Oh how I wish it were that simple. Seriously, I do. Unfortunately direct testing has shown that to not be the case, particularly with people in a hurry, and people in a hospital, well they're always in a hurry.

Say you work for an enterprise environment with 1000 portable phones. These regularly wear out pogo pins and if you use plugs, your uses will break them regularly. Wireless charging allows your users to throw them on a pad (more or less) and they just work. The efficiency loss is far outweighed by the savings in equipment replacement.

My concern is that the "few" will be an appreciably significant enough number so as to impact the long term fiscal viability of such a system unless the system could have a positive output appreciable enough to help offset the "few".

I want to be very, very clear about something. I in no way intended to paint everyone without a job as lazy. I do not think that is at all the case. Now, there are a TON of lazy bums (such as my cousin, she's not crazy, just lazy) but there is an at least equally large issue with mental health. The problem is fixing mental health issues, like the rest of our healthcare problems is hard, and no one gets elected (or stays elected) by working on the HARD problems.

I'm also 100% behind you on the corporate greed. I'm rather proud to work for a large, not-for-profit hospital that actually 1) pays its employees decently well and 2) actively works to help the community. Not a common thing to find in healthcare today.

A rather huge side benefit I had failed to consider

Valid point, and I was being overly dramatic in my point.

To better state it, there are 2 issues I see:

1. I think there are a lot of people who work because they must. If they can maintain a living without having to work, they won't work.
2. Giving everyone the money you described is going to cost a lot of... money. That has to come from somewhere, and the only place that can be is the pockets of everyone working. As item 1 becomes worse, the difference in income between me (hard working) and my cousin (lazy ass) is going to become more and more narrow.

Absolutely. All we have to do is take it from those that are earning the money, and give it to those that aren't. If 50% of the society works really hard and makes a bunch of money, but we just pay 100% of society equally, it'll all work out.

Of course, that 50% number is going to dwindle in both number and quality of output as you remove any and all reward for their work. "Atta boy" will work for some, but I think the math is going to fail on that one in the long term.

To put this differently; I have a cousin who doesn't do shit. At all. She's a worthless drag on society with 5 children. I work my ass off to the tune of 60-70 hours a week, every week, sometimes quite a bit more than that. If she and I are suddenly paid the same, I am staying home and playing XBOX, fuck this work stuff.

For what? To sit at home and watch TV?

I have no problem with the concept that everyone needs (deserves?) a basic income provided by society. I have a huge problem with the concept that they do not, in turn, owe society for that.

Give them a basic salary and then choose what menial position the Bureau of Suggested (Forced) Labor deems is best for their skills. Maybe that is doing stupid shit on the internet, I don't know, nor care, but they damn well should be doing SOMETHING.

Giving everyone 25k a year (okay, 40k a year in some places) to live, with no expectation that they will do anything other than convert oxygen to CO2 and reproduce is rather short sighted insomuch as it ignores the vast laziness of so very, very many people.

I live in a Midwest state and it's plenty civilized. We have a few military bases (literally, a few) which is true of the coastal states as well. Minimal defense industry, relatively large tech industry and huge medical industry (again, both true of most coastal states). We also sit equal at federal aid vs. taxes paid.

There are plenty of states that this does not hold true for, but the blanket "fly over states" bit is really rather droll at this point.

WTF, slashdot ate the top paragraph, sorry, let me try that again.

If a program can be sufficiently complex so as to create the program for the 3d printer to print the key with less than 5 dollars of effort, they could just as easily create tool paths for a CNC mill.

If you have to create the 3d printer program, well that's not any easier than creating the CAD drawing for the CNC machine. I can build a CNC mini-mill for 1500 dollars, so they are cost competitive (in relation to this topic) with the 3d printers also. Side bonus: steel key is much more resilient than plastic.

If programs can be sufficiently complex so as to create the program for the 3d printer to print the key with
If you have to create the 3d printer program, well that's not any easier than creating the CAD drawing for the CNC machine. I can build a CNC mini-mill for 1500 dollars, so they are cost competitive (in relation to this topic) with the 3d printers also. Side bonus: steel key is much more resilient than plastic.

Not as convenient, but it's not as if this is new. I have easy access to a CNC mill. Pretty sure I can make any key that a key cutter can create, given the original (or very good pictures with something for size reference) and a small chunk of billet.

As if. I assure you, they are all monitoring the ever loving crap out of each other for dirty laundry also. That's been going on even longer than they've been spying on all of us (though they certainly have always WANTED to spy on all of us).

I completely agree with what you're saying here, but I find it highly unlikely that the insurance companies will not immediately twist this to their benefit using Congress (and I firmly expect both parties to screw us over). It may work briefly, but they will find ways to force this to their benefit and our harm, while our government gladly helps them.

Perhaps that's a jaded view, but I cannot think of a singular example of government involvement, no matter how noble in intent, that has not ended this way. Can you?

I agree. The summary has some serious slant. This wasn't a class project, this was somebody screwing around building a "bomb" of sorts, on school grounds. That's pretty poor judgement. That said, this is a kid, and this level of punishment for something like this is way out of line.