Medically, LSD is one of the safest drugs known. Pretty much any reference, like wikipedia, will mention the low toxicity.

Are you sure? The article seems to be give specific examples of how established industries are using the US system to stifle new companies that are being innovative and more efficient. Now which theory agrees more with class-mobility decreasing rather than increasing. Class mobility is probably the greatest indication of how much importance a society is placing on talent and effort instead of inherited positions and wealth.

The parent is probably classic anti-vaccine logic. The flu itself causes Guillain-Barr&#233 at a much, much greater rate than the vaccine. An extra 1 in 100000 people who got the swine flu shot in 1976 developed Guillain-Barr&#233. And since no real direct mechanism can be found, that still might be correlation and not causation.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/guillainbarre.htm

Programming skills in combination with other actual skills can be quite valuable. A lot of scientific software has poor usability because it was written by people who have no idea what realistic use cases or productivity bottlenecks are.

As for settling for bachelors-level jobs, CS is a very different world from science where work experience matters much more than degrees. But a bachelors in CS and 2 years work experience is probably worth as much as your PhD. Demand does not really match difficulty of the degree, but how replaceable you are.

My background is fairly similar, but I skipped out at the Masters level to work in industry. In science, PhD really would help get an interview though. HR would have screened out my resume through official channels...

By every medical or fact based study, marijuana, shrooms and LSD are among the safest drugs ever known. Psilocybin and LSD are completely non-habit forming; as in they are much, much less addictive coffee.

Meth is not some new drug. It was the typical biker 'speed'. And there were many years when the US was producing massive quantities of amphetamines for prescription use.

The vast majority of heroin users are not addicts, but occasional users. Similar to how the vast majority of people who drink are not alcoholics. The brain damage levels of alcoholics are incredible and much more severe what a cocaine addict has. (I am not advocating cocaine use; the heart attack rate is very high.)

The medical facts are a VERY different story than is portrayed and then there are problems like the complete lack of evidence prohibition reduced alcoholism. Alcoholics made sure to get a dealer.

Legally you are supposed to pay tax on barter and those laws are there exactly to prevent what you describe. It just hasn't been profitable to enforce, and barter tends to be impractical for significant sums, but if too many transactions involved barter, the tax man will come.

Easy economic solution - only freely trade with places/products matching your moral standards and add tariffs otherwise. Similar how to sell a car to the US you need meet US safety standards, not whatever the safety standards are in their country. Or how we simply do not trade items made with slave labor. There are countries that would be fine with slavery, but it would eliminate the export market of their goods.

Okay, it will not be that easy. Especially with this strange notion that companies will pass their savings on to the consumer by lowering the cost of the product, instead of continuing to charge what customers will pay and keeping the extra profits like any good capitalist. Anyway the point is you only need to worry about changing what your country does and the rest of the world will change just to do business with you. Well for a large country with a big consumer base like the US at least.

Because his ethical goal is environmental, not economic. Shipping is subsidized in a sense as environmental costs are not properly counted into the price. The environmental cost lowers the productivity of the world. If the shipping company were doing something like capturing carbon released and adding the extra cost to the produce, then your argument is valid (from a CO2 perspective at least).

Certain morals have value to people and they're willing to spend money on them, like spending more on local or fair trade produce or even wasting money advertising against gay marriage. That is capitalism. Of course for capitalism to function, consumers require accurate information and that doesn't just magically happen...

You want my impulse buy money? No? Well then STFU.

That's right - no legitimate online provider will sell it in Canada and the customer would have paid for it if it was remotely reasonable. So its more like whining Ferrari get stolen more when they can only be bought as a bundle with an entire car dealership. Then claiming car thieves, not idiotic business practices against all rules of microeconomics, are the problem to push for harsher laws.

1. Excitedly rush to iTunes to buy Game of Thrones Season 2 - I didn't know I could buy it!

2. Discover AC is a lying, prick.

3. Return to paying criminals who actually know how to provide a service

I would love to be able to vote with my wallet. I see that's not possible through legal means, at least where I live. I hereby declare my downloads to represent a lost sale caused entirely by being unable to give money for the product I want.

The US never used to have this problem. Something like a $50/hour technician would maintain a machine doing the work of 100 Chinese workers that the company had invested time and money into developing.

The reason American/European/whoever were paid more per hour is that they were more productive per hour. Basically the GDP/capita thing. But there has always been cheaper labor in other countries that the US traded with and it was not a problem.

There are many reasons the why the US is destroying its competitiveness that can be argued at length. A lot of it boils down to loosing to countries like China or Brazil that are investing in their own country and people. Consider a few things like how class mobility in China has drastically increased, while in the US this is decreasing. If there is a huge financial barrier to get a University education, will you get the best and brightest or stupid rich kids with degrees? Is the US more or less of a place that rewards talent? If there are higher environmental standards to manufacture in the US, do you A) allow companies to move manufacturing out of the country, pollute more and sell the product back to you or B) only freely trade with those meeting your standards.

Except warmer air holds more humidity. Increasing average temperature slightly with CO2 then increases humidity, which amplifies the warming effect and this is one of the lines of reasoning that leads to run away effects and tipping points. The entire 'water vapor' fact argues very strongly in favor of limiting global warming, the anti-global warming crowd is just so willfully ignorant of the subject that they think this argues in their favor.

To help you out some, you can safely ignore anyone claiming AGW doesn't exist or is doubtful. It's been over 15 since there's been what a lay person would call 'reasonable doubt' about that. There is, however, very large uncertainties about just how large an effect humans are having and, therefore, just how effective global warming reduction methods would be. Anyone legitimate on the 'anti-global warming' side is making these types of very real arguments, not obvious nonsense like 'CO2 promotes plant growth' which would stop atmospheric CO2 from rising so cannot be happening. However, what to do about about global warming is at least as much an economic question (probably much more so) as a climate science question. So far, on the whole, it appears that money spent reducing global warming is among the least cost-effective environmental spending there is.

A carbon tax would promote nuclear energy because nuclear power doesn't produce carbon dioxide. The same is true of many other methods of generating power. Why wouldn't they promote an effective, market driven approach to accounting for the cost?
AGW hasn't been in any real dispute for a long time. In The Skeptical Environmentalist it was pointed out that back then there was no real dispute among anyone who knew about climate science. Of course it also pointed out that environmentally the 'bang for buck' on global warming spending was worse than about anything else and economically didn't look sensible. There is dispute over how big the effect is, which is being lost because these people are getting lumped in with the 'it is not happening' denialists who seem immune to evidence or facts.