You are absolutely correct. I think the thing that people who dislike "fiat currency" or advocate a return to the Gold Standard tend to forget is the single core principle that, since Adam Smith's days and before, has always defined market-based economies: "A thing is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it."

And the same holds true for gold, silver, salt or Beanie Babies: whatever you think it's worth means nothing if you can't find someone to sell it to for that price. "Inherent value" of a commodity is a lie in the sense that it is never truly fixed and an unalterably safe store of value. Today, most people in the developed world think that a small piece of paper with a dead white American politician on it is worth something, and they agree on what that value is. You could say to them, "but I have gold!" but to most people that is actually worth nothing to them except for what they could turn around and convert it back into currency for. The only thing that has inherent worth is whatever you are trying to buy or sell from someone thinks has inherent worth.

Except that most of those midwest states are red states and want to shut Amtrak down. If Amtrak's future depends on lobbying midwestern congressman, then they aren't doing a very good job at it. As for Amtrak cities without commercial airports, there are many, unless you consider driving 100 to 200 miles to an airport as having a nearby airport. And if they have a small regional airport, you can bet it is heavily subsidized by tax dollars in one form or another.

And if you are one of the people with food/water and the people around you need it, your pretty much at their mercy, too. Think of all the zombie movies, even though you can actually kill people, you can't kill or defend from all of them and eventually, you, too, will be over run and without food and water.

The best solution is to stop the apocalypse before it gets that bad because if it really happens we're all screwed.

Your anti-Amtrak bias is showing. If you did defund Amtrak and let it close routes, wouldn't it need the profits from the NE to use for operating the NE?

Well, on 9/11, when all planes were grounded, Amtrak looked pretty good. Could the infrastructure in the NE handle an extra 1M commuters? 30% of the bridges there are already classified as sub standard and past their useful life. If the infrastructure can't even be maintained for current levels of use, how will they fare with increased use?

Besides, Amtrak is like the post office, it is a private entity that is extremely regulated by the government. It might make great business sense to stop Saturday delivery for the post office or for Amtrak to cut routes, but they aren't allowed to do so. It's also ironic that most major cities will pay more to build a stadium for a professional team than Amtrak gets in its government subsidy.

Again, why single out passenger trains? Why not all manner of transportation, include air? There is far more spent subsidizing these other modes of transportation than Amtrak gets. There is a reason why every other western country subsidizes rail (and air) transportation and at a far greater level than the US -- it's called the common good.

On a small scale, you are correct. Simple bartering for goods and services works well. Unfortunately it doesn't scale up and some common means of exchange is always developed, whether it be silver, gold, sea shells or even bitcoins.

It may always be worth something, but not necessarily anything close to what you paid for it. As for land always having its value, tell that to the people in Centralia, PA or Times Beach.

Those states you refer too defer that cost. Also, the reason Amtrak is forced to support the "fly-over" states is because it is cheaper than building airports and providing air service.

And before somebody says, people choose to live there, that's their problem (or something to the effect), one could turn that around and tell the people of the northeast to grow their own food and drill their own oil because they choose to live there, too.

Why should you subsidize truckers and airports? It costs $3M to build 1 mile of interstate. Sure it looks nice on the back of all those semis that they pay $6,000 in fuel taxes. Too, bad, they don't tell you the damage they do to the pavement is far greater than that. But, of course, if we didn't subsidize the trucking industry and made them pay the real cost of transporting goods, then prices would go up and you, the taxpayer would still be paying for it, plus a profit percentage on top of it.

Why focus on passenger rail as the problem. Most airports are heavily subsidize in the US. Yes, carriers pay gate fees, but those fees do not cover the true cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure.

Face it, Amtrak, highways, airports, etc. are subsidized by the taxpayer because they ultimately benefit the taxpayer.

Instead of defunding Amtrak, maybe it's time to properly fund Amtrak. You seem worried about your tax dollars, but don't seem to mind the billions of them spent on subsidizing air travel and highways and even waterway traffic. What is really lacking in the US is a cohesive transportation policy.

But, hey, it's easier to shout "Defund Amtrak" then it is to actually fix the infrastructure and transportation problems in this country.

What do you expect them to say? But really, the PTC system wasn't turned off for shits and grins. It was still being installed and waiting final calibration and certification. Besides the NTSB is still trying to explain the sudden acceleration (twice) as the train approached the curve. One thought is a software glitch with the onboard system. If that is shown to be the case, then PTC wouldn't make much of a difference.

I think adblockers are great - for the end user to own and maintain. I've been running filtering proxies of one type or another since the last millennium. (And nothing will teach you the nuances of regex like the challenge of stripping out unwanted HTML tags.) It's for me to decide what I want my browser to display.

But just as it's wrong for my ISP to inject their own ads, it's also not the place of my ISP to censor them out of my data stream. That's my decision, not theirs.

Yes, they *could* have used some kind of special 'data diode' isolation device, but then the researcher probably wouldn't have been able to jump networks in the lab, or, as stated in TFA, "He told WIRED that he did access in-flight networks about 15 times during various flights but had not done anything beyond explore the networks and observe data traffic crossing them".

Car networks (CAN bus) have a similar weakness in that the infotainment systems have previously been breached, allowing attackers access to cross over to security systems and unlocking the doors.

If there is no tie between the entertainment and nav systems, then it becomes difficult to explain the seatback display of the current flight information. At some point the data has to move from one system to the other. That takes a lot more than "no tie".

He means Judas Priest's first album, Rocka Rolla.