There should be appropriate laws.

Commercial drivers license: If you have a full drivers license and a GPS, what more actually functional skill do you need? What is the point of an additional drivers license?

Appropriate inspected vehicle: This is NSW so that is done every year. Frankly, the most poorly maintained vehicles seem to be Taxi's from my experience, so I don't think a special law is required here.

Insurance: Well that's a given, and from what I understand Uber provide their own insurance, so nothing more to do here

Now I do think that there should be additional regulation. Drivers should be required to pass a police check, not be a registered sex offender, and have a certain standard for their driving record. This would be fair and reasonable. Everything else is government wielding power for the sake of it or trying to protect entrenched interests ($500 000 license? All this extra red tape? For what? Taxis that cannot be found at 2 in the morning?). I fully support disruptive change to this industry, and I believe that it is completely moral for Uber to ignore an outdated legal framework to achieve this.

Wrong. The license fee is $500 000 odd. If they got rid of this and then said "but you must get a special drivers license and pass a police check" this would be appropriate. The point is that the laws need to change and Uber is trying to force that change. Which I agree with.

Wrong. Taxi licenses are $500 000 or so in Aus and are rationed. Uber wants that to change and so do I.

This is exactly the point. Uber is operating outside of the law because the law in this case is retrograde and needs to be updated to allow for the disruptive effects of technology change. Taxi licenses need to be unlimited and much cheaper and available to anyone without them having to join the existing cartels. So yes, Uber is acting outside the existing legal framework to try and force change that will benefit everyone. (There still needs to be regulation here, but it needs to be based on modern realities). Now I've seen this kind of thing before; Napster comes to mind, and they didn't fair so well. But you can't erase a good idea from peoples minds, so change is inevitable, it's just a matter of how long. Uber might just have deep enough pockets to bring that change more quickly.

As a side note; I see nothing wrong with companies violating laws that are clearly wrong, in order to bring about change. The old US of A didn't seem to have a problem with this in their very early days either.

No their not. There is an extremely loose reference to Mirror Neurons, and that's all the science you are going to get. The rest is anecdote and persuasive reasoning. Frankly it's crap. But why are we surprised? Anything like the development of the most complex structure we know of in the universe (the human brain), is not going to be an easy (do X + Y == Best Outcome For All Developing Brains). People have their ideas and then move on to pushing an idealogical agenda with all confidence. Maybe their right, maybe their wrong, but to call this "parenting based on science" is just flat out nonsense.

At the end is a bit of a reference to some ways of teaching kids based on some psychotherapy concepts. It looks pretty good to me. I try everything and keep what works.

There are times when I do things that I think are pretty smart, and then I see something like this and am humbled. It staggers the imagination to envisage how this Albert fellow was able to design this incredible machine. It's marvellous to watch, and beautiful in its operation. This is how Fourier analysis should be taught! Nothing has brought it more alive for me than watching this documentary. I desperately want one; I don't think I've ever seen a machine more beautiful.

Your signature contains more than a trace irony. If only stupidity hurt.

What do you mean RTGs don't come in multiple sizes? How'd they fit them into pacemakers then?

Not true. I live in the UK and do not pay the TV license as I don't watch broadcast television. Without the license you can still play this game (and listen to the radio, and watch programs on the BBC site that are not live).

The US comparison is a bit of a sidetrack, and really only used to suggest how broken the UK's public health care system is. They main thrust here was to compare with the Australian system that is a mix between public and private. Private is incentivised by increased tax on higher income unless you have private health cover. Medicare (public health cover) will cover a portion of all private sessions even if you have no insurance, which further incentivises people to go private as it is more affordable. There are no silly rules about which doctor you can see. And doctors have no incentive (and more explicitly are not prevented) from referring you to specialists. In addition, as there is this good mix of public and private, the public system is not so separated as it is in the UK. This means that public GPs know what services might be available if you go private and even suggest it.

So in Australia you get: Cheap affordable health care, particularly if something serious has gone wrong (it will be free). You get competition. I can't stress enough what a difference this makes. Yes the train system here in the UK is completely busted, but that's because they privatised a monopoly. That doesn't work. Allowing GP's to charge a little more for better service makes an enormous difference. I always paid a bit for each GP visit in Aus, but the value was completely worth it. And I only had to pay the gap between the base rate (covered by medicare) and the private provider. Here in the UK I have to pay the whole lot. In addition, as medical is at a state level, you actually get competition between the states that drives better outcomes by states learning from each other. You also get the ability to fairly easily go private when you need to. And it will be covered to some extent even without insurance. I never realised how effective this system was until I learning the "joy" of an underfunded universal health system.

The NHS is really broken, people in the UK are just generally unfamiliar with alternatives (as was I before living here). Care can be good when you get it, but the beast is a big inefficient bureaucratic monster.

See there would be logic to this if things like Autism killed you. They could encourage a high fat diet for example, or anything else that would take you out young and quickly (free base jumping lessons for the unemployed?). But Autism is often (look at the stats) a drain on the public purse for the lifetime of the Autistic. Common sense alone would suggest invest a little now to reduce the overall burden (no need to consider ethical issues for the moment). But there is no common sense here. The NHS has demonstrated to me the absolute categorical failure of large centralised planning (the same thing that undoes communism). The US may have a messed up health system; but it looks like if you have insurance you actually get timely effective treatment! Give me your broken capitalist model over this broken socialist model any day of the week.

Just to add to the "moronically inefficient" bit. Now that my son has finally been recognised as Autistic (by going privately) we gain access to various services, one of which is a special nursery school. The staff of which are complaining they don't have enough students and spend most afternoons with no students at all! The absolute insanity of this makes me unbelievably angry. Between the ages of 2-5 is the only time you have to intervene in an Autistics life to really improve outcomes and here they are rarely diagnosed before school, while the intervention services sit by idle.

Rubbish. Living here now in the UK (from Australia) for the past couple of years, I can categorically attest that the NHS is both tragically underfunded and conversely, moronically inefficient. Yes I can see a GP for free, but quotas and waiting lists are ridiculous and it simply means that you don't get referred and you don't get treated unless bits are literally dropping off you. Turns out my son has Autism; pity the UK hasn't grasped the concept of "early intervention". The Australian system of a good mix of public and private and actually looking at preventative healthcare (skin cancer checks, early intervention for Autism), is light years ahead of the hopelessly outdated and underperforming NHS.

Why do you make this assumption? They may well be finding poor injured rats and repairing their spines to try and provide them with a better life. Would you prefer they simply leave these rats to undoubtedly die from their disability? And if it was some other "evil" scientist who did this to the rat, is it not good that this scientist came along to try and help the rat? Would you tar all scientists with the same brush? Clearly the scientist repairing the rats spine is a saint, and not the devil you make out! And if it was in fact the same scientist in both cases, should the scientist not try and help the rat that he (perhaps unwittingly) injured? Have you never done something that later you regret; lashed out and hurt someone you cared about? Would you judge this repentant man for attempting to right a previous wrong? Where you there? Did you feel his utter anguish at the wrong he committed? His exultant joy as the rat took it's first step from his painstaking work? No! You eat your vegetables and consider yourself superior! This man looked into the darkness of his soul and turned and made a difference! And yet you judge him! Where were you when the rats cried out for justice? Where were you when they laid out the baits?! Hypocrite! For shame I say, for shame!

You need to look up how Kant is actually pronounced. And you should listen to this Kant.