But do they not happen very much because of IP laws in this country? How would this change if the US didn't provide companies with legal ways to protect themselves?

So your logic is...

Government is corrupt -> corporations own the government -> corporations are corrupt

Did you miss the steps where politicians are elected to run the government and corporations are owned and run by people?

I counter with

Governments are made of people -> people are corrupt
Corporations are made of people -> people are corrupt

So yeah, it's cute that you rather naively think everything boils down to corporations being evil (you do know corrupt governments existed before corporations, right?) but the fact of the matter is both corporations and governments are corrupt because the people who own/run them are corrupt. And yes, that includes voters. Do you think everyone at your place of work would vote themselves a pay raise if they had the right? Do you honestly think your fellow voters are any different? Keep in mind 50% of them are likely dumber than you (or perhaps as dumb given your anti-corporate mouth frothing).

And if you think one side of political spectrum is more or less corrupt, you're still probably wrong. You could even make strong arguments for and against less government as a means of minimizing corruption, although in general I'll go out on a limb and say having less of something that can make it legal for you to be a slave is probably a Good Thing (TM).

So the argument against removing the laws (for all auto manufacturers) and making the dealers "sell" themselves to the auto manufacturers is what exactly? That dealerships lobbied really, really hard to sell you a product that they add no value to? Can you say "crony capitalism"?

Why does this have to be a hate crime?

Isn't the whole point of "equal protection under the law" to give us all the same protections of the justice system? Why should it matter who's privacy was invaded, who was beaten, or who was killed? Shouldn't all of these acts of evil be abhorrent in our society regardless of why they were committed? Isn't it hypocritical to cry for "equal rights" and then write laws which are, by definition, unequal? It's a sad, narrow minded overreaction to the injustices of the past.

Hate crime law, like the Jim Crow laws of the last century, are a backward and draconian implementation of justice and social regulation that are a slap in the face to equality. The sooner we stop drawing distinctions like these, the sooner we'll progress to a society that is open and accepting of so called "alternative lifestyles."

Incidentally, what this man did was a horrendous invasion of privacy and fully deserves to be considered a felony. He should be tried in a court of law and regardless of the outcome should be exported (obviously at the end of his sentence if found guilty).

Mr. Li is looking at this from a strongly economic point of view. California has lead the nation economically, and the quote he's referring to is that many socioeconomic policies are adopted in California before they are adopted elsewhere (generally this is in the form of heavy-handed government regulation of industry). A lot of this is because California is such a large market, companies will only retool to meet CA's requirements as they meet or exceed most other states' and federal standards.

In regards to the "future of endless referendums", Mr. Li is again referring to California, which has a somewhat broken implementation of direct democracy. This is bittersweet, because the population is often at odds with the courts and the legislature. Read about raising taxes in CA and the history behind Proposition 8. California is perhaps the best example of why democracy is bad if left unchecked (at least in the US - it looks like Greece might be the best example in Europe, if not the world). In California, and increasingly, in the US, politically "the ends always justify the means", meaning it doesn't matter what individual liberties you trample/destroy as long as you *think* it's a good idea.

I'm not sure how America is any "less democratic" now than it was, say, 30 years ago. But the population has been far more engaged and frustrated with the government in the last 10 years than in the 90s, when Americans were more cynical and apathetic. Unfortunately, I don't think the US' experiment in socialism will be over for another generation or two, so we're probably in for some rough times ahead.

What Mr. Li is ultimately referring to is optimization and the function of government (recall that "superior" is a relative term). Should your government's primary focus be protecting individual liberty (traditionally very American, somewhat libertarian), enhancing the life of all its citizens at the cost of some liberties (democratic socialism, generally European and left leaning), or national economic development (state capitalism, which the Chinese have championed and extremely right wing)? Mr. Li doesn't care about the Chinese, he cares about China.

You have an interesting definition of "fair". But that term is relative, so I'm sure it's "fair" from someone's perspective (probably the person with the least to lose and the most to gain...).

Property taxes are just the subtler, modern day equivalent of slavery. The only difference is that it applies to everyone instead of an unrepresented minority and you pay them to maintain some of your freedom. Maybe that's the "fair" part you're referring to. I'm sure your next argument is how we all have a duty to pay these taxes - you might even say we have a "social contract." A contract we never entered and can never exit. Sure sounds a lot like slavery. I wonder if africans thought the same thing 250 years ago as they watched generations of their children toil in a field for someone else's benefit? I guess I can have the pleasure of watching my future children toil in an office building for their entire life to pay off this generation's benefits. I'm sure that meets your definition of fair, too.

I bet you're the kind of person who thinks all the bank foreclosures are evil. All those poor people being evicted because they lost their job, committed fraud to obtain a loan they couldn't afford, or had fraud committed against them by predatory lenders. It sure isn't fair for them, is it? So for the few people who actually own their own homes - perhaps because their family actually built it - and lose their job in this bad economy, and can't afford to pay the government the protection^H^H^Htax money owed to it, then it's totally fair when the government seizes their home and throws them in jail, am I right?

WIth people like you around, why do we even bother calling this a "free" society?

If by "force them to do it" you mean "don't buy their products" then I'm onboard, otherwise you're just worse than the problem. And you might want to double check what protectionism is (I assume that's what you meant by "isolationism", which is fundamentally different...), because placing taxes on imported goods is pretty much what protectionism is.

Why is outsourcing everything good in the long run? Because if we didn't outsource it, you probably wouldn't be able to afford it. It's not like it's complicated; if US companies didn't/couldn't outsource, then they'd have no hope of competing with their european and asian counterparts. Period. You want to play the protectionism game? Sure, go for it. Europe and Asia will happily play that game and slap tariffs on all US goods. Do you think we can get buy as a country without the world buying our goods? Guess again, it would absolutely destroy our economy.

The sad irony is that we've always had the power of "social change", but we're too stupid as a population to us it. If you don't like something for any reason, don't buy it. If you don't think other people should buy it, tell them why. If you can't win your argument through logic and ideas and your only solution is force, you're just as bad as the barbarians who want to push creationism on this country and for the same reason. Or perhaps worse, because you seem to care but refuse any rational solution because it's not radical enough to force people to change whether they want to or not!

Any sensible man would know we shouldn't have such stupid laws. If CFLs/LEDs/etc are so superior, why do we need a law banning them? If everyone cares enough about the environment to pass a law to mandate the use of such bulbs, don't enough of us care that a law isn't necessary? The government shouldn't be passing laws for this kind of BS, guidelines and industry standard recommendations maybe, but not laws.

If you want to save electricity, how about turning off the millions of street and parking lot lights at night? How about wiring homes with DC so that damn near every piece of electric equipment doesn't have to take a >10% efficiency hit in order to operate? Or a law to limit the number of hours a TV can be used (we can all agree that that freedom isn't needed anymore, right)?

Maybe we should have laws limiting the amount of power your computer can draw or how long it can be on. Or perhaps outlaw that scourge to computer efficiency, the hard drive?

Of course everything can't be privatized; there are things that must be held in the public name or else fundamental public services would be non existant (such as courts or the military). I've never heard anyone clamoring for such an irrational view of privatization but I wouldn't put it past people. But the real reason privatization is NOT as dangerous to the common man is because 1) The government is eternal and 2) History has shown you have a lot more to fear from your government than from your asshole neighbor.

In regards to social security...how naive were people to think that this WOULDN'T happen? I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner! You've already admitted the money "didn't belong to them" and you're right - it belonged to the people who earned it. So why isn't that money in *their* control? Why was it ever under the control of the government in the first place? (Hint: it wasn't unintentional.) Why isn't the middle ground of SS "you have to put money away for retirement, but that money is in a privately held, but federally insured account for the individual"? Heck, you could even say that the money *has* to be used to purchase US Treasuries - as a method of lending to the government to fund it while hedging against inflation.

But the whole notion of SS is fundamentally flawed - it assumes that people can't think for themselves, can't plan for their own future, and can't manage their own finances. Anyone with any sense of self worth and independence should see that for what it is: a slap in the face and a command to "obey"!

Why "minorities"? Why not just "individuals"? Isn't an "individual" the ultimate minority?

This constant obsession with protecting specific groups is a deep, fundamental flaw in your thinking that is all too common. Stop categorizing people. Rights shouldn't be based on what category you fit into, they should be based on the fact that you are an individual human being with the same rights as every other human being.

No, the US constitution was important because it put THE GOVERNMENTS rights in simple English on a sheet of paper. It's supposed to list what the government can do, not what the people can do; I say supposed to because the monstrosity of government we have now is so out of scope of the original purpose of government that it's beyond defining. The Bill of Rights (which is what you're really talking about) was an afterthought introduced by Madison because it was feared that the Constitution wasn't explicit enough, i.e., people would allow the government to grow beyond its purpose and trample certain rights were key to the revolution in the first place.

The Constitution doesn't give you freedom. It gives the government freedom. Freedom isn't given to you by your government - it's something your government is supposed to protect!

So don't work for that employer. Work for yourself or work for someone else. Start a company which reverses this trend: allow innovators to keep the right to their ideas in exchange for being reimbursed the cost of developing the technology. I hope you don't consider yourself an inventor, because quite frankly you don't seem to have the balls to handle the competition (hint: if you want the government to rewrite the rules in your favor, you're doing it wrong). If you think corporations or the government has all the power, they only do because you let them have it.

There are real benefits to having a corporation fund your work. For example, there's almost zero risk for the inventor. The company will pay for the development and marketing of your idea and absorb (or default) on the loss if it fails. Sure, you might lose your job, but you're not going to go bankrupt or lose millions (and potentially more) on an idea with no guarantee of return. Your family isn't going to starve if your idea flops, or the market dries up.

Or lower the cost of labor. Not everyone in this country is going to have a high paying job and high education is not for everyone. Maybe if we spent more time on lowering the cost of living in this country then lower paying jobs wouldn't be so intolerable.

Well said. Right behind being popular is "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" which is absolutely contrary to the principles the US was founded on. Too many people these days think that what's good for the group is good for the individual. This is rarely the case, because it puts the government in the position of picking winners and losers, which is a position the government should not be in.

Society is not government. If government wants to implement social reform, it should do so in an open forum as an exchange between citizens and government and not merely pass laws. People keep thinking government is a tool for change when it should really be a weapon of second-to-last resort (with the last being force).