I wish I could mod this up.

I recently learned Microsoft MVC, being an old application programmer. Once I grasped the concept, I ended up with three competing database models to the same bloody schema in SQL Server, because some controls use AJAX/Entity Framework, others JSON/SQLDataObject, still others a SQLClient loaded on page load.

I got it to work, but what a rube goldberg machine it is, complete with the maintenance headache that implies.

But what it really means is that with this news getting out, Al Qaida is going to start manufacturing cell phone batteries that are half battery (to power up the device and show that it works) and half C4 (bonus, detonation circuit attached to the charger).

I still like the Augustinian Just War. If followed correctly by all sides, it leads to no war. Yet it still protects your people if an aggressor should violate a border.

These days, we could do it with armies of random, but GPS limited, drones pre-programed for air, sea, and land self-healing minefields.

Nope, I'm as against the Death Penalty as I am against abortion- and war as well- for exactly the same reasoning.

But in the mean time, even the Pope has noticed.

Yep- that's it! Even the author, Henry Kissinger fits. Thank you very much indeed.

Given abortion, he didn't.

"But what if I don't sell to foreign nations, to other states, or to Native American tribes?"

Works for me, but the Supreme Court had decreed that if you sell to ANYBODY in dollars, you're engaging in interstate trade.

"I suppose then your idea of communities is that they be what I'll call right now "trade immunity" zones, where as long as it's intra-community, it's sans regulations (besides things like fraud laws)?"

Not necessarily. There's still your LOCAL government to deal with- and they can have all the regulations they can convince their population to follow. But certainly, some libertarian communities, like Colton, Oregon, will keep the regulation down to "Carry a gun with you at all times" and leave it at that.

" And only trade outside the community would be where, in a sense, "foreign policy" considerations would come into play/get factored into trade regulations?"

Exactly. In keeping with the principle of subsidiarity, in which the least competent authority has the authority, and larger governments can't countermand that authority.

"It occurs to me, Lefties decry capitalism in part because of the unfairness of the "survival of the fittest" aspect of it. Yet that aspect is only absent in socialism in pie-in-the-sky theory."

Which is why I've moved away from Karl Marx towards C. Reinhard Marx. Socialism, and communism, and fascism, are all different sides of the same coin of using communalism to cheat people in a capitalist fashion. They're no different than Ponzi schemes in that respect.

"The last part, which I put in bold, seems overly optimistic to me. I'm not sure that social pressure was ever a solid deterrent for cheating one's neighbors."

It does when if you do, your children and wife will be hurt by your actions. It does when your neighbors can take revenge directly.

"Now whether separate currencies will help to suppress it is another matter. I'm not sure though how a large country such as the US, which presently has one currency, could realistically split up into a large number of city-states where each has their own. The division of the country does not seem that outlandish but the division of the currency seems like a big problem."

If you look at the Where's George data, we already do this. We may call them all dollars, but in actual trade, we're 11 different markets with very little to no trade between.

"I'm not sure that the loss of efficiency is a net gain for many people. While it would put a lot of people to work would it not also leave a lot of people to find themselves in jobs with no demand?"

The demand comes from the lack of trade with other regions.

" If everyone is producing food, shelter, and clothing, then what happens to the demand for computer programmers (for example)?"

Data is always good. Data is what creates more yield per acre.

" To me it seems that you are calling for a deterioration of society as we know it (I don't mean simply by reduction of that one job that I specified but others as well)."

It's worse than that. I'm calling for the destruction of the greedy, centralized, bureaucratic society as we know it.

The Church has always been a group of progressives. In fact, the only real progress we've ever made is due to her morality, and when that morality is ignored, it's regress.

The very part of the constitution I hate.

I think I want to keep breathing. I'm pretty sure I've developed asthma from this- as all of my cubical mates can attest to and many have complained about. But I've been outright denied the medication that could help, and the copays on the medications that are left are exorbitant.
 
A complaint has been filed with the Oregon Insurance Commission for false advertising on Cover Oregon.