You idiot, do you have any idea how many posts those accounts have?

In fact, at least one of them trolls, which is a rather stupid thing for a PR-firm run account to do. (InsightIn140Bytes ran around praising Kim Jong Il for a bit!)

And half of them are pro-Apple, half pro-Microsoft, half pro-Android, etc, which seems to be some fairly serious conflicts of interest for a single PR firm.

Seriously, you're completely stupid.

Yes, only giant corporations and millionaires should be able to directly pay for campaigns.

You do realize that your solution is completely and utterly unworkable, for three entirely separate reasons, right?

1) People do not have the resources to sue when they are harmed. This is obvious because there's nothing stopping them from suing now. Yes, power plants have special immunities, but there are plenty of polluters that are not, and in fact, often get sued...by the government. Not by private individuals.

In fact, suggesting that any solution to 'entities blatantly wandering around causing harm to others' is 'a lawsuit' is so fucktarded that it's nearly inconceivable, but that's libertarians for you. Hell, if we're not going to make laws about pollution, how about we just have them charged with assault, as that would actually be what people who of 'pump toxins into the air people are breathing' would be charged with.

Don't like that? Then we're back to specific laws.

2) We are talking cumulative effect. If twenty companies dump out 1/5th the safe limit of coal dust, how exactly does that work, liability-wise? Who do I blame my coal-caused lung disease on, and more important, how can I win in court? And how do I know who to sue? Is each bit of pollution tags with a creator?

3) Plenty of pollution causes no 'harm' that could be sued over, and yet it causes problems we want to avoid. I point to sulfur pollution, which causes acid rain. (Which we mostly got a hold of by limiting sulfur emissions.) Acid rain does not hurt people, and any property damage it causes in any specific instance is trivial. It just kills fish, and forests, and soil. So guess the government would sue...just like it does now.

But you want a system where polluters just get sued randomly based on who can allege what harm, and I want the existing world, a system of laws where actual pre-set fine exist and people have to follow the rules laid out in advance, where if they follow them they are fine, and if they don't they are fined.

We can either live in a world that says 'you can take ten galleons of water from the well each day' and if you cheat you get sued, or we live in a world where the government randomly sues people it claims took 'too much'. Removing laws that define 'What you can do to public commons' and then trying to work it out in a court (where the government would be the plaintiff anyway) is as I said, possibly the most fucktarded idea I've ever heard of. That doesn't make people more free, that makes the entire universe utterly arbitrary.

Horseshit. Cancer is a known and extensively documented phenomenon. That would simply prove those ten people had delusions of some nature

Incorrect beliefs are not 'delusions'.

Impossible or absurd beliefs (Like the belief you're Abraham Lincoln), or continual beliefs in things that have been disproved to a level that any rational person would change their belief (Like if they thought they had cancer, and doctors tested and said they did not.) are delusions.

Simply being wrong is not a delusion. Even if you're wrong about 'crazy' things. For example, thinking someone is following you every time you leave your house is not delusional. That could, in fact, be true. However, if you hire people and set up cameras and whatnot to check on that, find no trace of them, and conclude that they're just very very good at hiding, or they're manipulating the cameras and people, at a certain point that belief crosses over into delusional. Non-delusional people would change their belief, or at least assert the people spying on them stopped.

Likewise, hypochondriacs tend to skip from disease to disease as their older self-diagnosis become implausible. They believed something specific is wrong, but when presented with evidence otherwise, changed their belief. Thus they are not delusional. (Hypochondria is a real mental problem, but it's not 'delusions'.)

It's only a 'delusion' when the facts, as presented to the belief holder, say one thing, but the belief holder continues to come up with increasing implausible ways their belief might be true. Not only does someone have to be wrong, they have to know enough that a reasonable person would admit they are wrong, and yet insist otherwise.

Please note the 'Martha Mitchell effect', which is when a mental health professional misjudges when a belief is absurd or disproven, and note that there are some beliefs that are explicitly prohibited from being considered 'delusional', like beliefs that contain value judgements. I.e., if someone thinks that the President hates them, that cannot be considered delusional, no matter how much evidence there is the President does not know who they are. 'Hates' is an opinion. The belief that the president is conspiring against them, however, can be delusional.

As for water dousing and other pseudo-science, it is entirely possible to make the case that the case that such a belief should be delusional if we actually taught people correctly in schools...however, we do not, so it is not. I.e, our 'reasonable person' test is broken, as it is 'reasonable' to believe in complete nonsense.

Erm, first of all, you do notice that about two thirds of the posts here utterly misunderstand in a much worse way than you do? Aka, they're asserting that the school took away someone's food, and forced them to eat something, and then charged for it?

Asking 'If you saw a news story on the Huffington Post....would you immediately assume it was all lies because Huffington Post is a biased left-wing site?' makes you sound pretty silly when the original story basically was all lies, and it is that story that's still being echo-chambered around the internet.

Secondly, you still misunderstand the story, as the newspapers still haven't corrected it. Almost EVERY point you just listed is utterly wrong:

A kid went to lunch, and because she had been signed up by her parent for a special program to monitor and supplement her diet, and because she didn't have any obvious milk, she was told to get some, which was free. (It turns out she did have some dairy, but the 'inspection' is 'glancing down the table', not 'opening sandwiches')

That's it. That's the 'state intrusion'. That's all the government actually did. Does anyone have a problem with that?

Meanwhile, the state sent a letter home at the start of the year stating that if parents did not send their students to school without proper food, the school would provide it and might charge the parents. (As schools, in fact, often do, and anyone who has a problem with that can fuck off. The school is in loco parentis and must feed children, and they don't have the money to keep doing that for free. Although it's worth pointing out that 'charging the parents' is usually just there for threatening purposes, i.e., they call the parents in and say 'either send appropriate lunches or we will bill you for all the food we have to provide already'.)

Now, this didn't apply to parents who were signed up specifically for the program for free food supplements, as the state provides money for that, but the school failed to make that clear.

Meanwhile, the kid get in line and, misunderstanding, got an entire tray of food instead of just the milk, but it didn't matter, as the food was free. She then ate some of that instead of her meal, taking the bagged meal home. It's worth pointing out if she'd just done what was asked of her and taken just a milk, or even eaten the school meal and thrown her bag lunch away, no one would have even noticed anything happened.

So, basically, the problem was that a four-year-old couldn't follow teacher directions (Which obviously isn't her fault.), and the school sent out confusing letters to explained to parents 'If you do not provide food for your kid to eat, we'll do it and bill you. ' and didn't explain how that intersected with the 'Sign up here if you are unable to provide lunches and want us to help' program.

So that's two failures of communication from the school...which caused no actual harm here and perhaps all the morons out there could calm the fuck down and suggest the school work on explaining what is going on slightly better, instead of yammering about fascism and school lunch Nazis.

They didn't give the kid chicken nuggets at all, you utter dumbass. Here is the actual fucking story:

Teachers (not a 'state agent' unless you've decided to refer to all teachers in that way) occassionally see a kid without milk at lunch. As the school was in a program to try to provide healthier food, and knowing the kid was in that program, the kid tends to be directed to go get some milk.

No, despite the quote above, it has nothing to do with an inspector, unless they've been hanging out in the lunchroom every day. She's been given free stuff more than once. Nor, as various article implied, was her food inspected, and the cheese ignored. Instead, duh, her food wasn't inspected, so the cheese wasn't even noticed. 'Hey, look, it's a kid sitting without any milk.' says a teacher. 'Kid, go get some free milk.'

The kid, confused, at least once gets an entire lunch and doesn't eat her own, and then tells the parent about this, including giving them the receipt that all cash registers print off stating the cost of the meal. (Which is not, in fact, a 'bill'.) There is absolutely no indication that her existing food was in any way removed. (And, in fact, we know it wasn't, as she went home with it.)

The parent, remembering a previous letter that says that the school might start to charge for this sort of thing, and unable to afford the cost of the food they keep giving her kid (Although the school is not currently doing that, which is probably why the kid keeps being directed to get some milk without anyone thinking twice about it.), contacts the newspapers, worried the school is going to make her pay for the food.

Several news organizations misreport this story, and utter morons attach themselves to this story like white on white paint, apparently outraged that a school is providing free food and a parent is confused and worried she might have to pay for it. The horror that a school would provide things for free to poor children, or have some sort of authority over children in its care!

The government assigning an arbitrary amount of pollution credits for each person

See, and it's deliberate misunderstandings like that make no one take you seriously. At no point have I even vaguely suggested it be done in an arbitrary manner, and there's really no want to get that from anything I said or implied.

I said, very clearly, they should be evenly distributed. 'the rights to a X amount of pollution should start evenly distributed in the hands of every American'

Unless you're trying to imply the total is arbitrary, but I didn't say that either. That, just like how much mercury can be put safely in a river, should be decided by the government.

and having the main mechanism be a government pool to dump those credits to corporations for money is a Controlled Market.

Uh, no. The government selling stuff to the highest bidder is not, in fact, a 'controlled market'. That's how all free markets work, people sell stuff to the highest bidder. I have no idea in what delusional universe you think the government selling stuff to the highest bidder is not a free market.

The only reason you'd have a problem with it is that you have no respect for property rights. Namely, you think that corporations have the right to use and abuse public commons however they want, and the public has no right to set restrictions on how those commons are used. (Which the public, of course, would do by electing a government that decides exactly how much of the commons can be used, and then sells it in tiny pieces. Or lets people keep 'their piece'.)

You are a complete fool, and now you know which you are. It's really hilarious to watch libertarians argue about this, to see them baldly assert that the most libertarian solution possible is somehow not libertarian, simply because the Republicans don't like it.

Tell me, in your universe full of your rather shitty libertarians, how would that government control a limited public commons? Lottery tickets? Handing it to the rich? Handing it to the poor? If there was only one well in town, and it was publicly owned and gave out only a certain amount of water a month, how exactly would you decide who got the water? An interpretive dance concert? Fisticuffs?

Your whole premise is that Cap and Trade is an inherently Libertarian idea when in fact the market for carbon credits is 100% the creation of a government imposed regulation.

In that sense, all markets are 100% the creation of a government imposed regulation, because all property is 100% the creation of a government imposed regulation.

Saying 'We should invent property like that' requires some sort of explanation of why we should have car titles or have police to evict trespassers.

A certificate saying 'This person have the right to emit X tons of C02 in 2013' is no different than one saying 'This person has the right to control possession of a specific 1992 Pontiac Sunbird'.

And the government doesn't need to create a 'market' for that. Markets just magically come into existence when people have property they wish to buy, sell, or trade.

The philosophical problem with Cap and Trade is that it is an artificial creation of scarcity, and every such regulation is anathema to the libertarian mind (and I speak as a libertarian).

Um, I rather suspect you need to talk to Libertarians about intellectual property before you get all high and mighty about claiming they have a problem with 'artificial creation of scarcity'. You'll discover that most of them seem to have no problem with it.

However, more to the point, 'lack of pollution' is not artificial. People have always had the right to control people dumping stuff on their property. Or on the commons.

The only change is we've come to understand that the air and the climate are, in fact, property.

We need to figure out, as a society, how much damage we're willing to do to our commons (Just like we need to figure out how many cows we're going to let eat the grass of the village common, or whatever), and then fairly let people do that damage. (Which is, in modern society, done via the free market.)

This is, of course, complicated by the fact we're sharing these commons with the entire planet, and we don't want to restrict ourselves only to watch all the other villages eat the commons flat, but that is a fixable problem.

The practical problems are much greater - they begin with the fact that Cap and Trade is susceptible to "subsidy farming" by those who produce nothing, continue with the abuse of the system by arbitrageurs and other forms of rent seeker (Al Gore - I'm looking at you), and end with the fact that such provisions are not and are unlikely to ever be universal.

Uh, yes, which is why I proposed not handing the credits to companies, but instead handing them out to actual human beings, who could then do whatever they wanted with them. Or alternately the government could just let everyone bid on them, straight up highest bidder wins.

Looking back just shy of 2,000 years to when the Romans grew grapes in Yorkshire, I can see that the climate in the part of the world that I inhabit has been much warmer than today, with no dramatic ill effects on other parts of the world, so doubt that a couple of degrees rise from current temperatures would result in the disasters that the doomsayers would have us believe.

It's astonishing how your (lack of) scientific knowledge happens to align perfectly with your political position.

Here's a fun question for you, and unlike the other poster, it's not a hypothetical:

There are certain substances that are, in fact, toxic in large amounts, such as coal dust. This is not some 'possible' toxin, it's very well documented.

Coal plants, of course, wish to release these into the air, which is obviously cheaper than doing something about it, and even the expensive 'cleaning' system do not work 100%.

How do you propose we deal with that? Regulate an amount 'each plant' can give out? (What defines 'a plant'?) Regulate specific setups and cleaning equipment?

Yes, I agree!

Now if you'll excuse me, my neighbor has a nice looking car I've wanted for a while, so I think I'll go take it. Although I might take his truck first, so I can pick up some of that wood laying around at Home Depot and build a house on the nice flat area a little bit down the road.

I'm so glad we live in a world where the government doesn't bother to keep track of stuff like 'who owns the right to control access to things', aka, private property. That would be so much work. All libertarians know the only legit job of the government is to...wait, what was it again?

Ah, fake libertarians. It's so much fun talking to you on Slashdot, with your addled brains and inability to actually come up with any consistent political philosophy, as you react in outrage to the idea that the government should divvy up a common good and let all citizens control their piece of it as they see fit, keeping it or reselling it on the free market. The HORROR! Such a thing must not be allowed!

That's some real nice 'Libertarianism' you've got going there. Keep up the good work of reacting in outrage to using the free market to distribute 'the commons' instead of letting the business community abuse it for free.

Like I said: Fools led by sociopaths.