The problem with things like feeding the hungry is all of the political opposition you would run into. Since the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s we've had the capability of feeding, clothing, sheltering, and educating the entire world's population several times over. What we don't have is the political will to do it. Too many ruling elite would have to give up power for it to actually happen. That's the real obstacle.

Most armed conflict is also to the benefit of this ruling elite, who use such phrases as "ordo ab chao" (order out of chaos) to describe their interest in it. Wars are very profitable if you're a well-positioned sociopath, and playing two sides against each other is a great way to increase your power over each. It's the same military-industrial-complex that Eisenhower tried to warn us about, not that we listened.

The financial incentive related to cancer is that sick people are much more profitable than healthy people. A cheap, easy, one-time cancer cure (if there were such a thing) would absolutely devastate the multibillion dollar "cancer industry". The companies profiting from that would be just as eager to embrace such a cure as the RIAA/MPAA middlemen have been eager to adapt to an Information Age where the cost of copying and distributing a work is nearly zero.

Getting out of Mom's basement was easier in the past when good jobs that led to good careers with good pensions were available to anyone willing to work hard, which was when the USA valued and protected its manufacturing base, recognizing it as the real wealth and independence from foreign nations that it was. Additionally, it's not generally young women who are staying at home with Mama. They're showing the drive and ingenuity that young men used to also have. I'd recommend reading Boys Adrift by Dr. Leonard Sax for an in-depth explanation as to why this is happening, from grade schools that try to force boys into developmentally inappropriate roles (and then brand them ADHD when it fails), to chemicals in the food supply that have a feminizing effect on animals and humans, to reduced testosterone levels and sperm counts, etc.

These are all problems that we could do a much better job of addressing, with some of them being completely solvable. But for that to really get started, we'd first have to stop allowing psychotic sociopaths to have power and make all of the important decisions. It wouldn't hurt to also have a mass media that didn't use so many recognizable propaganda techniques, and/or a population trained in logic, reasoning, and introspection, considering these skills as basic as literacy. Until then, every starving person on the planet is basically a monument to how psychotic and fucked-up this civilization has really become.

That's exactly how I feel, which is why I don't take on such a project without first learning how it works, how to properly administer it, how to secure it, what the threat models are, etc. I would go so far as to say this is simply called being an adult person. The users who refuse to learn (as I've mentioned before) remind me of the child who really wants a kitten because they're cute, but doesn't want to be bothered changing its litter box and feeding it. This is where decent parents instill the notion of personal responsibility, the idea that if you truly want something you must also accept the costs that come with it.

Most of what is commonly called "stupidity" or "cluelessness" is really just childishness. It's why you see such annoyed protests from average users instead of genuine curiosity and fascination when you dare suggest they should, at the very least, have learned the basics. This is a self-reinforcing mentality that does not acknowledge and overcome its own faults. It will not self-correct because that would contradict its coveted instant gratification. Instead, it plays blame games.

This kind of thing being so widespread is also why we have the kind of government that we do today.

What would go wrong with classifying them as common carriers? Don't want to be held liable for every illegal use of your network? Then don't screw with the traffic in any way. What downside would there be to treating ISPs this way?

Of course, if you seriously advocate that people take responsibility for their networks, their equipment, and their decisions and realize the part they play in enabling the problems they complain about, you'll be accused of "blaming the victim".

Still, unlike the harsher laws that vary by jurisdiction (of which some have no extradition treaties), this actually stands a chance of working. On a hostile network like the Internet, nothing other than hardening the targets is going to actually improve security. It would also be nice for the rest of us not to have to contend with botnets and other problems made possible entirely by the clueless who want all the benefits of a general-purpose global network but don't want to put forth the effort to learn how it works and how to use it responsibly.

They strongly resemble the child who wants a pet cat but doesn't want to feed it and change its litter box because that part isn't fun.

That last sentence is false and shows you don't fully understand what you're discussing. The merchant is charged a fee, usually a small percentage of the transaction, each time you use your credit card. Even if you never personally pay interest because you pay in full each month, the bank issuing the credit card is making money from your use of that card.

Incidentally, this is also why some small, local, mom-and-pop stores won't accept a credit card unless your total purchase exceeds a certain amount. The fee they must pay isn't worthwhile to them if the transaction is too small. Larger stores are better able to absorb it and just consider it a cost of doing business.

What would it take to create a probe that could survive these conditions and send back data indefinitely? Is it even currently possible to engineer electronics that can either operate at those temperatures or be insulated and cooled sustainably? If you had infinite funding and the best engineers in the world, how would you even begin to address this?

If you understand how federal politics and the well-connected military-industrial complex actually works, you would know that costing lots of money would make it MORE likely, not less.

Yes, a global presence, especially (though not exclusively) because we just insist on constantly fucking with the Middle East. If we didn't have such a global presence feeding the military-industrial complex, we would have plenty of personnel to deal with the real national security issue of a wide-open border. We'd have far fewer enemies that way as well, but then the anti-terrorism propaganda would have to find another issue to excuse draconian laws.

The USA is a military and economic empire that doesn't like to call itself an empire because that might sound bad.

If the laws prohibiting those drugs actually made them unavailable to would-be users, then and only then would I see your point. They're failing to do so, have always failed, and will continue to fail for the foreseeable future. These are simply facts and these facts are not controversial at all. As I said, even in the highly secured, scrutinized, searched, regimented environment of a prison, where all the variables favor the people trying to prevent drug use, not even in those places can we keep drugs out. One way or another, they continue to be smuggled in.

What these drug laws are accomplishing is the enrichment of violent gangs/cartels, for whom the illicit status of drugs means far greater profits. Even the occasional large drug bust just amounts to less competition, and it's generally not the big kingpins who are bearing the risk. What the prohibition laws also accomplished is the steady buildup of a police state and the erosion of the 4th Amendment. The asset forfeiture laws alone are an abomination in any country that even pretends to be a free society. All of this is caused by trying to enforce an unenforcable law. It's the only outcome that can be expected from trying to do so.

Again if the prohibition were actually capable of stopping the drug use, this would be a legitimate concern. The policing costs could be eliminated entirely. Legal drugs would cost far less per dose, removing much of the incentive for addicts to rob and steal from others, reducing crime. Hell, state governments could give away free drugs to addicts and it would cost less than what we're doing now, both monetarily and socially. The reason productive crackheads are less common than productive alcoholics is that the alcoholic can easily purchase his drug anywhere and can afford it since it's legal and cheap. The other costs you mention like welfare, health, and insurance are effectively fixed costs, because right now anyone who really wants drugs can get them.

The best way to reduce the harm caused by irresponsible drug use is to treat it as a public health issue, not a law-enforcement issue.

Indeed, unfortunately that isn't what the Constitution says, but it would be wonderful if we actually had a pro-freedom Supreme Court to make such a ruling. These days the Court is little more than a mouthpiece articulating bullshit justifications for what the police are going to do anyway in order to create the appearance of legitimacy. Also, if drugs were legal and regulated, the incentive for the vast majority of police searches would disappear, as the vast, vast majority of prisoners got there because of drug charges. Then most searches would be for important things like murder weapons, not for unimportant and futile things like trying and failing to tell adult people how to live.

I seem to be more accurate with heavier handguns like a .44 Magnum or a .357 myself. Of course the nice thing about a .357 is that you can target practice with the cheaper .38 Special rounds, at least if it's a revolver. The gas pressure may not be high enough to cycle the action on a semiautomatic pistol -- at least, that was my experience trying to use .38 Special rounds in a Desert Eagle .357 weapon.

I also had lots of fun firing a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with slugs, trying to hit targets out of easy range for buckshot.

The only thing I haven't heard discussed before, that I think is a big part of this: in previous generations, Americans had a stronger shared culture. Yes it was mostly religious in nature, but it was something that nearly everyone agreed on and celebrated together. There was of course political division, but there was much less cultural divison than there is today. Among those who would like to keep the Ten Commandments etc. in public buildings, I've never heard them actually cite this aspect, but I think it's a major underlying reason for their desire.

I am against religious symbols in public buildings, by the way. I just find it useful to understand the motivations of people with whom I disagree. Personally I disagree with it for a different reason. I believe one's spirtuality or lack thereof is a deeply personal decision, something one must arrive at as an individual. I try to practice the teachings of Christ (among others), but I really find distasteful the shallow groupthink and lemming behavior I observe in any church I've been to.

In churches I've visited, I generally see a bunch of insecure people who need to be in a group of the like-minded in order to feel validated, repeating the same basic and unenlightening themes over and over again to feel like they belong somewhere. Once I understand a concept, I understand it, and I'm ready to move on to deeper subjects myself. I've never personally seen a church of courageous individuals with real, meaningful insight into the difficult struggles we all face in life, sharing hard-won wisdom for which they paid dearly. Nor have I seen anything resembling advanced philosophy and theology, an appreciation for the majesty and mystery of our very existence and the quest to find meaning and purpose in this life. It's just the same list of do's and don'ts, platitudes, and regurgitated ideas you would find in any other social club.

Government is shitty enough without adding (more of) this element to it.

It will also continue as long as there is no real penalty for getting caught. If a cop breaks the rules in this manner, the worst that happens is the case gets thrown out and the defendant goes free. Start throwing these cops in state penitentiaries for a year or two, making sure they go in the general population and get no special treatment, and you will see an immediate and drastic decline in this kind of abuse. And why shouldn't we do this? Cops who engage in this behavior are violating the very highest law of the land. That should carry a penalty.

The way I see it, when a cop breaks the law it's much worse than when an ordinary citizen breaks the law, because the cop is entrusted with special powers and has sworn to uphold the law. It follows that cops should be punished much more harshly when they break the law than a citizen who does the same thing. There is no other way you're going to return to being a free nation.

Talk to old people sometime about what cops used to be like. They were once genuine public servants. If you had a problem, you could find a cop and he'd help you. Average people didn't fear the police the way they do now. That's what we should return to.

Unless you manage to get beyond ego-consciousness and realize how interconnected and interdependent we all are. Then you realize that harming others without cause is really an indirect way of harming yourself, both in terms of consequences and in terms of what you become by so doing. Shallow minds miss this because they can see only immediate and obvious effects, and so they believe they ever "get away with" anything. A more mundane form of it is sometimes called enlightened self-interest.

The idea behind "love thy neighbor as thyself" is that you shouldn't have to be told to do it. Those who do it "because God/church/mama said so" are missing the point entirely. The funny thing is, you can only realize how interconnected we are as an individual. It's why the numerous efforts to make it into a doctrine have achieved so little. "The Creator will punish me if I'm bad" is a shallow and childish form of pseudo-morality for people who have to be threatened with punishment before they will behave a certain way. Lawrence Kohlberg lists it as the very most primitive form of moral development.

Should have written, "the LATTER is much, much better". Heh.

As the saying goes, "it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be falsely prosecuted". In a slightly different wording this is sometimes called Blackstone's Formulation or Blackstone's Ratio. As that Wiki page explains, this is a much older concept and it's closely tied to the entire notion of a presumption of innocence.

The requirement that cops go through proper procedures, including obtaining warrants, exists to protect you and me. There is no perfect system. There will be errors. The only decision to be made is whether we try to err on the side of imprisoning the innocent, or on the side of acquitting the guilty. The former is much, much better.

If you want a real solution to most of these cases, we need to wake up and realize that nothing confined to consenting adults should ever be a crime. If you're paying attention you will notice two things: these cases are almost entirely drug cases, and that drug prohibition is failing to make drugs scarce. You simply can't tell people how to live. The financial and social costs of trying are far too high, greatly in excess of any good achieved by trying. The US has the highest proportional prison population of any industrialized nation in the world, and the vast majority of those prisoners are there because of drug charges.

Speaking of prisons, when they find a way to keep illegal drugs out of prisons, then and only then can we have a reasonable discussion about keeping them out of general society. Until then, we should recognize that the laws and rulings coming out of prohibition are a threat to the liberty of everyone. The only reason this case was remarkable, the only reason it made a headline, is because this time the court rightly favored following the Constitution over prosecuting a drug criminal. That isn't the way it usually goes. Usually they perform various mental gymnastics to justify the actions of cops, like when using a dog to search your car (using its nose as a substitute for the officer's hands and eyes) is somehow not a search and doesn't require a warrant.