I actually agree with most of what you say except for this part. Money is a creation of the government only because the government
has laws and a military saying it is so. Without the government, corporations can easily create their own currency. Without a government
a "walmart gift card" would probably be worth more than government issued money. Same with a "taco bell certificate", etc... You don't
need a government to create money, a store of wealth, or an incentive for people to work.

I guess I should have been more specific that I was saying that tongue in cheek.
You're right, they come down very quickly on that. The secret service is actually
pretty good at their job. When I was in high school someone emailed a joke
threat to the president. He didn't think it was very funny when they showed up
at the school and started questioning him. Likewise I know someone who did
try to spend counterfeit money. Needless to say she quickly ended up in prison
in a matter of days. They traced it back pretty quickly. It only took a couple
of hops back to find her.

In theory this might be true but in practice cash is very tracable. US currency has serial numbers.
You get your money from the bank. You buy food at a restaurant. The restaurant deposits it in the bank.
There might be an extra hop or two if you're lucky but the number of hops without passing a bank is
minimal. If you don't believe me, try to pass off a counterfit bill. The secret service is extremely good
at tracing backwards the route it took to get to the bank and can usually do it in only a couple hops.
Smaller bills might get passed back and forth a bit more but even a place like walmart rarely gives back
$20 bills as change except for a tiny bit of cashback but the majority goes straight back to the bank.

Downloading from TPB can still get you in trouble if you are using a normal bittorrent client.
Bittorrent does tit for tat swapping so unless you set it to leach mode (which will all but kill your transfer speed)
then by just using bittorrent to download a movie you are helping to distribute it.

It's insane to try to prosecute the downloader. My 6 year old loves to watch youtube videos.
Alot of the words she knows how to spell like 'dora' and 'mickey mouse' are copyrighted.
How is she (or her grandma or anyone else) suppose to know that video A is ok to watch
but video B (which youtube is still getting ad revenue from) is copywrited and illegal.
Honestly half the time I can't even tell. I assume that full length movies on youtube
(yes there are quite a few, my kids stumble upon them all the time) are illegal but youtube
does a terrible job of enforcing it on all but the most popular movies and there is tons
of gray area as I'm assuming some of the shows like the disney ones are probably
actually licensed but then again even some of those have poorer quality and might
be bootleg. Prosecuting the downloader especially if the provider is someone like
google or youtube is like prosecuting someone because walmart sold them a bootleg
dvd.

Yes, that helps. Your reaction time is about half of that distance and stopping time is the other half so if you stop at the
same rate as the car in front of you then you "only" need 150 feet between every car. Now if you use a computer and
eliminate the reaction time as well then you could in theory eliminate rear-end collisions but because of the same reason
you stated rear-end collisions are alot less dangerous than many other types of collisions that would be harder to
eliminate.

Great in theory but that bubble is extremely large. At 60 miles per hour the safe stopping distance is over 300 feet. I've
never been on a busy highway where cars are spaced at least 300 feet apart. And even if you do solve that problem
you still haven't solved lane changes or even worse oncoming traffic where you pass within a few feet of each other at a
combined speed of over 120 miles per hour. That's one of the reasons planes are so much safer than cars. There are
far fewer of them and they can separate themselves both vertically and horizontally by thousands of feet.

I would never trust a "testing" account 100% and there is always more than one way for something to break
so you're never going to eliminate fake testing accounts. That being said I doubt developers make up a
large percentage of the "fake" accounts and I bet there are more "duplicate" accounts than fake accounts
though. It seems like alot of kids create multiple accounts, abandon old accounts and create new ones,
etc...

Given the vast distance between stars, saying that most of the matter in the universe is dust between stars seems reasonable to me.
Isn't that like saying there is more dust floating in the air than there is in concentrated dust bunnies in your house?
Another example would be saying there is alot more water vapor in the air that what you see concentrated in the clouds.
I didn't do the calculation but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to think there is more matter between us and the neared star than
there is concentrated in our sun's mass even at the extremely low densities of space which according to google is about 1 atom per
centimeter. Why do we need to introduce dark matter to get the math to work out?

Why even have a trial then if every trial is a crap shoot? Why not just flip a coin and save the expense? How do
you ethically even practice law? The system really is completely broken if the verdict isn't based on facts. In a
perfect world you should be able to have the same trial a dozen times with a dozen different juries and always get
the same verdict. Obviously juries make mistakes but if you can't reliable say that there is a 90% plus probability
of the same verdict a second time thru the system then we need a better system.

I never said anyone should work for free but rather the losers should reimburse both sides.

As I said, the system is broken. Any reputable school would gladly turn over the last 5 years graduates no questions asked. Most school
probably have it published on their website along with job placements, etc... If I was the judge and a school hesitated in giving over all their
  customers to a trusted third party then I would immediately assume they were guilty. As a legitimate school, I would gladly turn over my
records to a trusted third party. Why should I care if they waste their time calling and verifying my students? If I'm legitimate then it should
be something else I can advertise on my website that placement records were verified by a third party. The fact that discovery is allowed
to be time consuming is rediculous. It's one thing if it's records they don't have but every school should have enrollment and billing information
that can be printed at the touch of a button.

If it costs more than $15k to sue someone for $15k in the courts then the entire system is broken.
In my hypothetical ideal system, both parties would get free representation, they would each spend
4-5 hours preparing their claim, present it to the court and the losing party would pay damages plus
attorney fees for both sides. Problem solved. Total bill to losing party $15k plus a couple thousand
to the lawyers on each side. It's insane to think that you can't spend 3-4 hours getting sworn
statements from a half dozen students and be done with it.

Depending on when the copying took place, the original "me" might not be too upset.
Just like people take comfort in the idea that they live on in their children I can see
taking comfort in the idea that you live on in silicon. If I was 100 and could copy
myself before I die I might consider it so at least one of the me's could continue
doing whatever I thought was important to do. Likewise if I could keep a backup at
home that could be activated to take care of my children if I died I would also do
  that.

No, a non-belief is more like a non-action like "not doing anything on Saturday" or "Not thinking of a pink elephant".
You have to believe something and what you believe is passed on directly or indirectly in almost every interaction
you have with another human being. I think it's impossible to teach without passing some part of your belief system
onto your pupils. I think the question really is how much and of what kind is acceptable. For the most part people
have no problem with schools teaching morals and ethics like don't steal, don't hit, don't do drugs, and even don't cuss
at school which for the most part are non-controversial. The problem comes when you get into areas like don't be gay,
don't have sex, don't have abortions, don't have unprotected sex, or don't talk about sex at all where different groups
have different opinion. We are trying to walk this tightrope of regulating morality whether it's gay marriage, prostitution,
pot, or polygamy and also trying to keep the government out of the morality business. I think what we really need is a
simplified code of how we decide what falls in the "religion" realm and what falls in the "government can regulate" realm.
I think "live and let live" or "my rights end where your begins" would be a good start. That and getting the government
completely out of the public school system via vouchers so that we can stop confusing schools and government.
It's impossible to make every group happy while we insist on forcing every group into a single learning environment.

Yeah, I agree that this partially solves the problem FOR YOU but not for anyone else who actually follows the rules. You've basically added your
own layer of security on top of theirs and it's technically a violation of the intended purpose of the system. It's possible that your account can be
blocked, banned, deleted, etc... for not following the rules. Even worse, by not following the rules it's highly likely that if someone calls in to try to
unlock your account and are asked what their favorite color is that the response "I think I just typed some random garbage into that field" would
probably be sufficient to get the account unlocked.