Car dealers aren't going away anytime soon, they are exceedingly influential in local politics limiting auto manufacturers ability to side step them and earn fat commissions. Were it possible, no doubt around 1,000 apple store like super stores would replace most dealers for test drives/car fitting, warranty work, and help anyone who desires it with ordering.

Yeah that's effective, Saddam Hussein had the 7th largest army in the world prior to the Gulf War, it caused 148 deaths while suffering 30,000 over a month (100 hours on the ground). No conventional army is big enough to cause the US meaningful losses (especially as drone tech improves). It's WMD or bust.

Affluence means having more stuff, stuff requires that you have either slaves (how humanity acquired stuff from the dawn of humanity to 1800s) or energy (cheapest til we run out is fossil fuel). What stuff do you value that didn't require energy to make, store, or transport?

I would. What's the point of life if you're a slave?

True but only hoarders care about stuff, for the sake of stuff, people mostly care dearly about status (read that as people who envy/want to sleep with you) which is pretty close to zero sum.

Tshi? Was your duck overcooked?

Except they keep giving them lands back in exchange for peace.

In my opinion, Palistine lost any claim on the lands given to them by the UN/UK when they starte and lost the '48 war. International warfare should always be played for keeps. You start the war and lose and you're lucky if your women aren't simply prizes for the victorious army and your lands become little more than a reminder to future nations not to attack someone stronger than you.

Every pilot I've ever met, GA, military or commercial, to a man (and that's only because I haven't met any women pilots), fucking loves flying, in ways that most people simply don't. Most of them spend the kind of money on it that is usually reserved for things that float or fornicate, even when it's their day job.

Our oil, it never mattered where it was buried.

Also cars aren't such a good example because the US is basically an open range for people (ie no matter what they were doing it's almost always the driver's liability if they hit a person). In a closed range state/county (ie the driver has an unrestricted right of way vs animals), the owner of an animal hit by a car is absolutely liable for the damage their animal causes to the person's car (the responsibility is on the animal's owner to is maintain their fences to prevent the collision)

My concern is it sounds like your policy is basically pick on the westerners because they're either cowed or maturely shrug off insults, but don't pick on Muslems because they will react badly. To use your school yard bully example, it's still bullying to pickon the kid who knows he will be tried as an adult for assult (or who has a father with a belt if he gets suspended one more time). The threatened violent protesters are just as much bullies as the artists.

If you wish, to use a more contriversial example, how about abortion doctor shootings? They must be aware that their continued practice will deeply offend people (frequent angry protests, I'm sure they receive threats). Should the doctor be partly responsible, when they are shot? Taking offense does not give someone license to respond with violence or chaos. If we're endowed with inalienable rights (like speech or privacy). It's encumbent on the government to protect the excercise those rights, even in cases where most of the population doesn't agree with the expression.

Also due to very different rules about emissions and safety equipment, Smart cars don't achieve nearly the same milage in the US as in Europe

Let's use the example of Piss Christ as an expression that is offensive to Christian groups. Are you seriously suggesting that the creator be held even partly responsible for any outbreak of Christian violence that should occur? It's caused enough offense that vandals destroyed a print in France, but other prints are still exhibited (one's in at a smaller gallery in New York right now). I hold an intense dislike a view that expression should be regulated based on the potential violence of the group that an expression offends, that's a very poor incentive structure (rewarding violent outbreaks is very likely to increase their occurrence).

Couldn't they simply be, um, very frisky? Not every nation's total fertility rate is similar to the West's (below replacement). Here's charts on Muslem population by country note how fast many of the nations (Egypt, Afganistan, Indonesia, and Banglidesh for example) are growing even as emmigration to many other nations boosts populations rapidly in those nations.