That's just not true.

The government isn't required to be involved in currency manipulation to deal with inflation, and their involvement often has an exacerbating effect on the volatility of money because it requires them to make accurate predictions. Private enterprise can borrow money and lend it both domestically and by foreign currency exchange just the same as the Fed, and I say that if the Fed quit interfering then the private sector could compensate without the risk of a mistake or oversight occurring. Between the civil war and the 1920's I believe it was handled this way, and the markets of course went up and down as always, but without any serious failures. Obviously that was a different world than what we have today though, so who knows.

nah, I think tragedy of the commons is more like when there is a common resource, so individuals rush to take as much of it as possible before the other guy gets it. When in reality they are shooting themselves in the foot because they use the resource inefficiently. Alas, they have no real choice because they will just get left behind if they are efficient consumers, and their competitors are not.

What you describe is nearly the same conundrum, but it is arrived at in almost the opposite way.

Jonathan Coulton purchased a license from sir mix a lot to create the cover and sell it. So not only did he actually modify the original somehow, he paid the original artist. Fox modified nothing and gave no credit or money to one of the artists who was responsible for creating the song they used.

Pretty sure he had 30 round mags for at least one of his guns

I'm using speculation more than science here, but I would say most people are idiots with their guns, and they skew the statistics so that if you look at the population as a whole you get results such as you described.

This is not the same as talking to one person and saying "not owning a gun makes you safer". A highly responsible gun owner could very well be safer with a gun, and I say they should be allowed to have one.

well yea, it's a travesty to handle it through employment. I'm just trying to say why it is so difficult to change from that model.

Even if their employer drops them, they can transfer to the COBRA program and it will cost them similar premiums and deductibles as most employer plans. The ones who are truly on their own are the sick who got that way during a time when they didn't have insurance, and there are a lot of them.

My theory, in part, is that having medical insurance covered by benefits from your employer is a great advantage to those who are very sick and those who have a family. Essentially their health care is subsidized by a large number of single healthy coworkers. The family people still outnumber the single people though, in general, so the model stays alive by popular demand.

If medical insurance was exclusively an open market thing, then plans would come into existence that are geared towards single people, and it would be advantageous for them to band together in their health pool. They would win out over the current situation. Families and the very sickly would then have to pool with each other, and they would lose relative to their current situation.

and conservatives are all about reducing the debt and cutting entitlements, until it involves raising taxes or reducing funds for medicare.

  Any organization of people is hypocritical if you conglomerate the views of every participating individual into one mass.

Not having a facebook account could be just as risky for your privacy. Say one of your friends took a photo of you which you'd rather not have publicly broadcast say in a stripclub or whatever. He could put that photo on facebook, and you'd never be wise to it because you don't have a facebook account from which to view it. Then years down the road you're getting a divorce or something, and your wife's lawyer digs that photo up and finds evidence you cheated on her, so on.

but don't forget it isn't cut and dry that forcing helmets will reduce overall health costs. The point of TFA was if you force helmets, less people ride bikes, and maybe this causes otherwise greater obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.

Some might call what's left of the Taliban in Afghanistan a militia. Do you consider a 10 year struggle against them with no end in sight easy and effortless?

The whole reason for the corn subsidy is because of the mission of our agriculture department in the 1970's to create access to abundant, cheap food for the poor classes. Obviously its not healthy in the slightest, but it's hard to argue that they achieved their goal. Those below the poverty line do not contribute to the subsidy, and they get access to inexpensive, sorry tasting beef and HFCS based food products.

I'm not 100% sure about your statement on the sugar taxes. It may be that if you're right about them, then they contribute to the issue. But I really believe the corn subsidy is the real reason it is less expensive to use HFCS in America than real sugar.

I doubt verymuch that it is preference for bad meat, but rather a preference for cheap meat. with the corn subsidy, it is cheaper to raise cattle in confinement farms, rather than grass grazing. Remember, that the poor folks who buy the cheapest meat are not the ones paying for the majority of the corn subsidy.

I'm not sure how if this law applies in the event of a labor strike. But is this partially a response to the Verizon strike, where many employees who worked in their various NOCs were given massive overtime to compensate for the striking workers in the North East. I worked in the Cary, NC building, but I had just left the company before the strike occurred, so I don't know the specifics of how everyone got compensated for the overtime.

The world is not as Euro-centric as most of our history lessons. I doubt the mass 'migration' of millions of pacific islander will do any wonders for world peace.