That may be true, but there's a reason people are running AWAY from the farms in droves. People aspired to do other things besides working the land, and modern society made that possible.

I think we'd be moving backwards as a society if we essentially forced everyone to go back to agriculture in order to survive.

I read an interview a while back with a tattoo artist who said he really disliked and discouraged anyone asking for a non-permanent tattoo, despite the technology allowing it now.

From his viewpoint, he was an artist, like any other artist -- and felt like his art should be designed to stick around. (Sort of like asking a famous painter to only use water-soluble markers or chalk so whoever buys the art could choose to wash it off the canvas at will.)

Except you could do what retailers have done for eons.... Open ONE box and put a sample product on display next to all of the boxes, so you can see and even touch/handle the sample product to know what you're getting.

Except usually, it requires someone who ALREADY HAD a profit motive and was successful in some way, to be in the position to opt to do these "costly, but for the good of everyone" things.

And really, they do happen all the time. Most big businesses I can think of sponsor all sorts of things for their communities. The entire tax code is designed to encourage you to make charitable contributions.

The alternative to this is the classic "big government" advocate, who wishes government to act as forced charity, taking enough money from everyone else to spend it on various projects it believes benefit the whole. (As you might have guessed, I'm not exactly sold on that being the optimal way to handle it.)

There might be "2 basic types of advertising" but there are also two basic types of investors. The short-term people are just chasing after a quick return. A given company doesn't produce double digit percentage increases in profits or sales in a given quarter or year, and they're complaining and predicting it's time to get out and invest elsewhere. The long-term investor, by contrast. invests in what he/she believes in. Does the company generally build good things... come up with great ideas? Are they taking steps that show they'll be a contender for many years to come? If so, good. That's where to park some of your money!

So Google wants to expand its reach, getting away from a business model that loses money on everything it does except for advertising? Good for them! If they can pull it off, they stand to be FAR more useful to society with self-driving cars than with delivering "immersive marketing" to people about brand-names of products.

The comparison to Microsoft is uncalled for too, IMO. Microsoft always had an agenda of tying everything back to the Windows platform in some way. While Google was hooking homes up with the fastest Internet connections anyone in American ever had, Microsoft was still trying to find ways to get you to accept a cellphone with their OS on top of it, instead of the competition's.

Yeah, except all he's *really* asking for here is an additional way to get notified if something's wrong, so he could take a look for himself via an internet connected camera.

This wouldn't (shouldn't) be about trying to use a 2 year old as a caretaker. The way I'm reading this, he just wants an extra fail-safe in place. (I think even a 2 year old is mentally functional enough to realize something's wrong with mom if she suddenly falls to the floor, flails around and acts generally unresponsive. It would probably make the kid feel better, not worse, if he or she knew simply pressing a button would be a way to communicate "help!".)

One of our kids used to have seizures (he's been free of them for a couple of years now while taking medication), and his younger sister, around age 2-3, was able to come tell us when it happened to him, if he was up in his room and we didn't notice it immediately.

The direct health benefits of earlier alcoholic drinks don't apply today. That's true. (Historically, that stuff tasted terrible too and nobody was really drinking it for pleasure/social reasons.) And yeah, maybe those studies about red wine having beneficial anti-oxidant properties is over-blown too?

But there's little doubt in my mind that a beer or two helps people reduce their stress levels, which is certainly a positive. Like all things, I think the bottom line is that alcohol in moderation is going to be just fine. Too much of it and then yeah, it's detrimental to health.

I've heard it said that when you get right down to it, there really are no "Fundamental rights" -- because every single "right" you have is only due to others' willingness to respect that boundary, or your ability to keep it that way through threat of violence.

(You can speak of your "basic human rights" all you want, but if I have no respect for them and I have the power to trample on them that's greater than your power to resist -- how much good is that doing you?)

At the end of the day, it all seems to just be about philosophy and artificial constructs. (Even if you insist your right is "God given", I'm not really convinced your God is going to strike me down and keep me from preventing you from exercising that right.)

So no, the real question is probably whether allowing people to remain anonymous (or as much so as is possible) is a net benefit or a net loss for society as a whole. I think *most* of us do have a concept of ethics and/or morality that causes us to take interest in trying to protect some of these concepts -- simply because it stands to do us more good than harm if we do so. And yes, I happen to believe it is a net benefit. I see no real good that comes from trying to legislate away actions so basic and really, so unenforceable to TRY legislating away.

Honestly though, I suspect it rarely plays out quite that way.

What REALLY happens is a drug dealer (like everyone else) wants to hang out with a group of friends and have fun sometimes. Of course, being addicted to a substance means he/she only stands a chance of keeping friends around who partake in the same activity. So people who are already drawn to that lifestyle for whatever reason spend time with the dealer, getting some drugs free and other times probably being asked to "chip in" for their cost. Once they become addicted themselves -- then they've got to have the stuff often enough so they gotta start dealing themselves or doing illegal things to pay for the habit, so it's moved past the stage of just fun spare time activities for them.

The cliche of the sneaky drug dealer coming out from the shadows and giving out free drugs to young or naive people to trick them into becoming a new customer is kind of ridiculous.
 

Given this reality, doesn't that ethically justify using only pirated copies of TurboTax to do one's taxes?

Definitely do your research before making a decision on this one. We considered it, briefly, with our daughter -- but ultimately decided it was just too much to tackle.
One thing I didn't even really consider, initially, is that "homeschooling" doesn't even necessarily have to mean you're keeping your kid at home all day, acting as their full-time teacher.

In at least some areas where there's an active homeschooling community, it's possible to work out arrangements with other people so you teach a subject or two that's your own area of expertise, and then you let your kid learn from other homeschooling parents who are teaching other subjects they're best at teaching. There are lots of possibilities here, up to and including parents who are willing to teach your kid most of the school day in exchange for you bartering for something they need like transportation and fixing meals for them.

At some point, I think this starts to blur the lines enough to where you start asking how much different it *really* is than just putting them in the public school you're already paid for via your taxes anyway? But there are a lot of ways to do homeschooling when you work with others in the community doing the same thing.

I've heard multiple parents who did home school comment that they felt it was easiest and most effective for younger kids though. By the time their kid(s) got to grade 6-9, they often put them back in a standard school. (Probably makes sense as middle school is when kids really begin valuing things other than just the learning process itself. Peer relationships start becoming important, and I think for many kids - it's actually the peer pressure to look intelligent or to "keep up" with one's classmates that provides motivation for them to keep working. With home schooling, part of that is lost or weakened.)

But I've also read a fair bit of commentary (mostly from libertarian types who see some red flags about government taking Silk Road down), claiming the murder for hire claims are completely fabricated by the Feds, in order to get a stronger conviction.

That would seem to be a possibility worth considering, at the very least. (It's not too difficult to see some parallels in the lengths they've gone to, trying to punish Kim DotCom as severely as possible.)

Personally, I maintain that, really, the only big issue with Silk Road (both 1 and 2) was the effort made to create item categories that clearly proved the site operators knowingly/willingly facilitated transactions that would be illegal in the country they lived in. I rather like and support the idea of a big, anonymous marketplace -- but I think you have to approach such a thing so you're essentially a "common carrier". Nobody files charges against the phone company for providing a number to someone using it to make illegal drug deals, right? And nobody files charges against the mailman who actually delivers the illegal goods that someone purchases online. That's because we understand they're just doing a job of moving content around, and have no reasonable way to know what that content consists of.

The quote from that Time article says it all:

"Taxis are pretty much a public utility. Like subway and bus systems, the electric grid or the sewage system, taxis provide an invaluable service to cities like New York, and the government should play an important role in regulating them."

If you're the type who supports public utilities thinks an expansion of them would be a benefit to society, then sure -- you're not going to be a friend of any services like Uber.

I'd have to 100% disagree. Taxi service is *not* equivalent to a public utility by any stretch of the imagination. Public utilities won a monopoly status primarily because they were trying to distribute a needed service (like water, natural gas or electricity) where a large infrastructure was required, which had to terminate at the endpoint of each customer's residence. If you allowed competing power companies, you'd suddenly be facing problems of companies wanting to run their own lines everywhere, cluttering everything up (or being hugely disruptive if the cables were buried underground and one company or another was always tearing up a road or yard to access them). At some point, you'd even reach a point where new entrants would be physically prevented from selling their service due to lack of space. (How many water or sewer lines can you fit in a given neighborhood?)

Taxi drivers simply operate standard sized motor vehicles, along with every other licensed driver on the roadways. If each taxi company had to build out their own road and highway infrastructure to operate on -- then sure, you'd have an argument for a regulated public utility. It's not like that.

My local Radio Shack still has these things too (thankfully!). I needed a couple of non-polarized capacitors recently to change the frequency cut-off for dome tweeters in my Jeep - and sure enough, they had 'em, and on a Saturday afternoon too.

I think the problem is, they got rid of most of the other gadgets and electronics we came to know and love R/S for -- and the substitute inventory isn't worthy.

For example, I remember when you could count on R/S for a whole line of voltmeters. Everything from a pocket-sized analog cheapie to fairly nice LCD digital models. Now, I'm not sure if they carry more than 1 or 2 and they're likely not to even be in stock in a given store. And how about soldering irons and accessories? Again, they might have a tube of solder for sale, but not sure they have replacement tips or several models of pencil type irons and guns of various wattage?

And what happened to the car audio stuff?! I know people never did really respect Radio Shack branded car speakers or amps. But you know? I'd sure like to be able to drop by and pick up an amplifier install kit with all the appropriate cabling and connectors, or various noise filters. And as long as they're carrying everyone else's gear these days anyway, it'd be a great opportunity to "one up" the big box retailers who have increasingly limited car audio offerings in stock. Carry the items you normally can only get via mail order right now, like the Asian GPS stereos designed to look and fit in place of specific factory originals.

I once had a CB radio stolen out of my car, while it was in my *driveway*. Called the cops and they didn't even want to be bothered.... Could barely get the guy to write a report, and he sure as heck didn't want to waste time checking for fingerprints or any of that.

During a messy divorce, many years later, my ex and some of her friends/relatives ransacked the house while I was out. Came home to find the front door wide open with the A/C running full blast in the middle of summer, and pretty much everything gone from the house that wasn't nailed down. The cops were called immediately. They just laughed at me and walked around whistling and making comments about how "She sure screwed him over good, didn't she?" Nothing useful was done.

So when my portable GPS was stolen out of my truck in a smash and grab several years ago (all while I was picking up a to-go food order from a Chipotle), I didn't expect the cops to be of any help whatsoever. Surprisingly, an officer showed up who was friendly and eager to try to help out. He got out a whole fingerprint kit and went over all the possible places the thief might have touched the truck, took a detailed report, and gave me several contact numbers to reach him or other officers about the case. They never did recover the GPS ... but I was truly impressed that they actually did their job trying to help.

So yeah, results vary. By and large, the police disappoint me -- but I'll give credit where it's due.