I'm Mormon, and I'll have you know that I have very strong opinions about which local microbrew has the best root beer, you insensitive clod!

Please, go read even the Wikipedia article on the Tenth Amendment. You are embarrassing yourself. (And perhaps you could explain why my bar card would not be persuasive evidence in your fantasy land where somebody accuses me in court of failing law school.)

The Supremacy Clause does not trump Article 1, Section 8 where the powers of the federal government are specifically enumerated, or the Bill of Rights, which was passed to capture the votes of anti-federalists who feared that the new government would get too powerful if there were not explicit checks placed on its power. Seriously, just read even the Wikipedia article on the Tenth Amendment. This is not some novel, controversial issue to people who have a clue what they're talking about.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, the Constitution was supposed to be stronger than the Articles of Confederation. That is not synonymous with unlimited and all-powerful.

I have a JD and a Texas bar card that say otherwise.

No, you're thinking of some government that you just made up. Go read the Constitution, especially the 10th Amendment. The states wanted to make it very clear that they were giving the federal government only specific, enumerated powers. Then FDR told the court where it could stick its Constitution (as the GP said) and told them that if they didn't back down, he would stack the court with yes-men who would give him his way. The court backed down, and the result was 75 years of the federal government encroaching into everyday life until you couldn't buy a shower head without Uncle Sam's permission, and people like you who don't even realize anymore that it was supposed to be a government of specific, enumerated powers.

This will obviously ultimately lead to Mothra, which will be aswesome, especially if these guys also figure out how to build Godzilla so they can have an epic battle to the death that wrecks a scale model of Tokyo.

What will happen is that the manufacturers will lobby for a statutory "safe harbor." The legislature will make the ethical decisions in advance, or provide a menu of "safe" ethical options. And the manufacturer will be statutorily immune from lawsuits as long as they have followed those safe harbor guidelines. This is a good thing in theory, as it permits the technology to progress, where lawsuits would otherwise eliminate it. So don't worry about the manufacturers. What you should worry about is that those clowns in Washington, D.C.* will be selling off their "ethics" decisions under the table in exchange for cushy corner-office jobs with AIM, Inc. after they retire from public office.

*Yes, it will inevitably be a federal law, though just as inevitably, California will have some granola-munching variant that requires autonomous cars operating in California to place a super-premium on the lives of endangered salamanders or something.

Exactly. They're the type of people who always shop at the same supermarket, where the tomatoes cost twice as much as anywhere else and have a glossy wax coating, are all the same, approved size, and are utterly free of any flavor. In fact, they don't even know how to cook, and don't know why they're buying tomatoes in the first place, except that the reanimated corpse of Steve Jobs told them to. They buy their precious, shiny iTomatoes and dutifully display them in the crispers of their iRefrigerators. Then a week later, they toss them out and go back to the iGroceryStore and buy the new, upgraded iTomato 5S, with even more shiny and even less flavor.

From your constant insistence, over multiple comments, that under your proposed system nobody would "have" to work. I consider it a privilege to be able to work to provide for myself and my family, not a burden to be cast off at the first opportunity. My ideal world is one where everybody has the ability and opportunity to work for a living wage, not one where everybody gets free stuff.

As a matter of strict values, I share your vision of a world where nobody goes hungry or cold. But I strongly disagree with your path to getting there. You consider a world where nobody has to work as a utopia. My observation is just the opposite. If you take effort away from people, they tend to become entitled, lazy, selfish, and (ironically, with more leisure time) miserable. They may have enough to eat, but they lose so much of their humanity that they become less excellent as people. There is intrinsic value to hard work. In my experience, people who work hard (up to a certain limit) are happier. A society of bored people is one where crime is rampant and people are full of envy and strife (because nothing begets envy like a sense of entitlement). And that's not even to mention practical issues, like the inflation that dogs basic income economies.

My "utopia" is one where everybody works hard when they're working. When they're not working, ideally, they're building strong nuclear and extended families, raising children with a strong work ethic, and teaching them that when they are able, they should help those whose efforts have been less fruitful than their own. That help involves, for example, helping people through tough times, or giving them a lift while they do something to improve themselves like get an education or start a business. The end goal is always for everybody to get to a point where they can support themselves by their own efforts, so that nobody is dependent on government largess (as opposed to everybody). In fact, government hardly enters into it, except for providing some basic infrastructure and emergency services.

Perhaps that society is not possible in our present human condition, but it is an ideal I would sooner seek after than one where an over-powerful central government deals with poverty by subsidizing laziness.

Sex is a lot more comfortable on a soft, roomy bed. And I don't want my car to smell like bodily fluids. I'm going to spend the time reading.

I think you misunderstand the "Supreme" part of the "Supreme Court," and the legal doctrine of res judicata.

You seem to make it an either/or proposition. You can have laws that prevent these kinds of abuses without having huge regulatory bodies that just end up being the lapdogs of the "regulated" industry.

And you just disproved your thesis. The end result of a body that regulates a business sector is always that the regulators get in bed with the people they're supposedly regulating and work together to erect barriers to entry into their cozy little oligopoly. Throwing more money at them will not fix the problem.