I dunno... I ordered something by 2 day mail and it was shipped via USPS. It was shipped Thursday of last week. It's still not here. This is not uncommon. FedEx and UPS don't seem to have these problems.

I know, I know - anecdotal, one person - but it's is annoying to have people scream that USPS is the pinnacle of efficiency when 2 day shipping regularly turns into 4 and 5 days.

#1 is critically important. It is my understanding that getting land rights to put up poles and lay cable is the largest hurdle for many potential providers, to the point of making it cost prohibitive. And who is lobbying to keep it that way? The one provider already in the area. This must be fixed. I agree with you that a free-er (as opposed to completely free) market solution is the best. We just need some ground rules to ensure that competition can be made fair.

Too many people are looking to strong-arm the companies with strict regulation instead of looking at the situation and providing an environment in which the free market can work. We haven't really had a chance for the free market to work, and #1 is a great example of why, so we haven't seen what the free market can do in this sector.

Let's try the less-government solution first. If that doesn't work, then we can go to the more-government later. We can ALWAYS get more government later. It's excruciatingly difficult to go the other direction.

I'm not, because that would make you just as bad as the NSA.

Maybe that person has a good reason for voting against it. The article itself is very scant on details, but it does have near the bottom:

It was opposed by the California District Attorneys Association, which said the bill was too vague.

So maybe the intent of the law is quite good; I think we can all agree with that. However, it is possible that the law is poorly written.

This would not be the first well intentioned yet poorly written law in history.

1. Destruction of property (smash your car).
2. Physical harm (smash your head).
3. Psychological harm (stalking someone).

We already have laws that cover this stuff. We have plenty of settled cases that show what is and what isn't harmful. There's always going to be room in the law for some wiggle room - and that, I think, is okay. Every situation is going to be different (which is why mandatory sentencing laws are so terrible).

If someone wants to rot their brain with a kilo of coke, well, I don't approve but I'm not going to stop that person as long as they don't present a danger to life, liberty, or property. Want to squirt some krokodil into your veins? Have at it. Enjoy your short life. Just don't dick with me.

That actually may sound cruel; after all, we know that these drugs do serious damage to a person, and we could prevent that person from hurting themselves... but, little by little, as we have seen, it becomes, "drinking that beer is harmful, you can't do it" and "reading that book is harmful, you can't do it."

The best solution is somewhere between "go snort yourself to death" and "obscene nanny state"; you can tell which side I lean towards, obviously. (o:

Paying $250k to an administrator that sits in an office all day is very likely paying far too much.

Paying $60k to some guy who has to walk up to a car, not know who is inside, not know if that person is a criminal, and not know if that person has a firearm ready to shoot once the cop approaches the window... Well. I don't think it is nearly enough.

I agree; law enforcement should be funded through standard taxes just like everything else.

If you want to fix schools, though, well. Maybe you should think twice about money being the answer to your woes. It isn't. We spend more on our schools than any other developed nation. Money, on the whole, is not the problem. The problem lies elsewhere.

This must be a city thing.

I've always lived in semi-rural areas. Out here, people in general seem to appreciate the police. We're not afraid of them. We trust them. If they're talking to you it is for a good reason - and it's usually to make sure that you're alright. Every single time I've interacted with law enforcement out here it's been a positive experience. The officers really are interested in helping and just want to make sure everyone is safe.

People from the suburbs and the metro areas seem to come from a completely different section of reality. The distrust of the police is pervasive. I don't know what is wrong with urban areas - maybe it's just the population density and our brains aren't built to deal with it well - but "city folk" tend to be far more mistrustful, conspiratorial, on edge, and willing to steal/lie/try to pull one over on someone else.

Keep your cities away from me, please.

The Geese need somewhere to live, too. This stinks of homocentrism and speciesist thinking.

Not to be conspiratorial, but here we go. The first step is to have "smart" guns that will only fire when in the hands of the owner. The second step is to require all firearms to be "smart" guns. The third step is, for everyone's safety, to combat crime, and of course for the children, is to require that all smart guns now have a kill switch. That way the government can safely disable a criminal's firearm.

Since people like Bloomberg are unable to remove firearms from the populace entirely (right now), this is the kind of thing they will push for because it will effectively give them the control they want.

What? Don't throw junk into the environment? What is this madness?!

On a serious note, that's what it should really come down to. Don't toss junk into the environment, whatever it is. We should always be trying to reduce the amount of pollutants we produce. You can even find trace amounts of antidepressants and other prescription drugs in our water supply.

There's reasonable steps that society can - and does - take to reduce pollutants, but there's still a lot of things we could be doing more about. Plastics, for example. So much is packaged in giant wads of hard plastic or shrink wrapped plastic. Is it really necessary to keep piling this crap into our landfills? What is wrong with packaging something in paper or paperboard with a bit of natural glue to hold it shut?

You missed the global cooling scare of the 80s, don't forget that one. Back then we were headed for another ice age.

something with intrinsic value, like stocks

Stocks have no more intrinsic value than our paper currency.

Three grand is peanuts. How about spending $100,000?

What are some of the most interesting and promising recent innovations available to the home brewer?

I don't know what USPS service you have, but in my experience:

1. USPS is rarely less expensive sending packages than FedEx or UPS.
2. USPS has slower delivery times than FedEx or UPS.
3. USPS has a much higher rate of package damage than FedEx or UPS.
4. USPS has a generally less helpful and less polite staff in the offices than FedEx or UPS.

It is inferior in every way. We can talk about delivery of letters to mailboxes, but I'm sure you know that the mailboxes on the side of the road are considered to be property of USPS. It is illegal for anyone other than USPS to deliver a letter, package, or anything else to that mailbox.

This means that if FedEx or UPS wanted to enter that business they would forced to set up secondary post boxes or deliver directly to the house by foot. I don't know how much this enters into the economics, but god dammit, that's my fucking mailbox.

I paid for it. I dug the hold. I set the post. I poured the concrete. It's my mailbox. Their dictatorial annexation of the mailbox that came from me is exceptionally douchey and for that alone USPS should be smacked upside the head.

If you have USPS service so exceptional that you find it to be truly better than all other alternatives, well, great, good for you. It just doesn't seem to mirror the experience that I and everyone else I know has.