Wut? No, a right to work state is where you don't have to pay union dues even if you are represented by a union. It's another device to cripple unions. But obviously their marketing of this anti-worker policy has been very successful. Christ.

Uh, no. It's not illegal to say anything negative. There's this thing called the First Amendment. It does, however, open you up to civil lawsuits for slander and 98% of employers have decided they just don't want to take the risk of an expensive lawsuit.

Please god no. That is all.

Disproportionate statutory damages is the only reasonable defense; as others have pointed out, the RIAA gains ridiculous leverage because merely leaving a song upon eMule subjects you to thousands of dollars in phantom damages. Even if you ARE innocent, the risk/reward ratio allows the record mafia to shake you down simply because no one can risk the damages from losing.

Of course, the other obvious approach is to have Congress rewrite the statute to properly differentiate between a bootlegging operation with thousands of dollars in profit with counterfeit DVDs and some poor schmuck trying to get a few Mp3s.

I'd counter with the right to protect your business. Non-competes arise out of a number of valid reasons. They can be used to protect trade secrets. They can be used to protect customer relationships. Both of these cost a lot of money to create and maintain and there has to be some method of keeping your direct competitors from poaching them by bribing your employees.

That said, the law usually finds a balance and will usually strike down a non-compete that is too broad -- or in other words, defines "competitor" so expansively that it's impossible to find another job the utilizes your actual skills (rather than your former employer's trade secrets or customer relationships.)

Um, you forgot a couple of other possibilities:

5. Cut obscene executive pay, bonuses, and perks.

6. Fire bloated middle management (and bloated middle managers)

And most shareholders hardly count as "consumers", although I suppose you're right, there might be less consumption of luxury cars and second homes. Somehow I think that's a reduction in consumption we can live with.

Hmmm, I'm not a corporation and I and the many other volunteers I worked with did (IMHO) a lot to get him into power. I think you're confusing Obama with our last president....

Microsoft gets the benefit of a legal system (backed with armed force) that protects its so-called intellectual property, among other things. Seriously, in an anarchy don't you think lots and LOTS of people would beat up Bill Gates, break his glasses, and steal his (billions in) lunch money?

No kidding. IBM is still keeping PICK operating systems (U2?) on life support.

So it's not my firefox/windows/router/isp dns cache being poisoned and directing me to a government controlled evil Google clone?

The other possibility was the evil overlords were stopping me from to figuring out how to mount my pirated copy of F.E.A.R. (Yeah, someone lost disk 5/5 of the legitimate copy.)

Blizzard tends to do this (although it's significantly longer than a month.) There are a lot of things to like about Blizzard.

I don't consider refinancing a house (and I presume you have excellent credit and some actual equity) the same as finding financing for purchasing a struggling business. Circuit City is liquidating in large part because it could not find financing on any terms. Also look at Etoys and any number of recent collapses. One venture capital firm making one investment doesn't mean there's significant credit available out there.

And as I said, I have personal knowledge of the layoffs at Sun, and they are part of a pattern that began long before the current economic crisis because they have nothing to sell. In the quarter ending in September, Sun lost $1.677 BILLION on revenues of just under half that. That is simply unsustainable.

If they have technology that I haven't heard of because they aren't selling it, I'd say that's pretty good evidence it's not worth anything. And we have several Sun workstations where I work, and a couple of servers -- sitting unplugged on the shelf because Linux is cheaper, easier to maintain, and has more software that we actually use available.

Fortunately the winner of this debate will be pretty obvious in a year or two. If I'm so blind, it's view shared by Wall Street that's now valuing Sun at $3.61 a share, down from a 52 week high of $18.

And yes, I think the economy is far worse than your rosy claims.