I was once amused to discover that I had been entitled to a few dollars for seeing a sony movie that was falsely advertised, as well as for buying a dvd that wasn't cropped properly. I too didn't collect on my bounty.

To me, the purpose of such settlements isn't necessarily to benefit me, the wronged consumer, for past transgressions by the offender. It is to prevent offensive behavior in the future, which will benefit me in the future, as I won't be subject to such offenses then.

This does seem weird, though, as the stakes are somewhat different for individuals/people, who face jail time for such offenses. If Madoff can pay off his debts, shouldn't we let him continue as a stockbroker, as long as he ensures that he will act within the confines of the law?

I presume that many slashotters use facebook & are pro privacy. They see ./ as a forum to express their views and impact the social viewpoint to their favor. This is good, even though it leads to many argumentative discussions that devolve into semantic arguments. This is a form of social consciousness.

Personally, the only thing that I can say is that sometimes I value my privacy more than my social connectivity. During these times, I tend to add content to my facebook page. At other times, I remove content from said page because of privacy concerns. And I share these concerns with my friends through discussions and debates. I do this because I have mutable convictions, as I'm constantly learning (and forgetting) things. Overall, I think facebook is useful, despite its privacy drawbacks. (I feel this way too about using gas power, despite its environmental drawbacks, even though I feel the urge to talk about its negative impacts.)

And I guess the reason I don't mind my engaging in both sides of the coin is that in the long term, I feel my engagement allows me to bring about positive changes unattainable to those shun engagement (even though they can contribute in other ways).

There's an extension called requestPolicy that seems to be a viable alternative to those who are no longer willing to use NoScript: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9727/ As the addons page says, it's still experimental/not publicly vetted, so "take this with a grain of salt," "caveat emptor," etc...

The definition of "liberal economics" is different in the modern day US than it is everywhere else; liberal economy occurs when the government minimally interferes with the economy and only serves to protect the rights of the individual. In the US, the term liberal has come to be defined by liberal social policy. Thus, economically speaking, "progressive" or "socialist" economy is more of what you are describing in your post. I do agree with you on the paradox, though, although I would add to this that neither the majority of "left" or the "right" in the US truly cares for (classical) economic liberalization.