Two sides of the wake-up coin: (OT, but nomadic moves me to comment)

Perhaps the real Obama was pretty obvious to some of you out there. But I cannot shake the whole image of legions of hopey-changemass troglodytes all swooning over "the one": during the campaign, after the election tally, fawing during his speeches from his Office of the President Elect, created new out thin air and pure smug... To my own friends, I'd railed against this man, but most of the Obama supporters in my circle, and I think quite a number generally, couldn't break free of the cult of personality. Individuals really ought to do a gut-check on those things, cults of personality almost always lead to terrible places.

Alas, I was no better. With a twinge I voted McCain. I wasn't hung up on the man. I felt a little ill about my vote as I cast it, but saw him then as at least more likely to be slower-acting. I did not believe a vote on pure principle would work. I now realize this is what some in politics depend on.

A small part of me is glad for our Obama presidency. It taught me to reject the last vestiges I had of American-style conservatism and embrace fully libertarian principles under the sound economics taught by the Austrian school. I was and am no Progressive, so I was never inclined to support someone like Obama. But I also learned over the last decade how Bush, who I thought was a good choice at the time (my Obama moment, if you will) was really a Progressive of a slightly different flavor. What a lesson on civic responsibility! I had no idea then what I was doing, mostly just hopes and impressions. To Obama supporters, I deserve your shame for my actions then. You perhaps deserve mine for your actions more recently.

I take more time now. At the polling place, I think ballot measures, referendums, and initiatives of the various sorts are far more important now than candidate officeholders. The measures shape law we have to live under, and are usually written to catch you unaware or lend to an emotional bias. I never walk in to vote without having spent at least a week with the sample ballot beforehand, researching and reflecting. I resolve to vote on principle now, and did so last election season. I don't listen to the politicos who say votes for certain candidates are just thrown away. It seems to me, either one day those votes will number enough to matter, or we won't really need to worry about it.

WINNING!

(slips on John C. Dvorak buzzkill hat...)

[...developed along these lines: 'H2O and CO2 would be converted to methane, would fuel electricity-producing power plants that generate more CO2 and H2O, to keep the process going.']

Uh, this sounds like a perpetual motion machine scam. These researchers might be deluding themselves. In the process, we'll waste (via gov't funding grants) asstons of money on pursuing an unfeasible, impractical, but tantalizing idea.

A few flashy startups will be created later, promising viable technology that's always "just ahead." You know...along the lines of hydrogen fuel cell scams. The technology will seem new to Wall St. analysts and newsies each time.

Channeling and paraphrasing the inimitable Lewis Black, "Green Jobs! Green Jobs! What can I say?! ...back to you."

Hey, uuh, there's nothing immoral or unethical about purchasing the lice from the vendor.

Where you can start making these value judgments is when a purchaser subsequently decides to USE the previously purchased lice in some particular way you or society in general, might find objectionable.

To make the argument you'd made above, Anon Coward, is to misunderstand the subject. Free markets don't "fix" anything, sir. They are what has taken place when separate parties agree to do a deal. The "fix" is not to restrict free exchange, it is to protect property rights.

Most of the posts here had the understandable knee-jerk "eww, who would buy THAT?!" reaction...and I think this very fact shows how a free and unfettered market would normally act to keep this sort of activity very limited indeed.

As for the asshats who buy, and then use the lice thus obtained for the purpose of infesting someone against their will, or otherwise depriving them of property somehow as a result of the lice, now that's were natural law can come in. That's not a free market problem.

Anon Coward, you have to ask yourself carefully to define what a free market really is: It's the collection of _voluntary_ exchanges between parties. When the market is free, both sides want to do the trade, or it doesn't happen.

Wanting to kill a trade because you, as a non-party to the contract being undertaken, find it in some way objectionable in the end is the same sort of imposition upon another's natural rights as the case of someone using the lice they bought to infest YOU against your will.

Both YOU and HE then (if, and only if, he actually does go on to use the lice maliciously), ought to be made to suffer sanction. YOU for wanting to forbid all such voluntary exchanges because they offend you, and HE for choosing to do harm to you or deprive you of your rightful property by choosing to use the lice against you.

The <quote>Because someone is going to try to fuck someone else over</quote> part doesn't happen at the free/unfettered market level, because this is not an exchange. The malicious person spreading the lice he bought on your bath towel, thereby later infesting you, committed violence against you, and that's a matter of law.

Now, there can still be fraud in a free exchange, which is also a matter of law. Fraud is the intentional misrepresentation of the terms of an exchange, so as to create a false idea about what will actually be exchanged in the mind of one of the parties, usually with the object of depriving the misled party of property without the expected compensation.

The law's first duty is (should be) to enforce property rights. People often forget that you own (at least ought to) your own body too, so someone committing violence against you is, in essence, depriving you of the legitimate right to exercise control over your own property.

Laissez-faire capitalism is difficult to accomplish under true anarchy, because parties to exchanges can never have much confidence that their respective property rights would be upheld.

The first thing that societies interested in free-market exchange see is in their interest is standing up some sort of mutually agreed upon outside governance to assure enforcement of property rights. This allows markets to develop efficiently, as parties are relieved of the burden of maintaining each their own enforcement capabilities.