The outcome is fines paid by one part of government to another, but it does focus the leadership to get it right

Or discourage reporting any incidents. If losing a container of Anthrax means you get punished, then you have strong incentives to not tell anyone and hope you'll find it, rather than rise alarm and put the place in a lockdown.

All to stop a flu that never exceeded 5 infections contained to Fort Dix, and only 1 death directly attributable to the flu.

A flu with a 20% mortality rate amongst young men in top shape? Yeah, no reason to panic...

But for now, crossing a human with a flower may not result in a talking flower, though it still could be a pretty looking flower.

For some reason, this very scenario is present in two games of the Sims series.

Sure, if your only goal is efficiency. But if it is, you're boring.

You're the one who claimed any inefficiency means "no progress". So I guess I'm arguing with a boring troll. Bye.

We value life, they value heaven.

According to yourself, you value an personal ancestral connection to the land. And you also said you think it's the same for Hamas. So please don't try to twist things into a "good vs. evil" or even "sane vs. insane" narrative. It's not.

I have a personal connection to this land. So does somebody else. Hence, war!

I'm starting to wonder if the best thing anyone could do for the Holy Land and its residents was to detonate enough dirty bombs there to force everyone to decide whether living there is worth more than their own lives, rather than just their neighbours.

Oh well, with any luck climate change will clear the place through desertification.

Don't spend the whole comment section arguing about causes and consequences of the conflict, who started it, who deserves is, etc.

Stay on topic and discuss the technical aspects of the missile system, at least that is what should be discussed here.

Why? Surely analysing the mechanisms of society and their failure modes are far more deserving of the title "stuff that matters" than the mechanisms of systems used in the resulting mess. Or do you have some kind of ulterior motive to keep this conflict from being discussed or analysed? Do you, for example, fear that your side - whichever it is - might come up looking bad?

And if that's the case, perhaps you should look beyond whatever gains you think your side might have from the conflict to the long-term benefits of establishing a less violent and chaotic world.

I'm not a user, but my understanding is that pot is a very hearty plant, easy to grow and cheap to grow. Why invest money, time, and effort in learning to get the THC without it?

Because yeast is still easier, and it would be to everyone's advantage if at least some of the alcohol producers switched to pot. Except the "thank God for dead soldiers" crowd, of course, since they're never happy as long as someone else might be.

So your argument against permitting people to hire their services is that it will threaten others' wages? Congratulations, you just cast your vote for no progress ever. Please move back into a cave, and give up your PC.

Strictly speaking, I don't need a PC to stay alive and capable of working. That means the PC is a luxury; I have one because at some point of my life, I had spare income. That, in turn, is an inefficiency - I could had undercut other workers by asking for less. So, if you advocate a perfectly efficient job market yet have anything you could give up without dying, you either are a hypocrite or don't know what "economic efficiency" means.

This is the reason why people have so much debt: the entire economy has become a "competitive market" where those participating in it - employees - barely survive, no matter how much it produces.

No, people have so much debt because they insist on buying things they can't afford. No, you really don't NEED a Tesla. Or even a new car. A five-year-old used car will do fine. Nor do you NEED the latest tech toy. Etc, etc, etc.

So do you agree with me? Because you seem to be saying the same thing I did: employees, in an efficient market, can't afford anything beyond they NEED - in other words, they're just barely surviving. Which is only natural, seeing how "sellers barely survive" is the very definition of economic efficiency in a marketplace, even in the job market.

Which is an awesome thing for anyone who is buying the labour but horrible for those selling it. In fact it's so bad it historically led to the birth of Communism due to unbearable conditions. Sane countries avoided revolution by deliberately introducing inefficiencies - such as labour unions - which forced employee profits up to the point where they could live. The US, on the other hand, uses easy access to credit to hide the truth. But the problem is, debt can't grow forever. As it reaches its limits, both economy and social stability in general deteriorate. The vast majority of people simply can't afford anything.

The US is trying to compensate that problem, in turn, by blaming indebted people for being "irresponsible", when in truth they've done nothing wrong. They simply had the bad luck of being born in a "market liberal" country and believing the lies they were told. Perhaps they could had faced the ugly truth earlier, but in any case the sheer mass of debt build up is forcing the issue now. It'll be interesting to see if US can introduce the necessary inefficiencies to its job market before the smoldering anger passes the tipping point and the country goes up in flames. Judging by comments like yours repeating the frankly stupid propaganda, and the continued arming of the police with military gear, which is odd if the nation doesn't expect to use them in military-style missions against its own population, I'd wager "no".

Why not let everyone who qualifies swim in the taxicab business leaving those who cannot stand the waters perish?

1) Do you really want two-ton land missiles driven by desperate people who are driven to cut corners to stay competitive?

2) More generally, as you noted, a competitive market is a swim-or-sink situation. That means profit margins will get razor-thin. That sounds awesome until you realize that wages are also a form of profits. In other words, a competitive market is good for customers and horrible for everyone else in it. This is the reason why people have so much debt: the entire economy has become a "competitive market" where those participating in it - employees - barely survive, no matter how much it produces. So of course anyone who can tries to use whatever leverage they can to make any markets they're competing in less efficient. It's the only way to avoid starving.

The whole point of the DMCA is that you can take stuff down but you have to put your own ass on the line in order to do so.

No, the point of the DMCA is that those with money can take stuff down.

We do this for a reason. The DMCA was written like that for a reason. What we see right now is the direct result of lack of enforcement.

What we see right now is the real face of copyright. This is the spirit of all such laws, no matter what their letter might say.

For one, you don't edit the news. You relay the facts as is.

They did. The relayed fact was both correct and relevant. All this noise is about choosing one fact over the other when both could not be picked.

How about instead of trying to spin it one way or the other, try publishing the facts.

The facts of what? "Intoxicated man takes a taxi, family of four gets home safe and sound"?

Worse than that. It's like Brave New World news. The only things fit to publish are the things that keep us happy(and thus amendable to advertisements in this case). It's not trying to make on specific entity look good, it's trying to engage in actual mind control via selection bias.

Ironically, this might actually end up giving a more accurate picture of the world, because disasters and scandals tend to be big and flashy, while good news come as constant stream of small things. Overall, the stream drowns out the flames - our civilization would had never gotten off the ground otherwise - but it's the odd flame that becomes ever so more newsworthy by its very rareness.

Politics of fear are based on and enabled by this very phenomenom, and we've all seen them cause completely irrational - and often very destructive - decisions. So feel-good popular newsfeed could very well end up undermining demagogues by acting as counterpoison to fearmongering.