It stops being a compassionate act when we're forced to do it by government.

There are also governments that will take your money at gunpoint and give it to other people on the condition that you are more productive than they are.

Because Digital Rights Management has sure demonstrated that it's possible to create something that's impossible to fake or defraud in any way.

In other news, now that the federal government has legislated away your right to choose for youself whether you want health insurance, expect them to make other critical health decisions for you, like whether or not you should floss, how much food you're allowed to eat, whether or not you should really have that extra donut, and other wonderful decisions.

No, what has destroyed our manufacturing base has been the widespread destructive regulation of industries by our government. When the British left Hong Kong, for example, there was a huge explosion of business and free enterprise because you only needed to fill out a single piece of paper to start a business. Here you have to hire people specifically to understand tax laws, people to understand trade laws, pay permit fees, etc..

If government truly gave a crap about business they would stop putting tariffs and duties on imports, stop regulating exports, and stop setting up new taxes on everything. When you have to determine whether a sale is legal before you can actually make the sale, that is a huge impediment to business. I've had shipments delayed by days simply because the shipper needed a harmonized code. If I were to ship to China there would be no such issues.

Economic protectionism is a huge protection racket, where we pay our legislators to protect our businesses by sucking the lifeblood out of them in taxes and tariffs and blocking blood transfusions through regulation.

And to allay your suspicion that I'm somehow a member of the elite in this country, I make less than 30k a year.

He may have left with a budget surplus, but that was to pay off the enormous national debt. You know, because you're actually supposed to pay debts, not get them forgiven.

Hey, I'm the warehouse guy where I work and I have the biggest office in the building. It's more than 6000 square feet. Probably closer to 10.

No, because ideas are valuable property. Whether I can make copies of it without removing the original idea from my head is trivial. Ideas are worthless if they don't produce something. IE, music is only worth something insofar as it produces a response in the listener. If they have already experienced that response then the music is worthless.

Listener responses are a valuable, non-renewable resource, unless you've somehow discovered a way for me to completely forget a song. And then what was the point of copying it to experience it the first time? That is the value in the music, not the data itself.

If you were a woman, I would marry you.

This guy's methodology sucks. All he does is count the number of items available and then draw broad conclusions based on already-established opinion in the filesharing world.

I disagree with the premise that there is a limited quantity of stuff required for me to be happy. This is on the basis that someone must decide when I have enough stuff.

Our economy exists because of the creation of labor-saving devices. Imagine, if you would, a world where everyone decided that wood-fired stoves and ovens were good enough. The amount of time you have to spend maintaining the fire and heating the stove makes any attempts at cooking prohibitively time-consuming. Imagine coming home and spending 45 minutes boiling water for Ramen on your stove. My point is that, while advances in production may result in lost jobs, they usually increase our standard of living as a country.

The GP really did make an eloquent point about how the automated CNC machine improved his worker's standard of living by moving their hands away from the really dirty part of the equipment. In the company that I work for, we produce all of our walls for houses using a gantry. The facility produces almost half a mile of wall every day. That's walls for 20 or 30 houses a day. This can be accomplished with 15 people. This has halved the number of people neccessary to actually assemble a house, meaning that where before crews were 3-5 people now they are two people and productivity has increased. This means that we can sell more houses, meaning everyone gets paid more, and our standard of living increases.

Unfortunately if all you've ever done is flip burgers and someone creates a burger-flipping machine, you'd better learn how to operate the machine or you'll be out of a job. As a collection of individuals, our society needs to learn to adapt to changes in job availability because everyone's job is replaceable with technology.

Yes, because when someone else makes a bad decision like gambling all their money away or living in a city below sea level we should all be forced to pay for it with the fruit of our good decisions. What you are suggesting is tantamount to slavery because you insist that I work hard so that you can make bad decisions and not have to pay for them.

Why don't we just let those who do decide to live in such areas pay for their decision? I couldn't care less about your coastal city. But I know I will be expected to pay for it just as I've been fleeced as a taxpayer for New Orleans, and countless other disasters.

Speaking of fleecing, did you know that banks will reduce your mortgage payments and principle significantly if you are unable to make your payments? Whereas if you are able to make your payments you get nothing but an increased tax bill and an inability to borrow money.

No, I believe he was suggesting that we let it happen unless you want to pony up to pay for the protection of those buildings. Believe me, I couldn't care less.

We could simply ignore the problem as a race. Every time something bad happens to a group of people, they usually figure out how to adapt and prosper. I mean, the Dutch learned how to live under the sea without massive government intervention. It's not neccessary for our governments to step in and decide how to solve problems for us when we can decide as individuals. What if I really wouldn't mind converting my 3rd story apartment into a small dock? What if I'm willing to move?

My point is that if individuals want to preserve their way of life, they can usually find a way of doing that without having more government control. And it's best if they pay for it, not the people who figured out that their current homes would be under water in a few years and moved. The fact that our governments have taken it upon themselves to solve all our problems for us is insulting because it's predicated on the idea that we can't do it ourselves. If you live in the US, look at your paycheck every month to see just how much it's costing us to solve other people's problems.

Why should I pay a bunch of people in government to make decisions with my money when I can make those decisions myself and keep a butt-ton of money to boot? The government takes over $120 out of my meager $530 weekly paychecks and gives me nothing in return. Most of that money goes to pay for government health care for the poor and elderly. I will never see a dime of that money. The rest of it goes to a retirement plan which I will never see benefits from.

Essentially a bunch of con-men have conned us into believing that we should pay them to make financial decisions for us, then taken all of our money and used it on projects which never benefit us.

Communism doesn't work because it enslaves our minds to the needs of everyone around us. Want to send your kids to school? I'm sorry but we don't have the money for it until that couple having 15 kids in the inner city can afford to feed them all. It won't happen this year. Want a bigger house? Sorry, but we can't afford to move everyone into a bigger house so we must all suffer together in our hovels. And Comrade, you can't change jobs because you are needed doing the work you are. Just have faith that your betters in the government will decide well what truly makes you happy, because you obviously have no idea.