You can't argue about the sovereign rights of individuals and ignore the sovereign rights of the state. Regulating and taxing commercial behavior is among those rights of the state, and if you are accepting money rather than generously offering hospitality then you are acting in a commercial manner.

Actually it is pretty black and white if we look at precedent. In particular general aviation.

To greatly simplify FAA rules, taking money beyond the other person's share of the fuel cost OR allowing the other person influence over when and where the plane goes, makes the flight commercial rather private and requires the pilot to have a commercial license rather than a private license.

So according to precedent, receiving $2 beyond the other person's share of fuel would make the drive commercial not private.

Think about it, if it is truly just sharing a ride then the driver's fuel cost is $3, but the driver received $5. The driver did come out $2 ahead, that would be the private sharing perspective. Arguing that the driver is $1 short of actual fuel costs is an absolutely commercial perspective, as if the driver wasn't going to make that drive anyway.

That dehumanization of the enemy and the lofty patriotic goals that you refer to, the combat vets I've know have said that was all just Hollywood. That's for the civilians at home and that the guys at the front generally knew that such things were BS. That they fought to protect themselves and the guys next to them. That quote from earlier, "don't confuse the people who fight wars with the people who start wars", that vet was referring to both sides. Other vets expressed the same sentiment to me. The only ones that they truly wanted to kill were the leaders in Berlin and Tokyo, and possibly the closely held political troops of the leadership like the SS. As for the regular forces it was regrettable that they got between them and the leadership, a necessary evil. Similar story today. It being regrettable that some Afghan farmer decided to pick up a rifle and get between them and Al Queda or Taliban leadership, a necessary evil.

I've known numerous combat vets from various wars and several vets who served during peacetime. None ever had any intention of dying for their country. I trust your just "being smart ass" again. :-)

As for joining the military to learn some trade or earn money for college, that absolutely happens. However even in peacetime these people are making a voluntary choice to risk life and limb and to forfeit personal liberties for an extended period of time. I know a Navy Corpsman who is saving up money for college, plans to go to med school, and then plans on returning to the Navy to pay for med school. In fairly recent times he was part of a humanitarian medical mission to Africa. Some really hairy stuff happens that never makes it to the news. By hairy I mean the corpsman has exited the Humvee with his M4 out as the driver speaks with the AK-47 toting locals blocking the road with their Toyota. When you enlist such stuff may be an unlikely remote possibility but you have basically agreed to take such risks at the discretion of your superiors.

Here is a second bit of wisdom that the WW2 paratrooper taught me as a child: "Don't confuse the people who fight wars with the people who start wars. They are not the same people. Soldiers don't get to choose what wars they will fight, what Presidents they will trust."

One of the few privileges that a U.S. soldier has is to refuse to commit a horrific crime. Save the hyperbole for political rants.

Other mercenaries who probably also lack confidence in the mission and/or the leadership and after re-calculating the risk/reward see breaking the contract as the best outcome.

So did I. The point you missed was that our selective service registration was **not** voluntary. We were required by law to do so. Actually enlisting was completely voluntary. All those who serve, drafted or volunteer, deserve respect. But those who volunteer deserve some extra respect. Which is entirely the case for those who have gone into harms way since Vietnam.

Also respect and canonization are very different things. You make yourself look foolish by conflating the two. Although those who volunteer to be combat medics or corpsman have taken a step closer to the later.

"for others" in my original statement is a euphemism for one's fellow citizens. So no, the mercenary is not doing the same thing. Plus the mercenary can break their contract and leave if they do not like the mission or lose faith in their leadership/mangagement. Yet another detail amongst many that make them a poor comparison.

The construction worker gets to go home every night to the wife and kids.

The construction worker decides every morning if he will go to work today.

The construction worker can leave the job site at any time if he thinks things are getting dangerous, or loses trust in his management.

The acceptable casualty rate on construction sites is zero.

Those in the military face very different circumstances.

You have just made the point of those you are arguing against. The **act** of volunteering to risk life and limb for others over an extended period of time is worthy of respect. The **act** of accepting many personal sacrifices over this period of time is worthy of respect.

The point that you missed is that going into harms way deserves respect, but **volunteering** for it deserves some extra respect. Today's military is all volunteer, hence the extra respect. Plus ordinary military training involves a certain risk to life and limb, even in peace time.

Another point that you miss is that desk jobs do not mean you had not gone into harms way in the past (the translator I mentioned), or will not go into harms way in the future (the clerk and electronics tech I mentioned, and a Navy radioman I did not mention).

You also seem unaware that one of the reasons the military utilizes civilian contractors so heavily for supply and support roles today is so that those in uniform may be assigned combat roles.

You misunderstand and you distort what I said. Lets try it one last time.

(1) People who volunteer for the military are not forced to fight. They **agree**, up front, to go into harms way as needed. Going into harms way may or may not involve fighting. They further **agree**, up front, that participating in the fighting is a possibility. Furthermore, ordinary military training involves a certain amount of risk to life and limb, even in peace time.

(2) Non-military also **agree** to go into harms way up front. Ex. Police and firemen.

(3) Regular civilians have on occasion found themselves in a situation where they can help others by **voluntarily** going into harms way. Ex. Individuals who made it out of the world trade center but went back in to help.

(4) That people who **voluntarily** go into harms way for others deserve some extra respect.

As I said, volunteering to go into harms way is not exclusively done by those in the military. The founding fathers would be another example of doing so. By signing the Declaration of Independence they publicly declared themselves traitors to the king and put their lives on the line.

That said, having the military subservient to the elected civilian leadership and respecting the special contributions and sacrifice that members of the military make are two very different things. They are very compatible with one another.

And the publisher probably did not have to deal with the normal shipping. Gov't trucks probably showed up and the printing facility and took custody of the books.

Basically because the 99% can very suddenly find themselves a part of the 1%.

Don't be so quick to judge someone by their occupational specialty. Let me explain it to you the way a WW2 paratrooper explained it to me when I was a kid: "Don't trust the TV commercials that the military is a good place to learn a trade, like electronics, its not that simple. Every person entering the military spends some time crawling around in the mud with a rifle learning to fight. Its not some hazing ritual. When the shit hits the fan and things get desperate the cooks, clerks and mechanics are told to pick up a weapon and fight. Regardless of what job you are expecting to have in the military, don't sign up unless you are willing to pick up that weapon and fight."

This former paratrooper then told me about the truck driver he shared a frozen hole in the ground with while on the front line defending Bastogne. The truck driver was part of group that made a dangerous last minute supply run into the city before it was completely surrounded, after delivering the supplies they were told to pick up rifles and reinforce some paratroopers that were spread out very thinly. The paratrooper's brother was a clerk in the Navy. He was assigned to a destroyer in the Pacific. When the ship went to general quarter, getting ready to fight, he put away the typewriter and ledger books and manned a 40mm bofors cannon. That high school teacher I mentioned earlier, the Marine on Guadalcanal, he was wounded but instead of being medically discharged he was assigned to various army company headquarters units in Europe as a translator. While preparing his discharge paperwork someone noticed that he spoke fluent German, his fate changed. Another high school teacher was a Marine in Vietnam. He was an electronics tech with a desk job on base. Then one day he was told he would be accompanying a force recon team into enemy territory to set up sensors on a jungle road to detect enemy supply convoys. These jungle roads were under a heavy tree canopy so aerial observation was not possible.

Don't be so quick to judge clerks, truck drivers, electronics techs, etc.

Since the IRS declared that bitcoins are assets not gambling winnings one probably can offset a bitcoin gain with a bitcoin loss. What is unclear is if one can use bitcoin losses to offset other types of gains, as I believe you can do with stock losses to a limited extent.