The problem is, fuel efficient cars weigh less, and therefore do less damage to the road.

That's not always true. There are hybrid SUVs now that weigh more than my all-gas camry, but get the same MPG.

The taxing should be use-based. I'm not saying eliminate gas taxes entirely -- there should also be an incentive to drive a fuel efficient vehicle. But they should be lessened and an alternative taxation method formed like this GPS idea or increased toll roads.

The downside is any state that just raises the gas tax now has an incentive to promote the use of gas hog vehicles, and a dis-incentive to promote more efficient vehicles.

Their idea has merit -- people should be taxed based on how much use they are getting out of the roads, since a lot of the money is used for repairing those roads/infrastructure.

Is it fair to let electric vehicles that pay zero gas tax use the roads?

However, in my opinion, it would be cheaper to build toll stations that can read license plates, and require a credit card on file to charge for toll roads, compared to equipping every vehicle with a gps system.

If someone doesn't have a checking account or credit card for auto-pay, you mail those people a bill every month, with a surcharge to discourage this method. If they don't pay in 30 days, you mail them a fine, same as a red-light ticket does.

The problem is you're creating an incentive for states to promote gas-hog vehicles, which is ummm precisely the opposite of where we need to go.

After all, what kind of car does your mechanic drive? Do you know when your mechanic last did an oil change on their own car?

Hint - the mechanic's car is usually fixed last, if ever.

Care to try and back that statement up?

I happen to work in the automotive repair industry. Good automotive techs know better than most that it's far cheaper to maintain their vehicle than it is to repair damage later.

It's time you came to the realization that taxes are a part of what makes living in this country great.

No, our constitution and enforcement of it through our legal system are what make this country great.

Taxes are just a necessary evil. Switching over to a system like the Fair Tax would at least bring some sanity, and perhaps 'less evil', to the endeavor.

NY should drop their income tax and replace it with a flat sales tax increase.

A. Many programmers start writing or re-writing their code in functional programming languages.

or

B. Programmers continue writing to their platform of choice, e.g. .NET, Java, etc., and the guys writing the virtual machines do the heavy-lifting, making the VM execute more efficiently with multi-cores?

I'll go with B.

Apple is already proving this. Mac OS X Snow Leopard will have a lot of this built-in. Read about "Grand Central."

What have you invented for humanity? At any price?

Kamen has invented the portable dialysis pump, the iBot and related technologies (segway), a water filtration system ($1500 to purify 1000 liters a day), this slingshot device, and apparantly some stirling tech for developing nations.

Should the man give everything he makes away for free, or might it be OK to continue giving him another incentive to build some of these awesome devices?

You really know how to take the fun out of things, I'll bet.

Unfortunately, if the government brought back [even higher than we have now] death taxes, they would severely limit #1, so that you are basically forced to give it to charity or forced-charity (the government).

If you take away a large incentive -- the idea that you can build wealth in your family/friends, and let them have some of it in the future -- you will shoot yourself in the foot. Unintended consequences.

I vote for letting people have the freedom to spend their own money the way they see fit, and provide tax incentives for charity.

When you're a member of the federal government in a position to actually push through things into laws, your are specifically the type of person that should NOT just blurt out "all sorts of things," ESPECIALLY after distressing events.

Jesus H. Christ!

You thought so? What does that mean, that you don't understand how an analogy works?

The point was -- everyone plays the game. You have to do some things you don't want to do, to get ahead. Even if you do them, you don't have to like them, and it's not a lie to say as much.

C'mon, seriously? This isn't a libertarian thing -- people tend to mod down stuff they disagree with, it's human nature. Give me a break...

Libertarians aren't smart enough or educated enough to argue their case

Ahhh... ok.

Most libertarians are only capable of parroting back other people's arguments, so when you present them with an argument they haven't seen before, they don't know what to do.

Seriously? You're going to try and make the "sheep" argument against a small group of people that decided to stray out of the left/right democrat/republican fold, and think for themselves about what could be if we had more freedom and less government involvement in every part of our lives?

Really? You want to go down this path?

If you do, let's do it. Leave out the ad hominem attacks, and present a real argument in favor of government intrusion into the free market system, and I'll debate with you.

The key to arguing for the pure libertarian point of view is that whenever you're presented with an example of the market failing, you figure out some minor way in which it is regulated, and blame that for the failure rather than the lack of stronger protections.

Apparently the key to arguing against libertarians is to attack libertarians using a straw-man, rather than trying to defend your own views on why it's a good idea for the federal government to interfere in free markets.

Or if a financial industry falls all over it's ass by making stupid bets left and right, it's not that the industry went wild taking on too many risks, it's that entitlement programs sent them the...uhh...implicit message that they should...lend money to people that will never pay it back..?

What implicit message? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were providing the money and incentives backing these risky loans, and were pushed in that direction by the government, so that everyone could buy a house, regardless of whether they could afford it. In addition, the federal government artificially lowered the lending rates between banks, further encouraging this behavior through cheap money.

When you've got cheap money, the government buying risky loans, and now -- a total bailout of this philosophy, why WOULDN'T you operate your company this way?

Imagine if instead of this, the government wasn't involved with the mortgage market in any way. If the cost of borrowing money was in line with the risk of lending it. If you knew that if your company failed, it failed, no bailout available.

Do you really think we'd be in this mess?

My camera and my TV both use HDCP already.

What if all new TVs required HDCP streams to function?