Presumably MH370 is no longer doing things like communicating, running engines, maneuvering, hosting a crowd of living people, etc - the things that can get you noticed.

Gitmo was in full swing years before YouTube came online.

My computer works more like a space heater.

That is how communism has been applied historically - Russia, China, a few other smaller players. Communism isn't about concentrating wealth. The particular groups that took power in those countries are about concentrating wealth. They just happened to be using communist imagery and rhetoric.

What's interesting is that your picture of a wrecked communist country is very similar to how American "capitalism" is playing out.

Witnesses send in tips to law enforcement, or testify at trial. They don't blackmail in an attempt to extort money. The LEO agents involved in this were posing as criminals, not innocent citizens who witnessed a crime.

That sort of thing was covered in my "shooting the store clerk" example, which I painted unacceptable. These hypothetical 5 people were not "witnesses" to anything, they claimed to have compromised the SR site and were attempting to use that leverage to extort money from Ross.

To fix your analogy, it would be more like your neighbor breaking into your files and getting evidence you owe the IRS $50k, then threatening to inform the IRS unless you coughed up $10k to buy their silence. Except if the IRS dealt out murder and life sentences, not fines.

I'm using "Optimus" branded RadioShack speakers as we speak, which are 20+ years old. They still work, and they're still the best speakers in the house. I have never personally been to Radioshack for anything more than cables, but the legend lives on...

You don't ask someone to write a poem during an interrogation. I can't imagine any conversation where you'd ask someone to write a poem, except a scenario where you're commissioning an artist and you give X number of days to come up with the commission. Answers in a conversation come in seconds, not days.

iTunes sells music in AAC format at 256 kb/s, YouTube has 100 kb/s AAC allocated to audio, even on the highest quality settings. Additionally, the majority of stuff uploaded to YouTube has already gone through at least 1 round of lossy compression before Google even gets it, which compounds encoding artifacts.

The "5 people" he tried to murder were illusory, it was in fact a single law enforcement agent on something of an entrapment run. (This information came out in the court transcripts a few days ago.) Law enforcement got Ross to believe there were people who had sensitive information about Silk Road staff and users - the type of information that, if released, would lead to: Ross going to prison, random users of SR going to prison, dealers on SR going to prison and believing Ross ratted them out, subsequently putting a hit out on Ross himself... imo, these hypothetical people who would blackmail to those ends, deserve to be in prison themselves. (And I think the law agrees.)

To be clear, I don't think it's acceptable to have citizens killing people, even if it's justified. But in judging the man you need to look at the circumstances. He wasn't a crazy guy shooting up a school. He wasn't going killing his wife so he can marry someone else. He wasn't killing a family member to collect life insurance. He wasn't killing a store clerk in the midst of a robbery. He was being faced with blackmail amounting to death threats. Putting out hits on the blackmailers was self-defense by proxy.

Someone who is 65 was born in 1950 and reached adulthood around 1968. Are you suggesting that the majority of people in 1968 did not have access to housing, food, and schools?
It seems like you don't know that public schooling was implemented between 1852 -1917. Or the Housing Act for public housing was passed 1937. Or that the Food Stamp Act guaranteeing a permanent food stamp program was implemented in 1964.

Furthermore, other things flesh out the story more than the laws. The post-war economic boom of 45-55 is what created the middle class who didn't have to worry about meeting basic needs. Where's the middle class today? Rapidly disappearing. Income inequality has grown steadily for decades, reaching a crescendo. Close to 50% of the country is not participating in the labor force (the <10% "unemployment" stats the gov't puts out are heavily cooked and designed to hide the issue.) Look at the percentage of people who own homes vs. rent, and how drastically that's changed over the past 50 years. These things certainly don't make it easier for the average citizen to lead a life. People are struggling in this country, the problems are getting worse, and I don't see the trend changing any time soon.

From your post, I can tell your grasp on history could use improvement. I won't pretend to know you personally, but it seems possible your own privileges have reinforced your assumption that everyone in 2015 enjoys those privileges.

Well, our middle class is going away fast, and we're back to the model peasants and nobles soon. In that system, unless you're in the 1%... your only choices are to take the abuse, eking out enough calories and a bed to live on, or die.
Or, go live as a hermit - but gooood luck with that these days! Even if you have somehow managed to acquire real survival skills, prepare to be arrested for things like trying to feed yourself (no fishing / hunting license) or finding a place to sleep. And trying to find a frontier or unclaimed land? Forget it.

These days, those in power have even more ways to lock you in to indentured servitude than they did historically.

Texas is on the Gulf Coast.

Quite true... some of the on-paper numbers, like the (heavily manipulated) unemployment figures have returned to 2008 levels, but the story is deeper than that. Someone who gets fired from IBM but can only find a 20 hr/wk helpdesk job, or a 35 hr/wk retail job, is on paper "employed". But he's not doing well. The guy who hasn't been able to find a decent replacement job for 10 months and is still jobless is also "employed", by the common presentation of the statistics.

The economic recovery is an illusion, and it won't hold forever - when this one pops, I think we'll see the real pitfall. IMO the slow deterioration of the employment/wealth/economic situation since the 1970s is about to bear its most mature fruit. We have seen each successive ripple being more severe - The dot-com bust, the ca. 9/11/2001 faltering, the 2008 issues, and now get ready for the latest round.

IT in particular seems to be hard hit, especially considering the glamour it had just 15 years ago. I started an IT-related career track including formal education and certs in 2007. So far, it's netted me an $11/hr call center job, a few hundred dollars on the side doing random freelance stuff, and many months of (benefitless) unemployment. I'm starting to think of moving into HVAC repair, electrical work, or similar.

That's because IBM hasn't made consumer products in 10 years, closer to 15. If you have bought anything from the multitude of businesses that still do rely on IBM products or services, you have indirectly supported IBM as well as benefited from their stuff.