Well, he's only partly wrong, IMO the part that he's wrong about is that people are peaceful. Many are, but many aren't.

The purpose of government is to protect the rights of its citizens, be it from foreign powers or from each other. Yes, laws are enforced by use of force, and the fact that the government has the power to enforce them which generally prevents people from abusing each other in one way or another (though as is self-evident, this isn't a deterrent if the person thinks they can get away with it).

It's a mistake to suggest that governments don't govern with the use of force at least (if not violence / aggression), but it's an even bigger mistake to think that people would live peacefully together if governments were taken away.

Honestly, I don't know why private mode isn't the default mode on most browsers. Who wants websites to be able to leave things on your computer just because you've clicked on them? News sites (slashdot included) are pretty bad at this - visit one site and you have cookies from dozens of domains. I would prefer it if I were asked if the browser would like to keep the cookies (yes I know you can set browsers up to clear cookies when you exit but this isn't default behaviour and it's a pain to make a persistent white-list. Easier if the browser were to ask "You've just logged in to - would you like your login to persist?" with a "don't ask again" option too.)

Can something be inherently right? This I think depends largely on your viewpoint. We can't be too quick to cast aspersions at what has been looked at as right and wrong in previous generations or by societies different than the one we are in. The fact that gay marriage (for example) has only recently become legal while for centuries was illegal suggests that it's not exactly self-evident that it is right, even though today it is popularly believed to be so.

Governments I think can and should collect certain data about citizens. Births, marriages, deaths, ownership of land or other assets. They don't need to spy to the extent that Google or Facebook does though. (That being said, many of them want to.)

Again, in defence of the Mormons, they figured these things out within 100 years or so. Islam has been around since... around 610AD IIRC?

Sort of a weak reverse slashdotting... ?

The Porsches without aircon are for 'performance' reasons, they're lightened track versions of standard cars which do have aircon as standard. Most performance car makers do some models like that. Basically they take a lot of stuff away (radio, door handles, floor mats) and charge more for it.

https://xkcd.com/927/

I think it's silly to do this because I'm pretty sure the money that these music companies are making has increased more due to the existence of iPods and other such devices than it has decreased from the potential "losses" that may arise from the sharing of copyrighted music, so it's a win-win situation but these companies seem to want to turn it into a situation where they're the only winners.