The thing is, if the situation ever really got that bad, there would be an overwhelming tide of public opinion to change it. And don't say the fact that such a shift in public opinion thus far shows it will never happen. The current situation is nowhere near as bad as the one you describe. If we ever get to the point where the U-3 unemployment rate hits 25% while the rich are getting even richer, there WILL be movement to change the system.

Today is one of the days that makes me happy that my mutual fund just tracks the S&P 500.

It hasn't gone to zero, but it has lost 50% of it's value in a decade. The inflation-adjusted value of the dollar is far more stable than the inflation-adjusted value of gold. Not saying that gold is necessarily a bad investment, it has the potential to increase by a large amount, but it would be foolish to ignore the downside risk.

No one is saying that you should keep your retirement account in the stock market if you're retiring tomorrow. Generally accepted practice is to keep your savings in high variance, high return markets (like stocks) while you're young and gradually transition them to more stable holdings as retirement approaches.

Intention to harm is not required. Say it's a late night at a bar, I'm drunk but I decide to drive home anyway. I'm not intending to harm anyone and I may make it home without crashing. But it's still a crime either way.

If I get drunk and decide to take a drive that's still a crime, regardless of whether or not I actually kill anyone.

We can't wean ourselves off oil until we increase our grid capacity to the point that we can shift all of our oil users (mostly motor vehicles) to grid power.

The antitrust laws are written to target monopolies. But their underlying reason for existence (as well as other regulations and statues under which Adobe may target Apple) is to prevent the abuse of market power. There are more ways to acquire market power than simply being a monopoly, and its abuse can be just as detrimental to the public good.

Don't pretend like Apple is some small powerless company. As of right now they are the 3rd most valuable company in the United States. Behind only Exxon-Mobil and Microsoft.

I'm going to have to call BS on this. I love to pile on Microsoft as much as the next guy, but the suggestion that Microsoft should have all these special restrictions just because they are the largest player in the operating system market doesn't have much of a logical basis. Unless you're a computer gamer, the lock-in to the iPhone is every bit as strong as lock-in to Windows. Hell, it's stronger in a lot of ways because you can't cancel your contract without paying an ETF and even if you do you have to buy an entirely new piece of hardware. And the fact of the matter is, Apple's restrictions on the iPhone are far more draconian than Microsoft's ever were. Even during Microsoft's worse abuses in the 1990's users were fully capable of installing any plugins or browsers they wanted to use.

Because the Nexus One is the only Android phone on the planet.

So you want to drop 20 million people in the middle of the desert without any supplies? Why not just line them up against a wall and shoot them? You'd save a lot on jet fuel and parachutes.

Because "might makes right" is such an excellent way to run the world.

I agree it is vasly preferable for people to enter through the legal mechanisms.

Except that those mechanisms have yearly caps. And demand far exceeds the caps placed. So for many individuals, especially th every poor, the choice is immigrate illegally or not at all.

If you still don't want them to come in, that is your right. But don't pretend that they're coming in illegally because they don't want to fill out some papers, pay their taxes, and wait a couple of months.

To the extent that this happens at all, it's much more due to the fact that large insurance companies essentially come to doctors and say "we'll pay you 50% of your market rate and if you don't like it, all of our patients will go elsewhere." Some places (like the hospital where I am a student) are starting to get around that by giving a blanket uninsured discount rate. I'm not sure how insurance companies will respond to that, or if they'll even care. But to suggest that a profession still made up mostly of practices of less than a dozen physicians is centralized enough to collude in any meaningful manner is completely laughable. Now I agree that there is extreme sketchiness in the amount of power the AMA has to accredit new med schools, and how the specialties get to set the number of new members through their running of residencies. But that's a completely separate issue.