Because we aren't a direct democracy. Majority opinion doesn't always become law, and it definitely doesn't happen immediately. That's by design. But it still lies with the people to select the government. If our government representatives aren't doing what we want, then we have the power to select new representatives. If they're not doing what we want but we're re-electing them anyway, then that's our fault. No amount of money and corporate friends can buy a place in Congress. Instead, all that cash buys votes, but it's our fault for putting our votes up for sale.

A beauracracy the size of the US government will always have corruption in it, but it still always comes back to us when we don't remove those responsible.

This is partially my point, though. This article says "sham" acupuncture is equivalent or better than the real thing, but leaves out that both are better than the usual treatment:

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2007/09/acupuncture-may-be-more-effective-for-back-pain-treatment-than-conventional-medicine.ars

So yeah, all of the magic behind acupuncture and placement points and whatever other junk may not be true, but that doesn't change that there's something about the process of acupuncture that seems to help. So there's no need to throw it out. It really does help, and science should work to figure out why so we can make it better, not throw it away because it doesn't work exactly like practitioners think it does.

True, but at the same time, let's not throw all of the "wooly theories" away out of hand. I sometimes think that a lot of people see something like "Eastern Medicine" and stop listening right there. But just because science didn't generate the theory doesn't meant the theory can't be correct. Let's test them and see how they work, then teach the ones that make sense. There's no reason to limit ourselves wholly to theories originating from science or non-science when the ultimate goal should be improving medicine, whatever the source.

I think this is an excellent idea. If other tech industry people could be convinced to write one, even better. The RIAA has chosen to go to the public and try to paint the tech industry as the bad guys. Fight fire with fire, especially when they're the bad guys to begin with.

The point of speed limits is usually not to keep you from going "too fast", it's to keep everyone going roughly the same speed. Driving gets more dangerous when cars are all going vastly different speeds. That's why highways also have minimum speed limits. Having someone going 25 on a 60+ mph highway is just as dangerous as having someone go 100.

This is less of an issue where there's not much traffic (parts of the Autobahn, for instance), and you could maybe make it work by having different lanes going different speeds, but there is a point beyond just making you drive slower than you're capable of doing.

Exactly. Filtering by type of traffic? Ok. Filtering by source or destination of traffic? Not ok.

Why shouldn't they pay the same tax, in both examples? Where you live should have no bearing on federal taxes, unless you're not in the country. Neither should kids. Kids are a personal choice, and if you can't afford them you shouldn't have them. But if you wanted to ease some of the burden, you could always create a deduction for the situation. Deductions make sense, especially in the case of something like charity, it's just the multiple types of income that bother me.

In the other case, presumably a retired millionaire has already paid taxes on the money he's earned, and he shouldn't be punished for saving a bunch of it in a bank account somewhere. And hey, if you wanted to reward someone for taking a low paying but very important job like school teacher, deductions are still there. There is still the question of the transition from one system to the other, but I'm only concerning myself with what the effect of either system in place would be.

Absolutely. I don't understand what's so hard about saying "regardless of its source, all of your income just counts as income, minus some deductions, and you pay a percentage in tax based on these brackets". No special taxes, no loopholes, you just take your total income, put it in brackets, and pay the percentages required. I'm far from an expert so maybe I'm missing something, but I'd love to hear it. This seems so clear cut and simple.

Or simple marketing. Being able to say your product is not manufactured in China is probably worth something these days, rightly or wrongly. There's also a possibility of environmental concerns. Though I admit ignorance as to whether Brazil is actually better in that area, China has quite a rep for pollution. Apple gets a well deserved bad rep for a lot of things, but I think they do legitimately care about the environment to some extent and, again, environmentally friendly is also good for marketing.

I've always thought a forced sunset provision for every bill would be a good idea, perhaps with it being made permanent after being passed a number of times. Something like 5 years for the first, 10 for the second, permanent after that. Or whatever. Just the idea of revisiting laws after them being in force for some number of years would greatly improve the whole law making process IMO.