let's see. maybe when we all payed taxes and then funded the creations of TCP/IP and arpanet. Just throwing that one out there.

Another time government regulation was good--when we didn't allow banks to do anything but be boring with deposit accounts and loans. These rules were lifted in the late 90s and slow but steady growth was turned into an erratic economy.

In my favorite case we got a study guide with several sample essay questions on it and then the difference between the study guide and the final was that the header had been changed from "study guide" to "final exam". I had guessed this and even suggested it to several others in the class. I even went so far as to write essays for each question. Everyone else thought I was nuts but, unfortunately for them, the "curve" was to set the highest score to 100 with no care for the number of As, Bs, Cs, ... too bad for them.

I think it's debatable if income tax is a production tax. Certainly, given the individual it is, but across individuals it's more like a tax on being able to produce (being "smart" would be one way to put it, but smarts do not make one rich and all the rich are not smart).

They don't give a shit?

The problem with USB is the S for serial. The connection always has to make space for other devices on the bus to talk and that really brings down maximum bandwitdh for any individual device. So while USB 2.0 hi-speed (remember that debacle) may have high bandwidth, the amount available for, e.g. a single drive, was much lower than the theoretical max.

Can you point me to some evidence that the iPhone is invading my privacy? Again, the Android literally can record my conversations without my knowledge--and I can't turn that off in the settings without violating my agreement with the telco and rooting the machine.

It's called the washing machine. Laundry is a task that took a fair amount of time per item and was really hard on cloths a century ago. 98% of that has been moved to a robot.

You could say I consented to Chrome being installed (it can't be uninstalled) but not connecting to that is the same as having an android device that is a brick.

"On the other hand, a lot of the 'control' over privacy in Apple products is directly in the hands of Apple, and there is no guarantee Apple will stay friendly."

Uh, all of the control is in Apple's hands, and I'd rather have the device that is currently friendly then the device that is currently taking a crap on me and laughing.

I knew of these but don't like them. It's really shitty to think that one would have to root the phone to get it to work at all correctly. I'm concerned about the security implications of installing non google play software and rooting the phone are also not trivial and I want to do things in my life other than fix a phone that was sent to me broken.

In other words, buying an iPhone is a more attractive option than this.

Except that just today Scalia said that he doesn't have to consider congresses intent. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

I'm an android user but I really hate the OS. About 1/4 of my apps (the ones I can't uninstall) require me to grant them the right to record voice without notifying me. It's really shitty. On the iPhone I'm in control of privacy, on Android, google is. But, I do use it because I pay a lot less for the service.

Try anyone with an Android phone. On the play store, every google app (and several others) require the ability to record audio and video without your consent--and unlike iOS, you can't adjust the privacy app by app, permission by permission. We all know iOS isn't perfect, but they are way ahead of Google on privacy.

I use Republic and the wifi is more for when you're parked at your house or office (as far as I can tell). I haven't had any problems with it, except if I receive a call right as I'm exiting wifi range it will take about 10 seconds to respond.

I use republic and I have no such problem. At work, I use a password, and home, I use a password. But it really doesn't matter, Republic charges me $10 per month (maybe $11 or $12 with taxes?) and I still get unlimited calls and texts. If I upgraded to 3G, I'd be paying $25 (I think just under $30 with taxes).