How so? A net loss to the consumer sure. But to society? That's a stretch. You would need to assess the supplier chain to find out where all of that money ends up to make that determination. You can bet if you buy foreign made panels, almost all of that money is leaving society. If you're paying a premium for locally made panels, I would at least be willing to take the gamble that the majority of that money stays within our society.

Yeah, just look at all those technicians sitting around in a back room. I think you're mistaking the unibody assemby as representing the assembly of the entire car. It's standard for that to be mostly automated because of all the welding. But after it's painted, assembly is still mostly a well choreographed manual exercise. It just doesn't look as sexy on TV because people don't appreciate the organizational precision involved.

More like we're just at the end of our rope. At some point, when your neighbor won't stop peaking in your house, you either completely wall yourself off from the world or you say screw it and walk around in your skivvies all day and say 'enjoy the show'. At least in the later you don't have to lose out.

Really? My conclusion is that I should just leave this absurd place and go home where people are a touch more reasonable on the whole.

I don't know if that is true or not. Since I moved to Southern California, it has occurred to me that if I had a kid, I don't know what kind of menial summer job they could get. The things I used to do are just not options for a kid here. Cut grass? That is already dominated by day laborers and professional get ups. Flip burgers? I do see some younger people doing that but it appears to be far more dominated by adults than where I grew up. Paper delivery routes are done by adults. Hell even picking up dog poop is a job for the career man out here. There does not seem to be much left for a young teenager.

I mean, the reason I buy such a company is because it works and because keeping up with our economic system essentially depends upon participating in the system. It's lower risk gambling. The few companies I have invested in that pay good dividends always give me bigger headaches come tax time than its worth.

Not true. My car has tangible value. My house has tangible value. My furniture has tangible value. My stocks do not have tangible value except for the dividends they pay me. Cash is the only value I receive from a stock, and if its not coming from the company, the company is not actually creating value for me. The value becomes more like a collectable.

Cash can buy me tangible value. I have to trade stocks for cash before they can be used to buy tangible value.

That implies that stock value is directly related to the real value of a company. It is not. As a former 3D FX shareholder, I can guarantee you it is not.

These days it is often far dumber than that. Unless a company is paying a dividend, the only value you have is what someone else is willing to pay for it. In the age of worshiping the Almighty Growth, dividend payouts are more scarce than they once were and you can't expect a fledgling company will ever pay out. Stocks like that are little more than trading cards. It's just a popularity contest slightly regulated by supply. Actual earnings reports in these cases are only meaningful in the sense that people make buying decisions based on them, but with them having no direct impact on actual value.

The example of theft of service is a stretch for this case. In all of the examples given on Wikipedia for theft of service, real resources were consumed in a manner that is not replacable. In the case of copying data, the most you suggest is that he was stealing his own time on the clock. But there is absolutely no precedent to allow for that.

ISPs are already not classified as common carriers. That's why this whole debacle is even being discussed. The most obvious solution is for the FCC to classify them as the common carriers that they are.

Most amusing to me is that every time I hear about this so called "entitlement generation" it is usually from a privileged and entitled baby boomer.

Our politicians would certainly like you to think so.

I imagine that much of the water used to grow anything out here us lost through evaporation. This is why I stopped trying to go a patio garden. I just could not justify the level of wasted water that was going into it when we have such a short supply.

It could certainly change the dynamic to have more than two parties in office. But I can't imagine getting a third party in office would come without generational change. Even when there are third parties on the ballot, there is a perception that it is a wasted vote, so people don't bother. Campaign financing and access to the major privately funded public debates is a big part of the issue. When Perot had both, he demonstrated what was possible. But funding is a serious problem and since debates are privately sponsored, the government can't force candidate inclusion. Maybe I am too dire on the situation. But forced run off elections and guaranteed ballot inclusion don't really go very far to promote change. Money is the problem. And now with corporations opening their pockets to candidates and parties more than ever, the problem seems to be worse than it ever has been.

The real reason moderates have been tossed aside is because it is a lot more expensive to campaign to them. All politicians have figured out that it is much more cost effective to divide people into an us vs them mentality and drive them to the polls through fear. You will no longer find many successful candidates who campaign to the middle because it just requires too much damn money. How can you compete when your opponent can spend orders of magnitude less per vote that you can trying to run a sensible campaign? The only long term solution is to raise children to think independently and to have enough emotional maturity to break away from the group when it goes insane. Hopefully over time the middle can be strengthened to the point of making FUD campaigns not cost effective any more. It doesn't look too though because even if the "independent" vote is growing, I see no evidence that they do not fall into a right or left camp.