The argument that companies would rather have nobody rather than pay more is ludicrous and is NEVER USED with any other commodity such as fuel or flour. It exists purely to allow fiscal hegemonies to keep a vendor (us) from raising their prices. If your employer could make do without you RIGHT NOW, you'd be out the door. But there are certain times when you need someone's help in order for you to make money. And that's not going to change. There will always be times when the owner of a business needs a human being to do something for him. And what we have to decide on is whether it's gonna be that guy who pays the worker, or whether it's going to be the taxpayer.

Because starving potential thieves existing in large numbers is simply not an option, never has been. If 20 percent of your population falls into danger of starvation, your wealthy will be murdered and your government overthrown. No amount of Apache helicopters can fix a nation that has that kind of problem, and automation WILL bring us the potential for that level of problem. All that's required is a tiny dip in ambition among the investor class at this point.

Someone's going to be feeding the working people of this nation. I propose that it should be the employer.

First, Stone fails to imagine the possibility that his exposure to the workings of the NSA was a sanitized charade. Once the data is collected and stored, there is no limit to how many groups can make use of the data in its raw form.

Second, Stone fails to grasp the potential for such data. With this data, an incumbent and his cabinet can identify potential troublemakers, sort them by level of influence, and then simply selectively watch them until they break some obscure law, and prosecute it aggressively. Or even accuse them of having child pornography, since we already know that juries, the press and the public lose objectivity the minute the subject is raised, and the burden of proof goes right out the window. It allows the State to form an Enemies List, to know who dislikes what policy and how influential they are on social media or within their circle of activists.

From now on, we'll never be totally sure, when a politician or activist is prosecuted for something, that he was caught through the normal happenstance of law enforcement or whether he was expressly targeted because he opposes an incumbent or moneyed interests.

This, this, this. Unnecessary and rather unhelpful post because no upboats on /.

"that taxpayer-funded projects are barriers to future infrastructure investment."
 
Yes everyone can compete in the free market,
except for groups of geographically related people cooperating with their tax dollars. Can't have them competing.
 
That's the last thing we want for our infrastructure. People cooperating with their votes and tax dollars.

> People who have to use their own money / satisfy investors / secure a loan tend to plan ahead and think about how much they need and why.
People who have their hand out tend to ask for whatever they can get and think about how to spend it later.

Sure. Clever phrasing. The first group is satisfying self interests. The second is hoping to do something charitable or somehow beneficial to others, and still be able to buy groceries. We have different spreadsheets. For instance everyone who's not Levar Burton of TV fame.

They could totally turn themselves around if they offered exactly what just about everybody wants..
 
A ROCK SOLID home multifunction office machine. Rock Solid meaning slick bomb-proof drivers as well as a machine that didn't crap out on a black and white report because the yellow ink was low. This machine would also need a paper feed that didn't require the moon to be in proper alignment during a squirrel sacrifice in order to feed mostly whatever you put it in.
 
Then, offer them like cell phones. Charge less up front but only a bit less. Quit selling junk and hoping to cheat everybody on ink. Let me sign up for a quality service and ink renewal plan that works like a cheaper version of a smart phone. Make it as trouble free and pain free as your average smart phone. I'll sign up tomorrow.

Our roads need to be repaired almost constantly. How does this improve the situation? How about a dumb road that does it's job for 80 years straight?

+1 Amen

The Stigma and Social Effects scare me. Yes ideally I'd like to dismiss all that as trivial or superficial; shallow, or beside the point. But parents are weighing real effects, of real life, on our very real children. You can't teach a 6 year old to Be Yourself and Fuckitall.

How does one vet home schooling?

How is Prime not better than Netflix? Unless you're an old kung fu and anime buff Prime is in a tie with Netflix. They're pretty close with the free streaming. But Amazon lets you rent all those new On Demand Titles that your cable company sells you, but in HD for a doller less.

Netflix seems beneficial if you have b-sides and/or foreign or specifically eclectic tastes. Otherwise if you're an On Demand User then Amazon Prime pays for itself. 8 dollars / movies per month plus free shipping easily buys the membership. And the delivery is beautiful and with a seemingly un-compressed 1080 stream. Something not even Verizon Fios seems to be able to deliver lately.

They already have rules like these. Model airplane flyers have abided by them for years. What the FAA is trying to do is ignore those standing rules because there's money involved and they want their licensing fees.

The FAA's entirely overreaching position on "commercial drones"

I understand wanting to regulate full-sized military-style drones, but going after small commercial entities flying go-pro carrying quad-copters is a bit much.

What if the gold-plated ones actually sounded much better because they were better made, and more expensive, and didn't rust sitting on the warehouse shelves. What if they also didn't destroy as much groundwater in the making and the workers we're happer and better treated?
The gold/organic doesn't matter, it just makes things easier to find.

If we all demanded organic Orange Juice from Florida, the reduction in fertilizer alone could solve a lot of problems:
 
    https://www.fit.edu/research/p...
http://unclematts.com/dev/conv...
  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04...

That's just orange juice, in one state. There are thousands of examples.

It often tastes better too, which is a bonus.

So you grabbed whatever was in their little geek bins in the back that worked for you and told us the details. Sure ok.

You could open a Pinball themed shop selling pinball machine parts too. But the front 98% of it better be a brew pub with working pinball machines, good food, and hot waitresses.

To be clear: Drones and Secrets instead of Troops on the Ground... That doesn't mean we shrank our war machine.