The App store TOS prohibits releasing software that is GPL. You can find your favorite source if you google "app store gpl".

You make a sensible argument, but overlook a couple of key factors.

In the US, ostensibly we ARE the government ("We the people" and all that). We only have crony capitalists of both parties in power because the majority of the populous turns a blind eye while the minority funds them through the primaries/general election and puts them into power. Your complaints go to a larger problem that aren't really relevant here.

The rocket industry NEEDS oversight. These things in the wrong hands are basically weapons.

If you read the article, they basically suspended the regulations for a period of time to allow commercial flight to take off. At the time, they expected many flights to have taken place so there would be some safety data to analyze. The problem is when hundreds of flights were expected, they only had 12. I think this is just propaganda against sensible safety regulations. What will probably happen is the regulations will be relaxed for a few more years, but there probably aren't enough resources in this agency to provide proper oversight.

But thankfully it is not preventing you from storing chemicals of unknown danger in shoddy equipment next to a river that provides 300,000 people with their water. Because freedom!

Don't be absurd. If you're really concerned about government over-regulation of breathing, I recommend you go to a heavily populated area in either India or China. Our government doesn't need to tell us to breathe, but emission controls here actually do improve your experience. Truth of the matter is that we do need some common entity to oversee things like flying. I suppose next you'll say that we don't need the government telling airlines how to secure their cockpits, schedule takeoffs and landings to avoid collisions, or inspect their planes for mechanical failures, etc.

We were talking about a hypothetical scenario where the cost of hard drives used by Dropbox would become relevant to the OP as analogy to the cost of music vs record labels royalties to artists. In this example, Dropbox has as much influence on the market of hard drives as the music industry has on music royalties in the real world. Basically Dropbox forced the margins down on hard drives so much that most companies are forced to exit the business. As a result, you can't get Pandora music in this hypothetical world, because no one makes hard drives anymore.

Where do you think the stream comes from? Little musicians playing live on the other end of the tube? The music is being stored on a disk somewhere, even if you don't own it.

Let's extend your example a bit. Let's say that Dropbox develops an unnatural power over hard drive manufacturers and demands lower and lower prices to the point where no one could afford to make hard drives for their service anymore. Everything seems to work fine for a while, but eventually hardware failures occur without backup hardware for recovery and you lose whatever data you had stored with them. Would you care then?

The original statement is flawed. Sure, some people prefer the new UI, but they are statistically a minority. It's not a good idea to grow/develop a brand in a way that *shrinks* your user-base. If they were aiming for the uber-rich, that's one thing, but I get the feeling that they were aiming for mass appeal.

In the "Capitalism makes everything better"-model, there is nothing that could be lower cost than the multiple choice tests. It's not about creating a metric that's better for students. It's about creating a metric that's cheaper to produce and execute.

There's actually no transparency to what the costs of publication actually are. I've accumulated some anecdotal evidence that many peer-reviewers are often volunteers that work for free. I have no doubt that the majority of the cost of this publication is absorbed by the PI and his institution.

So the article costs $32 to read. It begs the question, what are they hiding?

a. If the freeloaders leave, a contributing member of society will replace them locally.
b. A valid point, but this is just restating the original problem. The solution requires these people to be replaced.
c. Tax cheats are a minority. With extra resources, the IRS could hire investigators and justice department could hire more prosecutors to curb this problem.

It's not as though this is a new problem, wealth concentrated in few hands. It can be solved the same way it was in the past. Increase the income tax at the highest levels to 75% for incomes over $1 million and use the revenue gains for public works projects. Make University level education free. Invest in research like the human genome project. Rebuild all the countries bridges and highways. Demolish ruined buildings and create public parks. The money is there and the manpower is here.

Actually, there is evidence that people that share files buy more than the average public.