There is a trick to creating a AppleID account with no credit card. It does, however cost $5. First buy an iTunes gift card for $5 at the local grocery store. Next use that when you set up the account. It works great and is safe.

Health insurance works more like the extended warranty I bought on my car. To add 4 years and and an extra 40000 miles to my cars warranty, it cost me $2,000. Car insurance of the normal type is about 800 per year for my car.

I am not sure I would call the extended warranty ridiculously expensive.

Indeed. That's Maker mode, as I mentioned, though Maker mode doesn't get offered for merely good karma.

I've implemented ad hiding for Maker mode, but if I can reproduce a bug with it, I'll fix it.

The poor Elbonain farmer can then not find a market for his corn because the 1st world country dump their surplus grain on Elbonia by the shipload thereby making an effective economy impossible in their little country.

Uni-Solar made some seriously crappy cells. If the plastic membrane on those cells got a scratch (and they scratched pretty easy) the cell would bloom into a rust ball that produced no power. Also the mounting adhesive could not handle multiple heating and cooling cycles without coming apart. The warranty department also had no idea how to fix the problems.

The problem with decriminalization as opposed to legalization, is that the supply chain is still unregulated. The upper chain are still criminals and can still adulter the product in dangerous ways. The product is still sold along side of harder drugs which is the mechanism for the gateway drug argument. And drug dealers exist outside of the law so there is no reason for them to not sell to children.