How should one deal with theft if it's a "private matter"? Let's say they know (or think they know) who the culprit is. Should they be allowed to steal in return, or to use force or intimidation? Should they set up their own private court and hire private police to bring the thief in and be told his sentence? Or should they be satisfied with a strongly worded letter to the thief telling them what they did was wrong.

If you have to take action against thieves yourself, then what's to stop the strongest band of thieves getting away with it all the time? Without public enforcement of property laws I don't see how you could avoid producing an economy openly and destructively run by violent gangs. Most people would then have to join and pay tax to one of these gangs without having a vote (or a say of any kind) in who runs them. If they didn't join, their property would be regularly stolen or destroyed and what could they do about it?

But maybe I've missed something and you can enlighten me.

No it's not exactly the same, and this is easy to prove, no matter how many times you or other copyright proponents try to conflate the two:

A simple thought experiment: Two shops, side by side. A restaurant and a music shop.
- In the restaurant: The chef makes up all his own recipes. Two customers come in and order the same meal. One eats it and leaves without paying, the other eats it and enjoys it so much they pay careful attention to the ingredients and tastes, and they pay for their meal, go home and attempt to replicate it in their own kitchen. They make the meal when they have friends over, and write down their recipe and put it on their blog.

- In the music shop: the owner writes, records and sells all his own music. Two customers come in and ask for a copy of the same CD, one runs out without paying, the other one pays, listens to it, and likes it so much they go home and try to play the music themselves. They play it for their friends and put a recording of their own performance up on their blog.

The shop owners try to take action against all four customers. Which customer is legally the safest, and why?

In soviet China, the government owns the largest corporations

Turns out it greatly exacerbates the peasants' lust for democracy. But we didn't know! We were just trying to build a more robust military communication system. May god forgive us.

The three biggest power stations in the world, and six of the top ten, are hydroelectric. The other four, I grant you, are nuclear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations_in_the_world

The vast majority of existing dams don't have power stations, so you don't introduce any new ecological damage, or other risks associated with dams, by increasing hydropower.

New dams do introduce risks, but they're built for flood control, ie risk reduction. Like with immunisation, the idea is to do it when the new risk is less than the risk you are taking away.

Adding hydro power stations is simply a question of whether you want to tap all that free energy - which is available because of flood control - in a clean and efficient way, or just let it go to waste.

Most existing dams don't have hydropower stations on them.
For example:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/retrofitting-non-electctric-dams-for-power/

That's a lot of free energy, which can be efficiently tapped.

And that's before considering places that could or should be dammed for flood control and could in the process get hydropower stations, or places that don't need flood control but could provide a lot of power if dammed.

First of all it was a record flood that killed those people. The dam couldn't handle such a massive, prolonged downpour, but what do you think would have happened if the dam wasn't there?

Secondly the dam was built to control flooding, more than 20 years previously. It probably would have been built with or without the hydropower station. How many lives do yout think could have been saved over 20 years of flood control?

Nuclear power causes dangers that wouldn't have been there if not for the nuclear power station.

Hydropower taps a resources that is produced because of flood control.

Flood control can be done badly, sure, as can anything, but if done well it saves lives, houses, crops, etc.

Turning all that harnessed power into electricity, especially when the efficiency of doing so is so high, the resource is so renewable and the pollution is virtually nill, is just good sense.

The three biggest power stations in the world are all hydroelectric.
Norway, Brazil, Venezuela, and Canada all get more than 60% of their electricty from hydro, and in Norway's case it's more than 98%
There are already a lot of dams that don't have power stations attached, so you could replace/upgrade them without adding to the overall land use.
And here comes the one that's different from the other ones: The plants can stop floods.
What's not to like? Blocking sediment: There are ways to let the sediment through (see three gorges dam) and these can probably be improved further. Habitat destruction: Ok good point, but you don't have to keep mining for coal, uranium, etc. Virtually everything humans build will destroy the natural habitats of other species, but in this case it's a one-off finite use of an area for long term energy production.

"This is the first such investigation into China's large enterprises since the Anti-Monopoly Law came into effect in 2008."

Does anyone else get the impression China is in many ways like America about a century ago? Maybe their problems with pollution, labour rights, monopolies, etc, aren't so much reflections of its style of government, but rather common symptoms of competitive industralisation.

Probably they can mature faster than America, since communications and other technology (and examples from history) are so much more advanced now.

Maybe in 20 years they'll have labour unions and clear air and water.

Shouldn't you take each program separately on its merits? If publicly owned internet infrastructure will save you money, then perhaps you should vote for that and against the things that you consider wasteful. The list of government programs is not static or monolithic. One can be removed without needing to remove all of them and one can be added without needing to agree with all the others.

Would you argue against having a police or fire service simply because you disagreed with having social security, college assistance, etc?

Only in the same sense that all spending money can do is redistribute wealth. When the government builds a communications network they spend taxpayers money to build something of value to virtually all taxpayers. The same with building roads, power-line networks, etc. It makes doing business easier, cheaper, more efficient. Can you imagine if all trucks had to transport goods via toll-roads. It would likely make things a lot more expensive by the time they reach the shop-front.

The government isn't a for-profit organisation. Your analogy would be more appropriate if all of the gamblers at the casino were also its shareholders.

Once a town has a decent fiber-network it's unlikely anyone would lay down a second one right next to it, anymore than they would lay a competing road, railway, or power-line down the same row of houses. Infrastructure is a natural monopoly and not subject to the kind of competition that keeps prices and service reasonable in manufacturing and retail markets.

That sounds good. I'll take the 11 million dollar model if I can pay it off in installments.

Should I start digging my bunker now, or can I wait until I have a bigger backyard?

As I can see from that chart, your summary is highly misleading. Most of the countries with high broadband penetration have much lower populations than the U.S. so the total number of broadband subscribers is a meaningless comparison. As for U.S.A. having "a higher percentage of broadband users than even Japan": this makes it sound like Japan must be high on the list so that being higher than "even Japan" is remarkable. Whereas according to the page you referenced, on the graph sorted by penetration rate, the U.S. is 19th (and Japan even lower).

Leaving aside how poorly it does when compared to other countries, we can just consider your stated FCC desire to "give everyone broadband" and see that penetration is about 22%. Their goal is therefore not "being reached", except in the sense that the rate would have been 21% at some time in the past, so 22 is an improvement. But that's a fairly weak standard by which to declare that a goal is being reached.

Rather than a private company, yes. What do you imagine is the danger of the government storing certification information, that wouldn't exist (and probably to a greater extent) with a private company?

Yes I'd rather trust my government for issuing ID credentials. Would you trust a privately issued birth-certificate or passport over a government-issued one?

There are of course plenty of governments around the world who I wouldn't trust to do this, but there are plenty (including mine) who I would trust more than any private company in this area.

A private company is more likely to be bought, have their business practices changed in secret, or put profit above best-practice than the government of a developed, democratic nation. Not infinitely more likely, but a lot.