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Anyone on HN ever seriously questioned popular democracy? (genuinely curious)

Opposition to large states certainly makes sense if you are concerned about climate change, but perhaps not for the reason you think. Large centralized governments and economies cause wasteful and short sighted resource consumption (and thus CO2 production) through massive debt bubbles on a scale never before seen.

Nyt hasn't distorted the facts to political ends just once.

Also consider that blacks are probably the group hardest hit by illegal immigration.

Also human attempts to prevent natural fires have caused a build up of fuel over the lat 100 years or so.

That the usg attempted this is a sign of deeply seated incompetence at a philosophical level.

Very astute points wrt the demand for banking services. Banking will always be with us.

Bitcoin has the advantage over fiat of having been designed with incentives of participants aligned so as to make the likelyhood of inflation extremely small over the long term. So the scenario that Bitcoin makes better is the one in which money printing would have occurred, but now can't because of recourse to Bitcoin.

Anyone ever read Shadowrun? I remember in one book there were automated trucks that shipped goods through the unsafe areas between the large cities...

I think an interesting question is - more desirable to what end? To what end are these youths toiling? How, after millenia of evidence to the contrary indicating that experience is valuable, are we to believe that somehow magically it is not valuable? What if the end to which the young are applying themselves (or being applied) is not in fact of any value? Historically young inexperienced men have been considered entirely disposable. Perhaps now they are being disposed of in a different way?

I have achieved some consolation for pouring years of my life into technologies which I should have known would become obsolete by spending the last few years studying classical languages (mostly Attic Greek), the knowledge of which will never be obsolete. I believe there is also some value in studying the classics of Computer Science as well (Turing, Shannon, McCarthy, Graham, Dijkstra, etc.), and doing CS archeology (building retro computers from old parts, etc.).

This knowledge won't help me get a job as a coder at an SV startup, but it does help me to understand why I shouldn't try to get it, and to ease the discomfort of a fate of relative poverty.

Well, one could always leave one's private key with a trusted third party. So the public key model can accomodate those who are uncomfortable with the responsibility of keeping their private key secure. The password model however does not allow for allodial title to a secret.

No. This is impossible. The whole model is broken. A less broken model is the use of asymetric keys for authentication that doesn't require the service provider to "promise" they'll keep your password secret.

This "promise" model of security needs to end. I "promise" I'll encrypt your password, honest.

This will go as well as the war on drugs, poverty, terrorism, et al.

Precisely.

How about let individuals decide if a school is good, and not the federal government? AKA Capitalism.

Trust is cheap. And people should be able to and will trust or not trust whoever they wish.

That Bitfinex was not legit was predicted: http://btcbase.org/log/2013-05-16#34498

I'm still mostly working through my textbook, but I've read part of an interlinear translation of the Anabasis. I'm reading through parts of Plato's Apology with a group. My goal is to be able to read at least one of Aristotle's books, and perhaps Herodotus and Homer.

Regarding Anabasis, the scene in which the 10000 put on a show for the Queen of Kilikia (who is rumored to be sleeping with Cyrus), ending it with a fake charge scattering the onlookers struck me as profoundly humorous.

Learning to read Ancient Greek. The insights into language and culture just keep coming...

The student loan "bubble" is essentially an attempt to paper over the lack of jobs and serves as a welfare program for youth funded (as are most government programs) with debt.

Ha. Overblown. His wife must not owe 100K+ after being kicked out of law school like mine.

Buy some of these from your local government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence

I think we should censor articles about how censorship is good for China.

America's service economy where we "own" IP and everyone sells each other backrubs is a joke.

Would you allow black people at least some moral agency? Certainly you'd say that blacks who avoid crime and instead thrive in the legit economy are responsible to at least some degree for their own success? Why would you not then hold those who become criminals equally responsible for their failure?

Lesson: don't be a twitter share cropper.

I in turn don't find an attempt at a straw man all that convincing.

Aha now that is an interesting question and I'm glad you asked. I know that I personally would feel responsible if I saw collectivism murdering yet another society and did not call it out for what it is. If I for example saw that people were dying of lead poisoning but instead blamed evil spirits then clearly I would be responsible for mass poisoning.