But who manages the managers' managers?

That's quite the stretch.

Naively, I would say the important comparison is between the scale of thermal energy available on Earth to organic bond strengths. I don't see gravity being a large issue.

Swipe your card through her cleavage.

Yeah, it upsets me that the seeming majority of people actually equate those. I think the problem arises from "intelligence" being vaguely defined in common usage. Does intelligence imply abstract reasoning? Creativity? Simply being quick with arithmetic? We could really use a bunch of new words to cover the differences between these abilities, which are all intellectual, but vastly different.

Ah, so then what happens with small businesses, where the owner or few owners buy things for the "company" and end up just using the stuff for themselves? Perhaps it would just be a matter of type of good. If a company is buying consumer goods they would pay tax, while if they buy barrels of chemicals, they don't.

Interesting, well that's good to know at least. The only other problem I could think of was making sure the sales tax wasn't regressive (taxing the poor more). But that is likely solved by making enough essential (non-luxury) goods tax-free.

Out of curiosity, do corporations then pay tax on sales between each other?

I could see the response to a federal sales tax being the drive to a cash-based market where things are off the books. You either pay a big markup, or if you pay cash then you get the better deal because the seller doesn't record the transaction. It happens where I live all the time. If you were up against paying 20% sales tax, the incentive would be pretty big.

You might be tickled to learn that there are some (wild-ish) theories that posit "every mathematical abstraction exists", as in, for every concept you can derive from mathematics, it actually exists "somewhere". Look at "mathematical multiverse" here http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html And Tegmark is not actually a crackpot, just fanciful. :)

Right, when making these estimates you have to really calculate the total amount of land required to support a person. Living space is one, but you need to feed, educate, entertain and etc. These considerations are noticeably absent from many of these off-the-cuff estimates. Food is a big one. Googling will give you an estimate of at least an acre per person, in order to maintain a Western diet (namely meat). At the bare minimum it is 1/8 of an acre, and then it's pretty much just grains.

He didn't say anything about how many woman want to do it, just that there are obviously some. Don't argue against something no one is trying to defend. It's a valid point that, for every woman who would like this avenue of work, legalization would be helping someone.

Regardless, in the case of people who are prostituting themselves to make ends meet, without "choice", it seems to me that legalization would be a better scenario, since the working conditions (medical checkups, personal security) would be improved.

Regulated prostitution is far safer than black market prostitution, for both parties, so you are really arguing for legalization...

I'm guessing this is just a rehash of the stuff demoed here...

http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

I agree with the ideal, but the specifics behind the situation don't support it. If a band can make significantly more money by playing at large venues with relatively expensive tickets, most will probably do so. Easiest workaround to me, just pirate the albums to save money for the concerts. No moral qualms, you're still giving them all the money you can afford to give.

The process would probably involve shotguns and slander.

So the Visigoths are going to come wipe us out now? It's very difficult to draw good 2000-year-old analogies...