The US badly needs a loser-pays system for civil cases. Also, if you are accused of a crime and are found not guilty, the government (local, state, or federal) which tried to prosecute you should pay in full all the costs you sustained, including legal fees, time lost from work, time away from family and loved ones if jailed, and travel expenses. This money should come out of the prosecutor's budget in the case of criminal trials.

... which, unless you go to considerable time, effort, expense and maybe also some luck to change it, is in fact based on national origin. Think of national origin as the default state. It can be overcome, but otherwise, it is the default setting. For most people most of the time, they are a citizen of a nation because that is where they were born.

Everyone always eventually gets what they deserve, whether that is towards their benefit or their destruction. It's just that it usually takes a good god damned long time.

And that's the problem.

I'll add that the other powerful force destroying Western civilization (the US is merely the leading edge of this wave) is "how can I tell my neighbor how he should live, and back it with the police power of government while claiming that it's for safety or some other thinly veiled excuse?" It's just that this one has been around a long time. The idea that adult people must be protected from themselves is newer by comparison. Both ideologies require a powerful government with its fingers in everything, so the politicians are happy to endorse either.

What the fuck is wrong with "if you like Wild West and understand what that means, use our Bitcoin system. If you want nice and regulated, use standard currency"? In other words, why this one-size-must-fit-all mentality? Someone using a currency created for the very purpose of such anonymous transactions either understands what this means, or learns a valuable lesson about not diving into something before understanding it. Or decides that the learning and potential risk involved is not worthwhile and uses US dollars, Euros, or whatever else.

There is nothing wrong with that! This means a new option is available that wasn't there before. If you don't like the option, don't go out of your way to use it. No one is going to force you to use Bitcoin if you don't like (or understand) the terms under which it operates. This isn't broken. The effort to fix it will therefore fail and is likely to create additional problems.

It's subtle and there is a long sequence of events separating cause from effect, but this psychotic unwillingness to treat adult people like adults is the primary enabler for the US government's perpetual expansion of power and scope. That stupid, lazy, impetuous people who make bad decisions might hurt themselves is not a bug, it's a feature. It's the only thing preventing the takeover of widespread, institutionalized stupidity. It is not an injustice when adults who make poor decisions suffer the consequences. No one was coerced and there is no victim in that picture. The effort to prevent this is well-intentioned and tragically misguided, but happily and diabolically exploited by politicians in the business of protecting you from yourself because to them it means opportunity to grab power that will never be given back.

Greed for money or goods is a material form of avarice. The lust to have and perpetually expand power at every opportunity is just a non-material form of greed. The latter is more dangerous by far because it is backed by the police power of government and there is no counter-force causing it to retreat. There is only incremental advancement.

This isn't a road or an essential utility or a national security issue. There is no real public interest here. Ergo, the correct solution would have been to dismiss the suit and tell the plaintiffs that they are free to form their own clone registry. The fact that the current registry is a monopoly would be immaterial because said monopoly excludes clones and thus wouldn't compete with a clone registry. The clone registry would probably find itself entirely without competition. Then those who are interested in cloned horses know where to look while those wanting horses bred the old-fashioned way also know where to look.

Apparently that's just not as fun as forcing people to do what they explicitly don't want to do.

Do you suppose they would also include a transparent HTTP proxy for people like me who run their own caching nameserver?

It remains that way because a much bigger segment has become completely oblivious. This is not mere ignorance. This is a self-protecting, oblivious, zombie-like sleep state. It includes an active hostility towards anyone who suggests that perhaps the increasingly centralized power and wealth of our society lends itself to being controlled by a small elite. You'll be called a tinfoil hatter no matter what evidence and reasoning you produce, not matter-of-factly either but often in an angry hostile fashion, because the zombies are deathly afraid of anything that might pierce a hole in their worldview of denial.

For the same reason that the FDA allows aspartame despite the mountains of scientific evidence that it's toxic: money.

You just haven't greased the correct palms. If you did, I'm sure you'd have their full support.

The point was, that's a political party with actual differences from the ruling factions. They don't disagree on how to implement the same philosophy like the Democrats and Republicans. They disagree about the fundamental philosophy itself.

Also, be aware that there is a serious effort to misinform people about what libertarianism is. The effort is to equate all libertarian thought with anarcho-capitalism. This is intentional. As I said in a post below, when political types cannot logically argue against something, they do their best to portray its supporters as evil and heartless. To give an example, only those who can afford their own armed guards would have police protection under anarcho-capitalism.

I am, for the most part, a libertarian. I want a government that collects taxes. I want that government to regulate industries and stock markets, with the goal of eliminating force and fraud. I want there to be tax-funded firefighters and police. I want there to be something like an FDA, but its sole purpose would be to make sure that no fraud takes place (if you buy a container claiming to have X drug, it actually does contain pharmaceutically pure X drug). I otherwise believe all drugs should be legal with only crimes (such as DUI) being punished. I want all activities confined to consenting adults to be legal, but I want it to be a crime the second anyone who is not an adult or does not consent is affected by the activity. I want almost all of a citizens' experience of government to come from state and local levels, with only issues like national defense and interstate roads handled by the feds.

This "utter train wreck" is, as a poster below pointed out, extremely close to classical liberalism. This same "utter train wreck" is what the USA had during its early history. If that's a train wreck, please derail me.

It's fashionable to portray all libertarians as anarcho-capitalists. Make no mistake, this is not an accident. When those with pulpits cannot rationally argue against a philosophy, they try their level best to demonize it and make its supporters look as evil as possible. It's a standard and ancient tactic.

They argue about teachers' salaried while the kids graduating from high school are dumbasses with no willingness or ability to think independently, since following instructions is what they know. They argue about unresolvable (thus to them, perfect) debates like abortion while the republic crumbles, they may as well play the fiddle too like Nero did. They quibble about how many scraps should hit the floor instead of taking a hard look into why everyone doesn't have their own floor.

The differences exist but they are minimal and designed to give only an illusion of choice. One day something like abortion is demonized and made more difficult, another day this is reversed. Over the course of years and decades the status quo does not change; it only becomes more so. That's what matters.

You may not want to believe that a single entity with two factions has completely usurped all political power in the nation and locked it down like what the guilds of old did to trade, but it's a fact. Consider what Microsoft did to the PC market. That's what the Demican/Republicrats did to politics. Compare either or both of them to say, the Libertarian party and you'll see what actual differences are.

The point was that the world is a great many shades of grey, and is therefore not suitably represented by our black-and-white two-party system.

Reading comprehension is gravely on the decline. It's been replaced by an insatiable need to be right at someone else's expense, even if you have to put words in their mouths to do it.

Being hypersensitive and too easily offended makes you look like the ranting lunatic. Specifically, it looks like you just don't like the guy and are clutching at straws for some way of taking a jab at him. Whether or not that's actually the case. It also makes you appear to promote this phoney decorum and perfect inoffensiveness that no living human being actually embodies in real life.

He referenced a very specific part of it in order to make a joke about how incredibly similar the Democrats and Republicans are on any truly important issue (such as state surveillance). Getting hysterical about that makes him look like a goddamned genius compared to you.

A very limited one with an established procedure, yes.

Yes, we call them politicians. In the past their own disagreements divided them, but they're all uniting under the monied banner of Big Brother.

We have a satisfying way that works for everyone involved. It's called getting a warrant. It begins when the police have reason to suspect that someone has committed a crime. Next, they convince a judge that these reasons are real and not bullshit fishing expeditions. Finally, the judge agrees to provide the warrant and it specifies the persons/places to be searched and the items or activities they are looking for.

The problem is, this system prevents massive surveillance and massive fishing expeditions. That's precisely why the politicians don't like it. But it's a solved problem and has been for hundreds of years now. Don't be fooled by the phoney debate and the appearance of legitimacy (of two coequal sides) it tries to create. All of this is a power grab, pure and simple. It's not necessary to protect anyone and it's not necessary to catch criminals.