The last time I frequently used a US bus system -- about 15 years ago, in Pittsburgh -- they used a zone system, with the fare based on your origin and destination zones, and most bus routes crossing at least one zone boundary. The last time I used a public bus -- about 5 years ago, in Japan (Yamanouchi, Nagano Prefecture) -- riders took a numbered ticket when they boarded, and their exact fare to the next stop was displayed on an LCD panel. I would guess that US cities avoid exact metering in order to subsidize their passengers who live far away from their workplace; these are the most frequent riders, and tend to be lower-income.

Yes, and you have effectively described Uber's concept for driverless transport. It won't look anything like today's buses, and the only real similarity is that strangers share road vehicles.

If you go from ten single-occupancy cars to a ten-passenger bus, you've eliminated 90% of the vehicles at the (relatively low) cost of adding one more driver. Eliminating the bus driver gets you from eleven people in the bus to ten, which is probably not as important as other efficiency improvements. Also, buses are awful unless you have quite high population density -- lots of areas don't have enough prospective trip endpoints to justify mass transit.

And in your world, how do you deal with unicorn overpopulation?

When you have one district that breaks down mostly into two significantly different constituencies -- whether they are based on race, class, rural versus suburban, or whatever else -- the way politicians react in reality is that they focus their appeal on one of the constituencies, try to increase turnout for that constituency, and discourage turnout for the other one. It's just gerrymandering of a different kind.

District-drawing very much should recognize communities. If you can avoid it, it does not make sense to have districts that are half suburban and half agricultural, or half high-end gentrified downtown and half working-class and poor. Unfortunately, as you point out, the judgment involved does make it easier to slip in some degree of gerrymandering.

The US is even better in that respect. If our federal government went out to lunch for 18 months (which might be a reduction for some of our Washington politicians...) we would still have 51 governments plus the territories.

Your "status card" is essentially recognition of the marriage by the government by another name. I have also barely scratched the surface of the issues. If the government doesn't recognize a marriage, then presumably it treats a "spouse's" inheritance as taxable income -- the US Supreme Court's first case on the question was over that very point (a lady in NY state died, the federal government's policy was to not recognize her state-recognized marriage to another lady, and thus the IRS wanted to tax the inheritance as income to the second woman). Maybe all inheritances should be tax-free, but a lot of people already seem sensitive over estate taxes now.

Government recognizes marriages for a lot of reasons, many relating to how much the two people are expected to rely on each other in case of hardship, and most of the rest relating to raising children. Even very good roommates are unlikely to share burdens in the same way, so it doesn't seem quite right to extend the current benefits of marriage to simple cohabitants.

So doctors should ask your estranged sister instead of your soul mate about what extreme measures you would approve of? Your retired parents should get all your worldly goods, and the person you made a life with should be left to beg them for money so that he or she can feed your children? In those cases in particular, most people would prefer that a spouse get precedence over blood relatives, and the law currently recognizes that priority.

My last hypo is this: Andi and Sam have a kid. They split up, and are now shacking up with others. Which of the adults are allowed to pick the kid up from school, or authorize field trips, or review medical records? Saying "family" doesn't cut it: there are two parents, who are perhaps unlikely to agree on major decisions, and two other step-parents (except that, in your proposed world, the law doesn't recognize such a relationship because it doesn't recognize either Andi or Sam as being re-married).

Legal recognition of "marriage" includes a lot of useful side effects that make it hard to get government out of recognizing marriages. Who should a hospital consult if a person is incapacitated but needs a medical decision to be made: a roommate, a blood relative, or someone else? Who inherits belongings if the decedent did not leave a will? If the parents of a child no longer live together, should their current cohabitants be regarded as legal guardians of the child?

Voter registration is required in the US because the state and federal governments do not always track where people live. If you get a driver's license, "motor voter" laws typically give you the option to register to vote at the same time, but there are people have driver's licenses, pay taxes, or do other things to show up in government databases. Voter registration gives them a way to vote. Voter registration rolls are also used to select people for jury duty.

Localities in the US may allow non-citizen residents to vote on local candidates and issues, and some have -- mostly more "progressive" cities and counties. I think states may allow non-citizens to vote for state candidates and issues, but my understanding is that it is currently forbidden in all states. It is illegal under federal law for a non-citizen to vote in federal elections, which I assume includes presidential elections, even though technically the votes only work to select state-level delegates to the college of electors.

Maybe it would be better and simpler if we just stuck peoples' thumbs in purple ink when they vote. That would give other people a chance to police non-citizen voters (in places where it is illegal), reliably prevent multiple voting, and reduce paperwork overhead. However, that scheme is incompatible with absentee and early voting, which are considered important voting methods by both conservatives and liberals in the US.

With enough effort and expense, sure, the plaintiff (complainant? whatever) could probably *eventually* find a working address to serve notice at. That would delay the proceedings an unpredictable, and almost certainly undue, length of time. Neither the US Post Office nor the state's "Support Collection Unit" (which handles alimony) have a newer address for her. The husband in this case tried to call and text his two children (with the ex), but they did not respond. How long is the guy supposed to wait to argue that he shouldn't have to pay child support for his 21-year-old son?

The key element of a tortious interference claim is not the existence of a contract, it is third-party interference with a business or contractual relationship. sixoh1 was suggesting that someone might have a cause of action against Rightscorp, not the ISP, so the ISP's prerogative to terminate customer contracts is not relevant.

Similar logic applies to having the ISP cut off your connection entirely -- if they got statutory authority for one of them, I bet they could get the same kind of permission for the other (if the original language of the law doesn't cover both already).

Next up: Booting all of your connectivity -- mobile as well as hardline -- through one, integrated, Big Brother-ish app.

In the US, a typical manager earns some amount more than the people they manage. As a result, the average software engineer earns significantly more than the average non-engineering manager, and more than many engineering managers.

And in the US, doctors and lawyers are not comparable to software developers for two main reasons: they have significant legal duties towards their clients (and must carry malpractice insurance as a result), and it is a serious crime to practice medicine or law without a license (which is granted by the people already in the field). Doctors and lawyers typically have further education, as well, which is not required for software developers. We also hear chronic complaints about doctor shortages, too -- but thankfully none for lawyers :) The kind of doctors with the worst shortages are "primary care" doctors, rather than specialists and surgeons, who also make much less money than the specialists, and I think in the same neighborhood as software developers.

You missed the key word "potential" in that sentence. There are many thousands of good programmers in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco area, although basically are already as employed as they wish to be. In the kind of places where you think a company might be able to relocate, there are probably dozens of programmers with the same level of skills. When a company wants to hire hundreds of good engineers, that is not very useful: they'd need to convince most of their workforce to relocate.