It's important not to forget the people who would have died if they didn't have a gun to defend themselves, even if your coworker would have had a better chance if guns were banned. Of course we don't cry for the people who would have died if guns were banned, but they are just as important as the people who do die. Even studies carried out by anti-gun researchers show guns are used in self-defense hundreds of thousands of times a year in the US. Though of course the large majority of those defensive uses didn't prevent deaths, a significant number surely did. One of the saddest things about gun crime is that the victims who could benefit the most from arming themselves are women, who mostly voluntarily go unprotected. It's not fair to disarm the few women and others who do want to protect themselves, in order to protect those who chose to be vulnerable.

Even if a gun ban would prevent more street murders than legal guns do, one of the countries you cite, China, is a perfect example of how if the people were armed, millions of deaths that result from the poverty caused by the tyranny of their murderous criminal government could be prevented. I think the people of North Korea would gladly accept the street crime murder rate of the US if they could get rifles to help overthrow their government.

Eventually the robots will be smart enough to replace all humans. But we're not there yet. Not even close. When we are, then it will be time to discuss the basic income. In the mean time, people who can get a job, shouldn't steal from those who do get a job. Currently we've got a problem with workers from undeveloped countries willing to undercut the pay of workers in developed countries out of desperation. The solution to raising pay is to get all the countries on the planet up to a well developed standard, and then wages for even unskilled labor can rise to the proper level.

Feel free to donate your own money, but don't vote to send people with guns to steal the goods produced by taxpayers that choose to spend what they've created on more important things, or however they choose, rather than giving basic income to people who don't need it. If somebody can't produce a basic income on their own, then maybe an argument can be made for taxing the general public for welfare or to more fairly distribute the income of the rich. But not to just give free money to people who can make their own living just fine. That is just plain theft, even if it is by majority vote. If welfare is necessary, distributing money can be done very cheaply on a near honor system with just a little fraud investigation. Better yet have the government employ people on infrastructure jobs.

The whole population has lost their jobs to automation many times over, and they will again. But infinite greed ensures infinite jobs until the singularity. After that, there will be near infinite wealth, and only then should we start talking about a basic income.

We're still a long way from free production and losing all jobs. Most of the stagnation of wages has just been from moving most of the jobs to exploited labor countries like China. As the poor countries get better off and their wages get competitive, like has happened in South Korea and Taiwan, manufacturing will become healthier again in the US.

But more importantly, there is no excuse for a basic income until after the singluarity, and then it won't matter. Until then just have the government create jobs like military or infrastructure building, or have welfare, or tax the rich more heavily. If welfare costs too much to administer then cut the application to something close to an honor system, with just a little bit of fraud investigation, and the costs to give away money will be tiny.

People have no right to vote for guys with guns to go around stealing the wealth that taxpayers create just because they'd like free money.

And if you want to save money on welfare bureaucracy just require less paperwork and investigation. And if there is a lack of jobs then just give people jobs, not free money. At least then taxpayers get something back. People have no right to vote to steal other peoples money for nothing.

V22 Tiltrotor drones with shrouded rotors would have better range, payload, and safety. You could still have several rotors mounted on multiple tilting wings. Wings provide lift much more efficiently than rotors do. Shrouded rotors could perhaps be made practically silent to those on the ground.

If a few motors failed, a tiltrotor could very likely fly back home to a runway on as few as one or two rotors. If it can't fly back home, the wings would often allow it to glide to a gentle landing instead of just falling out of control. The glide ratio would allow selection of emergency landing sites over a larger area under the point of failure.

The wings combined with a horizontal takeoff would allow a heavier payload if you can live without the ability to hover or ascend near landing. After dropping off the payload it would be lighter for a vertical takeoff, or it could get a rolling start on a driveway. A tilt rotor would be much faster and have much longer range. It could also pick up a fresh battery at an automated batery change runway half way to the destination. That would allow more range or greater payload. Though a regular quad rotor could do that as well.

Set your SSID to "UnauthorizedTrafficRoutedThroughPolice"
and/or
Set up a server between your ISP and wireless access point with a VPN. If you get caught by his evil twin access point, you will know because your VPN connection will fail. Even if it doesn't fail at least your traffic should be secure.
or
Set your SSID to "ConnectingHereConstitutesConsentToEnterAndSearchYourHouse" Maybe the opportunity for an easy search would get the cops interested.
You should probably file a complaint with the police in case his illegal activity comes back to your IP address.
You may want to find out what kind of person you are dealing with before getting the police involved. Your strategy should probably be different if you are dealing with a local gang leader or homicide parollee rather than a high school nerd.
If the offender happens to be on probation it could give you extra leverage.
Keep in mind that if he lives next door he can listen in on your conversations with a sensitive directional microphone. He could also probably easily tap your phone, especially if it is cordless or cellular. So be carefull about speaking your passwords or other sensitive information out loud. Mail theft, burglary, vandalism, and other nasty attacks could become an issue.

You may be able to find the direction of a WiFi signal by just standing with your laptop held out in front of you and turning slowly until the signal strength drops as your body blocks the signal. Do multiple turns to rule out random signal drops.

If the government can't give it away then maybe auction it off. Don't auction off the copyright, just auction off a single copy. Then if it is GPL the goverment will have to fulfill its obligation and pay for what it got by posting the source code. Thus posting the source code for free will not be giving anything away, it will be paying a debt.

If no cellphone reception, set up a repeater on a nearby hiltop. Use a motion sensor on the road sending to hiltop repeater to get realtime tresspassing updates and give cops somebody to chase. Wifi with long range antennas will suffice for the first hop and maybe the second hop to a neighbor's internet connection, bypassing the need for a cellphone tranceiver. Some companies provide long range Wifi internet connections with range at least 10 miles, so you might want to check that out. They may give you a discount if it is just for low bandwidth alarm service.

Maybe put up a simple unlocked gate or just a chain with flags, to reduce alarms from harmless wandering tresspassers who will go down an open road but will not open a gate.

That TED talk only shows that religious birth rates were dropping similarly fast in the past. But there is a small religious minority who's birth rate still hasn't dropped, and barring legal reforms or some other limiting effect, simple evolutionary theory suggests they will dominate before long and bring the rate back up. And no, there is no significant limit to food production. It can be synthesized cheaply, in quantities only limited by the carbon content of earth's and other planet's crusts, from rocks, air, and nuclear or space solar power.

Converting all land areas and most or all of the oceans to maximum productivity crops would increase food production several fold. If that is not enough, then most of our dietary needs could be cheaply synthesised from rocks and air using nuclear or space solar power.

I didn't mean to suggest that religion was a genetic disease. Note that I mentioned that the population would eventually be maxed out by secular parents as well. It is an evolution and culture issue not a dig against religion. Religious groups that encourage high birth rates might consider it a complement to hear it asserted that they will someday dominate the population.

Children born to the small minority of religious women who *continue* to have very high birth rates will eventually dominate the population of child bearing age. The birth rates of religious people have dropped over the previous decades, but certain high birthrate sects will rebound with a vengeance. Although high birthrate religious groups are much more common, population growth would also explode among secular persons who simply like to have more children, given a few extra decades. The process is faster within religious groups not just because of their doctrine but because they tend to mary within their group of higher birthrate spouses instead of mixing with outsiders of normal birthrate. But religion or not, the end result will still be higher birthrates until maximum capacity is reached.

The planet can easily support the food and space needs of several tens of billions in population, and the population will eventually grow to fill that capacity unless limited by law or some mechanism other than food shortage. As religious groups dedicated to high birthrates come to dominate the population, it may become increasingly difficult politically to enact reproduction limitations. Space of course provides unlimited expansion opportunities, and will become much more practical as reusable launch vehicles will have several decades of refinement by the time the planet is nearing capacity.

The population growth rate will explode again as more children are born of high birthrate religious parents and are increasingly high birthrate themselves. This slowing of population growth is only temporary.