mattlevan

Interesting to hear your perspective. As someone who'd also like to buy land and build a house for my future family some day, aren't there relatively inexpensive ways to do it despite potentially overzealous building codes? Surely there are some pretty nice "cookie cutter" templates out there, right?

Or perhaps we should drastically reduce government's role in education altogether. After all, we were doing fine before the Department of Education opened in the seventies!

That may be true regarding physical encyclopedias, which are, of course, limited by space and weight (ha!). With an online encyclopedia like Wikipedia, though, those limitations are gone.

I'm looking forward to seeing Infogalactic give Wikipedia a run for its money!

If anything, it sure is nice to see that Microsoft might actually begin to become a real Apple competitor again. Competition is good!

Perhaps without the safety net, children of seniors would provide more care for their parents rather than moving them into expensive senior centers.

Hell-- even some types of Muslims in places where the other type of Muslim dominates.

This is a common argument for basic income and, even though you say "Do not take the State as something socialist or communist", your argument is the same as it is for socialism and communism.

You say, "Do not take the State as something socialist or communist, taking from someone and giving it to someone for free; no, this is provided by us, the population, for us, the population."

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Here's the problem.

Can you think about what, exactly, "the population" is? Is it tangible? Is it a singular physical entity?

The answer is no, "the population" is merely a collection of individuals! Individuals, of course, exist-- they are tangible, singular, physical entities. You are one. I am one. Individuals exist.

Populations, on the other hand, are abstractions.

My point is this: when an abstraction needs to be represented, it cannot do so itself. In this case, individuals are required to represent the population because, well, individuals are the only ones with the actual ability to do so.

Under your proposed system in which the State provides basic income to each and every individual, who decides how much each is given? Who will be the ones to actually control the means of production; and who will be the ones to actually control distribution of goods? Only some will.

If you think democracy as it exists today already performs poorly in representing the ENTIRE population (i.e., representing each individual fully to their individual desires) (think of the surprising amount of people who feel conned by the election results), then just imagine the extent by which people will likely feel when the State is responsible for just about E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G in E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E-'-S life!

Good points and very interesting, thanks.

Once again, getting the state involved just makes things messy. Let people be responsible for their own well-being as they age. Without safety nets, people tend to be much more cautious and thoughtful when spending. Plus, people who are fit to raise smart and healthy children will also be more apt to do so, which is a must for any society!

What makes these beautiful to you? Such stark, spare design is not what I personally consider beautiful. Educational and clear? Sure. Beautiful? I don't think so!

Honestly, I don't know why I hadn't thought of this. Good point!

"Douchey" or not is for you to decide, but you're right that Assange's philosophy to release untampered documents causes collateral damage. It's a tough call, honestly: would you have your leaked documents' contents nullified in court due to censorship or risk collateral damage (identity theft) and maintain your leaked documents' impact as evidence in a court of law (which could potentially lead to the prosecution of a criminal)?

WikiLeaks maintains credibility by being solely and entirely funded by individual contributions from the public.

To be fair, Assange doesn't seem to release personally identifying information because of malice, but rather his stated fear of the leaks being thrown out in court due to WikiLeaks tampering. He purposefully releases documents in full to prevent evidence-related loopholes closed in court.

Arguably, we would not have known about the mass trampling of our 4th Amendment rights were it not for Snowden. How could you deny the inherent merit in that?

The reason Assange publishes documents which may contain personally identifying information is a philosophical one. Unlike Snowden, who advocates censoring documents before release, Assange maintains that censorship can discredit documents in the court of law (tampering with evidence) and therefore abstains from doing so.