The problem with things like feeding the hungry is all of the political opposition you would run into. Since the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s we've had the capability of feeding, clothing, sheltering, and educating the entire world's population several times over. What we don't have is the political will to do it. Too many ruling elite would have to give up power for it to actually happen. That's the real obstacle.

Most armed conflict is also to the benefit of this ruling elite, who use such phrases as "ordo ab chao" (order out of chaos) to describe their interest in it. Wars are very profitable if you're a well-positioned sociopath, and playing two sides against each other is a great way to increase your power over each. It's the same military-industrial-complex that Eisenhower tried to warn us about, not that we listened.

The financial incentive related to cancer is that sick people are much more profitable than healthy people. A cheap, easy, one-time cancer cure (if there were such a thing) would absolutely devastate the multibillion dollar "cancer industry". The companies profiting from that would be just as eager to embrace such a cure as the RIAA/MPAA middlemen have been eager to adapt to an Information Age where the cost of copying and distributing a work is nearly zero.

Getting out of Mom's basement was easier in the past when good jobs that led to good careers with good pensions were available to anyone willing to work hard, which was when the USA valued and protected its manufacturing base, recognizing it as the real wealth and independence from foreign nations that it was. Additionally, it's not generally young women who are staying at home with Mama. They're showing the drive and ingenuity that young men used to also have. I'd recommend reading Boys Adrift by Dr. Leonard Sax for an in-depth explanation as to why this is happening, from grade schools that try to force boys into developmentally inappropriate roles (and then brand them ADHD when it fails), to chemicals in the food supply that have a feminizing effect on animals and humans, to reduced testosterone levels and sperm counts, etc.

These are all problems that we could do a much better job of addressing, with some of them being completely solvable. But for that to really get started, we'd first have to stop allowing psychotic sociopaths to have power and make all of the important decisions. It wouldn't hurt to also have a mass media that didn't use so many recognizable propaganda techniques, and/or a population trained in logic, reasoning, and introspection, considering these skills as basic as literacy. Until then, every starving person on the planet is basically a monument to how psychotic and fucked-up this civilization has really become.

That's exactly how I feel, which is why I don't take on such a project without first learning how it works, how to properly administer it, how to secure it, what the threat models are, etc. I would go so far as to say this is simply called being an adult person. The users who refuse to learn (as I've mentioned before) remind me of the child who really wants a kitten because they're cute, but doesn't want to be bothered changing its litter box and feeding it. This is where decent parents instill the notion of personal responsibility, the idea that if you truly want something you must also accept the costs that come with it.

Most of what is commonly called "stupidity" or "cluelessness" is really just childishness. It's why you see such annoyed protests from average users instead of genuine curiosity and fascination when you dare suggest they should, at the very least, have learned the basics. This is a self-reinforcing mentality that does not acknowledge and overcome its own faults. It will not self-correct because that would contradict its coveted instant gratification. Instead, it plays blame games.

This kind of thing being so widespread is also why we have the kind of government that we do today.

Alexander Stepanov, I have never had a chance to ask someone as qualified as you about this topic. I grew up on the opposite side of the Iron Curtain and have constantly wondered if (surely there must have been) alternative computing solutions developed in the USSR prior to Elbrus and SPARC. So my question is whether or not you know of any hardware or instruction set alternatives that died on the vine or were never mass fabricated in Soviet times? I don't expect to you to reveal some super advanced or future predicting instruction set but it has always disturbed me that these things aren't documented somewhere -- as you likely know failures can provide more fruit than successes. Failing that, could you offer us any tails of early computing that only seem to run in Russian circles?

If you can suggest references (preferably in English) I would be most appreciative. I know of only one book and it seems to be a singular point of view.

What would go wrong with classifying them as common carriers? Don't want to be held liable for every illegal use of your network? Then don't screw with the traffic in any way. What downside would there be to treating ISPs this way?

Of course, if you seriously advocate that people take responsibility for their networks, their equipment, and their decisions and realize the part they play in enabling the problems they complain about, you'll be accused of "blaming the victim".

Still, unlike the harsher laws that vary by jurisdiction (of which some have no extradition treaties), this actually stands a chance of working. On a hostile network like the Internet, nothing other than hardening the targets is going to actually improve security. It would also be nice for the rest of us not to have to contend with botnets and other problems made possible entirely by the clueless who want all the benefits of a general-purpose global network but don't want to put forth the effort to learn how it works and how to use it responsibly.

They strongly resemble the child who wants a pet cat but doesn't want to feed it and change its litter box because that part isn't fun.

That last sentence is false and shows you don't fully understand what you're discussing. The merchant is charged a fee, usually a small percentage of the transaction, each time you use your credit card. Even if you never personally pay interest because you pay in full each month, the bank issuing the credit card is making money from your use of that card.

Incidentally, this is also why some small, local, mom-and-pop stores won't accept a credit card unless your total purchase exceeds a certain amount. The fee they must pay isn't worthwhile to them if the transaction is too small. Larger stores are better able to absorb it and just consider it a cost of doing business.

Are you joking? I thought it was well established that there were chemical weapons in Iraq we just only found weapons designed by us, built by Europeans in factories in Iraq. And therefore the US didn't trumpet their achievements. In the case of Iraqi chemical weapons, the US established that Iraq had chemical weapons not because they said so but because Western countries had all the receipts.

What would it take to create a probe that could survive these conditions and send back data indefinitely? Is it even currently possible to engineer electronics that can either operate at those temperatures or be insulated and cooled sustainably? If you had infinite funding and the best engineers in the world, how would you even begin to address this?

If you understand how federal politics and the well-connected military-industrial complex actually works, you would know that costing lots of money would make it MORE likely, not less.

Yes, a global presence, especially (though not exclusively) because we just insist on constantly fucking with the Middle East. If we didn't have such a global presence feeding the military-industrial complex, we would have plenty of personnel to deal with the real national security issue of a wide-open border. We'd have far fewer enemies that way as well, but then the anti-terrorism propaganda would have to find another issue to excuse draconian laws.

The USA is a military and economic empire that doesn't like to call itself an empire because that might sound bad.

Jury nullification has a tarnished history here, as it was often used in the South to acquit white men of lynching crimes. While it may be possible for a juror to use it, even mentioning it may be considered grounds for dismissal, or so I've heard. (IANAL)

If the laws prohibiting those drugs actually made them unavailable to would-be users, then and only then would I see your point. They're failing to do so, have always failed, and will continue to fail for the foreseeable future. These are simply facts and these facts are not controversial at all. As I said, even in the highly secured, scrutinized, searched, regimented environment of a prison, where all the variables favor the people trying to prevent drug use, not even in those places can we keep drugs out. One way or another, they continue to be smuggled in.

What these drug laws are accomplishing is the enrichment of violent gangs/cartels, for whom the illicit status of drugs means far greater profits. Even the occasional large drug bust just amounts to less competition, and it's generally not the big kingpins who are bearing the risk. What the prohibition laws also accomplished is the steady buildup of a police state and the erosion of the 4th Amendment. The asset forfeiture laws alone are an abomination in any country that even pretends to be a free society. All of this is caused by trying to enforce an unenforcable law. It's the only outcome that can be expected from trying to do so.

Again if the prohibition were actually capable of stopping the drug use, this would be a legitimate concern. The policing costs could be eliminated entirely. Legal drugs would cost far less per dose, removing much of the incentive for addicts to rob and steal from others, reducing crime. Hell, state governments could give away free drugs to addicts and it would cost less than what we're doing now, both monetarily and socially. The reason productive crackheads are less common than productive alcoholics is that the alcoholic can easily purchase his drug anywhere and can afford it since it's legal and cheap. The other costs you mention like welfare, health, and insurance are effectively fixed costs, because right now anyone who really wants drugs can get them.

The best way to reduce the harm caused by irresponsible drug use is to treat it as a public health issue, not a law-enforcement issue.

Indeed, unfortunately that isn't what the Constitution says, but it would be wonderful if we actually had a pro-freedom Supreme Court to make such a ruling. These days the Court is little more than a mouthpiece articulating bullshit justifications for what the police are going to do anyway in order to create the appearance of legitimacy. Also, if drugs were legal and regulated, the incentive for the vast majority of police searches would disappear, as the vast, vast majority of prisoners got there because of drug charges. Then most searches would be for important things like murder weapons, not for unimportant and futile things like trying and failing to tell adult people how to live.

I seem to be more accurate with heavier handguns like a .44 Magnum or a .357 myself. Of course the nice thing about a .357 is that you can target practice with the cheaper .38 Special rounds, at least if it's a revolver. The gas pressure may not be high enough to cycle the action on a semiautomatic pistol -- at least, that was my experience trying to use .38 Special rounds in a Desert Eagle .357 weapon.

I also had lots of fun firing a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with slugs, trying to hit targets out of easy range for buckshot.