Its not possible to stop murder. So we should get rid of the laws against it, why bother if it's not possible?

Just because perfection can't be achieved doesn't mean something isn't worth doing.

If I don't get a vaccine, and I infect you (although how is that supposed to happen if you're vaccinated?) have I committed violence upon you?

Yes. Yes you have.

My religion says I can rape and murder members of other religions. In fact its a sacrament. Laws against homicide are an assault on my religious freedom and I MUST be given a choice to not follow them.

My expectations aren't internet bluffing, its taking my RSUs by the current stock price, and adding in my expected bonus. Although if the stock market crashes in the next 6 months it could seriously decrease, its not a 0 risk supposition.

I think you have a lot of wrong information about real cost of living in the valley. My commute is 20-25 minutes each way, and could easily be much lower at the same housing price. This morning it was 35 due to an accident, first time its been over 30 in 6 months. That's lower than most people's commutes are in other places I've lived. Housing is truly disgusting, but even then its a difference of 24K/yr over what I was paying in other cities. Subtract that from the salary. As for hideously crowded- you'd have to pay me 10 times what I make now to live in a less crowded area, what the fuck do you even do all day on weekends in a rural area? No museums, no galleries, no street musicians, no festivals, no events. No thanks. Its not even all that crowded, its just a giant spread out suburb. Crowded would be like Manhattan, which would probably be more fun

I mentioned the city in several cases- assume that until I mention another city its the same as the previous one. But cost of living numbers tend to be really overstated- other than housing the remainder is basically flat anywhere in the US, the 2-3% difference doesn't matter if you aren't living paycheck to paycheck. Subtract out the difference in housing yourself, I have no idea what your base is.

We'll disagree on you having the best housing- for me the best housing means fun things in walking distance with minimal square feet, more room means more work and I hate housework and yardwork. I'd pay extra on a house not to have a yard. The thought of mowing 4 acres all summer makes me physically ill. You'd have to pay me retirement level money per year to live somewhere rural.

Mine started in 01- the year of the dot com crash. He's still underpaid, the problem is he doesn't have the balls to demand more or leave.

You were underpaid from the start, and its perpetuated. Laughably so. Here's what my progression looked like

01-05 70-72K (I got a small raise in there) in San Diego
05-08 82K+equity in Seattle
08-10 90K+equity startup
10-12 90K-120K+equity at another startup (salaries went up from startup scale to full scale when we knew we'd be bought)
12-13 $75/hr contracting while on vacation then moving to Baltimore. I was underpaid here, should have asked for more but did it to move to Baltimore for personal reasons
13-14 120K+equity at a startup
14-15 172K+lots of equity at the company that bought the startup (expect over 300K/yr total probably around 350K. May be more after my performance review which is likely to be very good) in the Valley

Even if we assume you live somewhere far cheaper than the valley you were criminally underpaid to start and still underpaid now.

No-fault is about taking money away from lawyers, who used to litigate each and every auto accident as a lawsuit in court before the insurers would pay. Eventually the insurers decided that they spent more on lawyers than accident payments, and they had no reason to do so.

If you want to go back to the way things were, you are welcome to spend lots of time and money in court for trivial things, and see how you like it. I will provide you with expert witness testimony for $7.50/minute plus expenses. The lawyers charge more.

In general your insurer can figure out for themselves if you were at fault or not, and AAA insurance usually tells me when they think I was, or wasn't, when they set rates.

If we don't have more than two children per couple, the human race would've died out a long time ago.

I think the proper way to state that is "If we didn't in the past", not "If we don't". If we were to have 2 children per couple (approximately, the real value is enough children to replace each individual but not more) from this day on, it would not be necessary to adjust the number upward to avoid a population bottleneck for tens of thousands of years.

The Northern California Amtrak is actually pretty good for commuting from Sacramento to the Bay Area and back because the right of way is 4 tracks wide in critical places and it has priority over other trains for much of the time.

Acela in the Boston/NY/DC corridor is also good, because the right of way is 4 tracks or more for most of the way, and it has a track to itself along a lot of the route. Other railroads run on parallel tracks.

For the most part, though, Amtrak suffers from not having exclusive track. It runs on freight lines that host cars so heavy that the rail bends an inch when the wheels are on top of it (I've seen this first hand).

And Germany is a nation the size of New Mexico with an economy the 5th largest in the world. Starting pretty much from zero 70 years ago.

Maybe having good trains is part of that.

No. If anything, I assert that good trains are a hallmark of the set of good economic policies that lead to the general well-being of the citizenship.

Poor people are poor because they can't get jobs. One of the reasons is that they can't get to jobs. Can't afford a reliable car and insurance and gas in the US? Can't work! Too often, that's the equation.

The other reasons they are poor are that we were equally bad in investing in other things we should have spent more upon publicly, like good primary education. This is caused by more wealthy folks not wanting to pay the necessary taxes.

I have a lawn and there are turkeys and quail in the front yard today and we can hear the coyotes howling some nights (that's on the edge of Berkeley where it meets Contra Costa county). If I want to be in San Francisco, I have to get to the train station, which is a mile away (convenient, by the way, to lower income homes). And then it's all train from there, under the Bay, out again in the middle of the city.

In two more years, I will be able to get to San Jose that way. Right now, that is an hour and twenty minute drive if I start at 6 AM, and two hours if I start later. It will be a shorter time on the train, more relaxing, a hell of a lot safer, and will allow me to work on the way.

This is what railroad transportation can mean for people with lawns.

Well, I am not convinced by the auto ownership report that failed to include the purchase price (really!)

I think there's a lot about European behavior you're not taking into account - like the kind of car they actually buy (really small compared to ours) and what they use it for (often, just getting to the railroad station), and the clear indication that car ownership was because of their larger middle class which is itself an indication of better economic policies - like having good mass transit.

I think you have the tax picture wrong, and it's still the better-off people who are contributing the most to mass transit through their taxes.

Regarding the bus, I'm not convinced. The biggest problems are that it can't be connected to electricity efficiently (San Francisco's catenary busses can't exceed 40 MPH while on the wire, and rarely approach that speed because they share the route with cars), it is labor intensive compared to rail, and it has the traffic and safety issues of an automobile. And too often light rail is little better than a bus. It's only when there's an exclusive right-of-way that you get efficiency.

And ultimately there may still be people who vote against mass transit, but they are shooting themselves in the foot.