When I went to school (I'm 33), "A Wrinkle in Time" was the 23rd most frequently banned book in the United States.

Why do you have a Facebook if you don't want to be monetized and tracked?

So, if you got pulled into an interrogation room, and the police say "if you sign this confession, you'll be free. All taken care of." clearly any normal person should just sign the paperwork, right? Except this happens all the time to trick black men into signing confessions for crimes without support of a lawyer. Your analogy is ridiculous.

This agent of the government asked Arrington to commit fraud, and he's just supposed to "sign the fucking paperwork"? Enjoy that boot stomping on your face.

Without having RTFA yet, it looks like we're talking optimal strategies here. The rules for MTG are finite and can be printed, read, and analyzed. The absolute maximum winning strategy for each play, depending on what cards your opponent has in hand, in play, and in their library is not so easy to lay out for Standard play or even a single block. Strategic complexity, not rules complexity.

If you're going to pick an example of the failure of free market capitalism and call for regulation, maybe you should choose an industry other than the one that has an entire agency of the federal government dedicated to regulating it.

One of the FCC's main goals is to promote competition. Instead, look at the concentration of power of radio, television, telephony, and increasingly the web, in the hands of a few powerful corporations. If "deregulation" looks like a $350 Million dollar FCC budget with 2000 employees and the dismal selection choices I have for mobile phones (4 companies), cable TV (2 in my area) or dish (2 companies), radio (all owned by ClearChannel), and high speed internet (nothing at Google/FiOS speed here)... then I really don't want to know what the limitations created by more regulation will bring us.

There are 5 commissioners that head the FCC. It is so much easier for a corporation to convince 5 people that competition is bad than it is to have to convince 200 million plus people that you have the best product or service. You fear a monopoly. I say the monopoly is already here. It's a cartel corporation called Verizon Sprint AT & T Mobile, and they're working the FCC and the Senate to make sure you and I never get another company to choose.

Ah, yes, it's the Godwin's Law of Libertarianism: As an online discussion on Libertarianism grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Somalia approaches 1.

Similarly to Godwin's Law, the person invoking the comparison loses all credibility as they are forced to resort to hyperbolic comparison rather than factual information.

From the Wikipedia link: "many claims are expected to be met administratively from the fund set up for that purpose under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990"

The Oil Pollution Act set up funds to prevent civil liability for spills. It capped BP's maximum liability for the spill at $75M. So I ask, what lawsuit risk? The government already set up a system such that BP knew exactly what it was liable for - a total risk of $75M.

But we need those regulators, right? I mean, they obviously kept the spill from happening, or at least knew it was going to occur... U.S. exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study

No, the reality is regulatory capture. The only people with enough expertise to oversee something as complex as oil drilling are largely people who have worked in the industry, who have friends in the industry, and often benefit financially from the very companies they have to regulate. BP gets a pass, regardless of how many regulations are on the books, because the guy that's regulating went to college and worked for 15 years with the guy he's trying to regulate.

But really, keep calling people that disagree with you anti-science, or anti-evidence. It makes it easy to tell you're being partisan instead of rational.

Is TARP an example of deregulation? Just checking.

Honestly, do you believe the parent to my original post "points out the clear and obvious holes in my ideology". Or is it just a worthless, throw-away straw man argument? Do you want to tell me about those "flaws that any five year old can identify", or is that your equally worthless straw man argument?

I mean, how could I ever hope to attain a level of argument with the nuance of "Somalia = Libertarian government, therefore Libertarianism is wrong"?

Oh look, it's the new Godwin's Law - As an online discussion of libertarianism grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Somalia approaches 1.

Will be waiting for your next response, maybe something regarding privatized roads or police departments.

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/07/21/072111-opinions-column-cafe-dalmia-1-2/

"But to the extent that carmakers have complied with CAFE, it is less through radical innovation and more by simply slashing vehicle weight. In the 15 years after CAFE standards were first introduced in 1974, vehicle weight diminished by 23 percent. But every 100-pound weight reduction results in a 4.7 to 5.6 percent increase in the fatality rate. A 2002 National Academy of Sciences study concluded that CAFE's downsizing effect contributed to between 1,300 and 2,600 deaths in a single representative year, and to 10 times that many serious injuries."

I totally agree that the cars will have to be made incredibly light in order to meet the new standards. I don't agree that so many additional deaths are worth the savings in fuel. Given a choice, you could make a decision as to whether the increased risk of dying or being seriously injured in a car accident was worth the savings to your pocketbook and the environment. Here, there is no choice, the government has decided for you - you will increase your likelihood of dying in a car wreck because we say cars have to follow these standards.

Another important point, imo, from the same article:

"Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research, notes that it is technologically impossible to squeeze anything beyond 45 mpg in fuel economy from current vehicles. That’s why Europe’s fuel economy has plateaued at that level, despite $8 per gallon gas. The 56-mpg-mandate will require a total, top-to-bottom overhaul of cars. Every part of a vehicle from its transmission to its engine would have to be replaced."

So, even with the large taxation on fuel in Europe, they can't seem to get current technology to perform at the levels needed by these standards. Now, what costs less for these companies (ie, better for the bottom line): To completely top-to-bottom overhaul their entire manufacturing systems and pour immense amounts of money into R&D, or to lobby the government to reduce the new standards? Want to guess which one will happen?

I've been on slashdot long enough to be very afraid of clicking on any links in this post. I could live with Rick Roll security, but not this...

That sound you hear is the woosh of ePhil_One's comment going over the heads of most of these respondents. Must we actually use sarcasm tags?

Wait, are we talking about Microsoft or Apple now?

Where will your civilization be then?

It will have moved on to the next cheapest source of energy, through the nature of global supply and demand.

When I read your comment, I hear "I don't think the third-world should get to increase their standard of living, I'm OK with keeping them perpetually poor by artificially restricting their sources of energy." It's the same argument as "Walmart makes cheap goods that end up in landfills" - what you want is for everyone to have the nice things that you can afford or to go without.

Environmentalism is a first-world priority. Everyone else is too busy trying to feed themselves and stay alive.