whoops - I meant to vote for

I'll respond to your last comment within the next day or so, but thought you'd get a kick out of this one:

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?a
rticleID=201000479

Also - riddle me this one - how do you explain that the IRS is, in fact, a registered corporation in Puerto Rico and not actually a department of the United States government, having originally registered under the name of the "Federal Alcohol Administration?"

Please note - the remainder of those closing arguments were in context of her asking to see the law, and the court not providing it. Not only that, but her lawyer does also note, in the same closing arguments, that the IRS still has not shown the law during the duration of the trial, and post-trial, she states that she will only pay taxes for which she "is LIABLE."

She has not been sued in a civil court by the IRS since(for the tax dollars that you and the IRS claim she "owed"), and she continues not to pay Federal Income taxes.

Looks like Tom Cryer also won against the DOJ for "failure to file" with the same lawyer - Larry Bacraft. With the same argument, apparently, even though he was only allowed to read, and not show, the specific sections of the law that pertained to Federal Income Tax code.

System's failing, d00d.

Apologies for such a late reply - I've actually been trying to find references to Vernice Kuglin's "demonstrating successfully that she was not aware of the relevant (case) law." I just noticed that you stated "illegal" as opposed to "legal," above.

As for what makes it illegal for her to pay Federal Income Taxes - well, that's quite evident in the Constitution - the Federal government was given no power of taxation over the people. That is what her lawyer argued for her during the case that she won, at least.

In your second paragraph, you note that "The Supreme Court changes the Constitution by offering new ways to interpret it," but just by this statement, you are negating the ninth amendment - that the Supreme Court does not have the power, either, to deny or disparage rights retained by the people - therefore, according to that one amendment, they can only interpret it two ways - in favor of giving people more rights, or of not interpreting it at all.

I want to thank you, actually - and at some point, I need to buy you a drink. You've helped at least myself see a lot of historical relevance in what is about to happen in the United States quite soon - a relevance that otherwise I would have overlooked - that the American people are not going to simply sit back and let happen what will, but will hold debates, in very much the same manner that you and I have now, and will learn what there is to learn about these issues.

I think you minimize the value of the strive for independence of the United States that began with the memes created by the founders of this country, and I don't think you understand just how long of a duration these challenges have lasted. This game has been in play since prior to the founding of this country, and prior to the founding of most every country currently in existence today. Those in opposition to it(the inherent slavery of 70+% of the population) vastly outweigh those that actually favor it - I think people know, now, that this game has been played for too long - far too many see the correlation between the past and the present now.

I also hold the opinion that you have not paid much study to the reason for the independence of this country - "taxation without representation" is the commonly referred term, but, in effect, the founders of this country created it to be independent from the corporatization that was occurring in Britain, as a result of the rise of the Bank of England.

At this point, it's a very long-played game of Chess, and it'll be interesting to see what "checkmate" is.

Again, you point to societal mores that have changed in the past 200 years as evidence that one should not trust or abide by the general theme or the Constitution, nor the basis for which it was created. Fact of the matter is, through legal methods, all people are now counted as onw whole person, and no longer 2/3rds. Why you would bring the same irrelevant statement up again is beyond me.(also, if you haven't noticed, the "President" has been elected by the select few for centuries, as originally, the founders of this country did not have a way to count each and every vote. Nowadays, the popular vote usually guides the electoral, but not always[as in the case of the last 2 Presidential elections])

The Constitution is as much as, if not more, relevant now than it was when it was written. It needs to be updated to account for new developments and technologies made/acquired over the centuries, but it's message has not, and will not, lose "relevance."

But like I said, I owe you a drink.

Well, there are the cases of Vernice Kuglin and Joseph Banister, to start - Joseph Banister, a former IRS agent himself, was NOT tried on evasion charges though, but Vernice Kuglin was, and she won. Those are not the only cases, but the first right off the top of my head.

Have you just not read the Constitution or what? It's very plainly stated in it, that no part of it should be interpreted to deny rights retained by the people. As such, what you are saying is UNTRUE. The courts can(legally) NOT enforce their own interpretations of the Constitution if it denies or disparages rights retained by the people.

You are correct - the Founders, themselves, put "vehicles of change" into the CONSTITUTION, as well, for, if we, as united STATES decide, we can amend the Constitution to allow them to have such powers. As it stands, they have not done so, and, under the tenth Amendment, the Federal branch of the government has no powers outside of the regulation of international commerce and the ability to coin money....therefore, any such powers that you state, that currently the Federal branch of the government is exercising, that are outside of the regulation of international commerce or coining money ARE ILLEGAL.

The Constitution is not outdated - we, being members of individual States that at any time can split from the Union, have NOT been given the opportunity to vote on actions that the Federal branch of the government has taken upon themselves.

You've got a Bachelor's in CS, surely you should understand how natural languages correlate to the systems they create!

People getting laid off IS a fact of civilization, alone, as in a tribal system, the more experienced go on to teach the less experienced, and then are supported in age by those they have taught. Each tribe is independent, and the role of a "manager" is not something that is desired - it is not something to strive for - it is only a necessity of any operation, and is not allocated more or less resources for it's goals, and it is equal to all others participating in the operations of the tribe.

Do you not understand the evolution of a career? Do you really think that, in 20-30 years of working for a corporation, developing proprietary systems for them to sell to consumers, and patent, etc. that you would be keeping up on standards that other people have developed? How many of those proprietary systems do you think BECOME standards around the world?

Sure, for people like Vint Cerf, who helped to invent TCP/IP, the proprietary technologies they created BECAME standards, and ended up being used by the world. For 99% of the people that develop proprietary solutions for what are, inherently, industrial problems, they are not as fortunate.

Most of the people that worked on the first RAM in the world were not working on the whole solution of "Dynamic Random Access Memory," as Robert Dennard did, but worked on individual proprietary solutions, at the time, that formed the basic electrical theory to create a system that would function to be dynamic, randomly accessible memory.

If you care at all about your career, in a civilized world, you had better create something that will be used by the entire world, or you can expect to be fired at some point, and have your original job sent to another country, as the cost of living is entirely too high in the United States for you to undercut other countries' costs...and, unless you did do something that far reaching, you should expect that, when you get old enough to have your knowledge outdated by the incoming workforce, that you too will work for Wal-Marts and K-Marts around this country....that is, IF civilization is to continue.

Please understand that this country is NOT the singular "United States of America," as you may perceive it - it is the PLURAL "United," "States," "of America," which is outlined in the Constitution, effectively giving each MEMBER state the rights and responsibilities of those of an entire nation, EXCEPT when they choose to allow the bureaucratic oversight of the Federal branch of the government to manage something for them.

Please also understand how the media's role has changed in these united States in the past 100 years. 100 years ago, the media would report on a proposed law - some even publishing the full text in their local papers, when it was important enough - and the public and member States would both provide and actually HAVE a discourse about the law before it were voted on.

That behavior(by the media and the public) continued up until two infamous laws of 1913 were proposed. One of the laws established the Federal Income Tax. The second law, conveniently voted on and passed on December 23, 1913 - 2 days before Christmas, when most members of Congress, the Senate, and the public were getting ready to celebrate Christmas - was the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

Since then, it has been portrayed as though this country is behest to those that sit in the District of Columbia, as to what laws we are to live under. The majority of the public neither has the money, or the influence, to provide the Congress with their own discourse on any particular law - only to protest it when they do learn of it.

That is a fundamental change in the media's role, if you haven't noticed.

Some day, when you have the time, what say you and I take a road trip to a couple random Wal-Marts throughout the United States? We'll ask the front greeter(who is usually well over 40) what he used to do. We'll ask many of the parcel and various department employees what they used to do.

I only bring it up about their backgrounds because I used to work for many places like them - not just one - at various times, when I was young, I used to work for 3 of them at a time, and I don't regret a day of it, because I was "just starting out" in the workforce - as you stated above, it did give me some semblance of discipline, for the rest of the work I would be doing in my life thus far(Discipline that NORMALLY would be provided by one's family, as they were learning the day to day operations of their tribe's functions, and instead is put off until AFTER the public education system has raised the individual, in a civilization.).

The upside of "the way it is" when you work at a place like Wal-Mart or K-Mart or Home Depot is that you will generally meet people that worked for such technical places as Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies - please understand - it is not a rarity for them to be there. The reason they most often do not still work in the industry is because of the proprietary things they were doing at Bell/Lucent(or wherever else they've worked), and thus may or may not have followed standards in order to produce very state-of-the-art advancements in science/technology(heck - in many cases, they were the people that helped DEFINE the standards of what is now our current technology. Of course, in order for them to do so, all of the patents and standards they filed were given appropriation to their irrespective corporations, in hopes and expectation that those corporations would take care of their employees with the royalties from them, but that is, yet again, another failure of civilization, another failure of hierarchy, and an obvious failure of the plutocracy we live under.).

The downside of it is that, just like Bell/Lucent, many companies either laid off, or offered severance packages, to many of their employees, in efforts to reduce their numbers. Almost the entire manufacturing industry moved to other countries, as the cost of the labor needed to manufacture goods is, without any doubt, cheaper outside of the United States. In effect, such a corporate decision is a direct function of a civilization, or a hierarchy - the individuals that have more money, and more influence, within a corporation, have a RESPONSIBILITY to think of their stockholders first - in effect, civilization keeps the plutocracy afloat.

Insurance/Health care: Again with the irrational belief....this time, that somehow "Sicko's" popularity has a correlation to the quality of our health care/insurance. First: show to me how "Sicko" is any more or less popular than any other documentary. Second: show to me how popularity would correlate with health care quality.

In opposition to your statement above, about "think about how many people in Zimbabwe would care to see a documentary about hunger," I must point out that Google and Youtube viewings for some of the most Anti-War and 9/11 investigation documentaries have risen, as the numbers in the polls have - not fallen as you might expect from the logic of "If it were as common as you say it is, movies like Sicko wouldn't be so popular."

In other words, there is no correlation between the popularity of a documentary and the truth of it's message. You'd think there would be, but have you taken into account the amount of people that would pay tickets to see it, simply BECAUSE they have had something similar happen to them? Of course, that would be just "preaching to the choir," but does that not happen more often than people who do not believe in the message of the documentary going to see it of their own free will? Most of the people that go to see that documentary are not learning anything new - they're only having their anger and frustration with their health insurance companies(and, for that matter, most EVERY insurance company) reinforced.

Taxes: To most people, that would be the case - first off, not EVERY tax protester has lost their case in court. The ones that have won have usually won BECAUSE the jury either was, or became, aware of their right of "Jury Nullification" - their responsibility to try the law AS WELL AS the facts. To me, however, "the fact that every tax protester has lost their case in court" really says something about how misguided the judicial system is, as it, like every branch of our government, is sworn to UPHOLD and OBEY the guidelines established within the Constitution, NOT to supersede them.

Current Excel/PivotTable I'm working from, but I am going to put into SQL once I'm done playing in Excel, as Excel isn't powerful enough for true multidimensional analysis:

http://jp.infinitedev.net/CIAWorldFactbook.xls

In particular, take note of the worksheet: "BD Rate" which is a direct correlation of birth and death rates in all of the countries in the survey for which BD rates were available.

Source directly derived from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
in conjunction with the agents at the CIA's Office of Public Affairs.

(P.s. - if you have a statistic of the U.S.'s Death Rate PRIOR to private insurance/health care, please post it, along with source - that is really the only place you might see a difference, and it's likely that difference would not correlate with insurance/health care, but with birth rates and total population.

Comparing death rates for private/public insurance/health care with a different country is like comparing apples to slate granite - it's in both poor taste, and not an accurate statement that insurance/health care would have ANY correlation whatsoever, from one country to another, with death rates, as death rates are dependent on far too many local variables, like the country's birth rate, population, and area[not to mention things like HIV infection rate, etc].

In other words, we need a baseline for corrected death rate PRIOR to the implementation of private insurance in order to possibly make the correlation between insurance and death rate - my guess is that it wouldn't be more than a 1/1000 difference + or - our current death rate, given our birth rate and our population/density.

Seeing as how the CIA World Factbooks downloadable from the Office of Public Affairs only dates back to 2000, and the implementation of private insurance in the United States dates back to the Nixon Administration, I do not have the death rate/1000 population prior to the implementation of private insurance in the United States.)

Actually, I'm looking at the trend curve right now, and it's very very interesting - only 6 countries are outside of the Birthrate:Deathrate trend curve(provided by the very same CIA World Factbook that you state your "we'd see an impact on the death rates" quote above from), and 6 countries are outside of a Population:Area trend, too (this is from a pool of 250 countries the CIA has gathered Birthrate:Deathrate and Population:Area statistics on).

Sorry, not seeing any correlation between insurance/healthcare and death rates. As a matter of fact, Iraq only has a 5.26/1000 population death rate - albeit they have different population and area compared to us, but that is what these statistics are made to be used for - statistical analytics.

If anything, you can blame death rate on birth rate, population, and area(or birth rate and population density, if you want to go so far - Europe has a 10/1000:10/1000, or essentially a 1:1 correlation with birth and death rate, but they have about 113 people/sq. km - Poland also has a 1:1 correlation with birth and death rate, and they have 123 people/sq. km. Here in the U.S., we have a 1.7:1 birth/death rate, and we have around 30.65 people/sq. km - which is actually slightly lower than trend, as many other countries with less than 40 people/sq. km have 2.x:1 ratios).

As for a "rare enough issue" - watch "Sicko"....yeah, I hate the guy too, but he covers a couple stories at various hospitals and shelters where the staff state those "rarities" as common occurances.

Taxes: Case law must follow the Constitution, as stated under Amendment IX: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Unlike other countries, case law, by the very law of this Republic, can not supercede the Constitution in such a way as you state, as "The enumeration(interpretation - described in prior posts) of the Constitution shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" IN CONTEXT OF Amendment X: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

One of the powers NOT DELEGATED to the United States by the Constitution, was direct taxation of American citizens. This is WHY Title 26 HAS to state that the tax will only be applied toward international commerce, and foreign citizens working in the United States. It's buried, but if you have read all of U.S.C. Title 26, you'll see it in there.

"The Fed" may be how you think of as the "fourth branch of government," but, if you read the Constitution, which established this country, and set the rules by which all forms of government within the United States must operate, you will notice that there is absolutely NO necessity for a "fourth branch of government" - the Congress has the power to coin money, and the states have the power to choose whether to use it or not.

Have you taken a look around the United States lately? Generally, those that you are labeling as "too lazy or incompetent to get a creative job" had jobs they liked for quite a while - about 20-30 years, in many cases. The factories that they helped to start, or that they chose to work for, and studied specific schools of trade to get jobs in, have closed down. Much of the stuff they made is not even made in this country any longer.

Of course, you have your specialty Machining(CNC, Milling, etc.) companies that still exist in this country, but if you know anyone in that industry, you know how much they're struggling.

Heck, if you want, I have friends that were working for Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies that could tell you on what specific DAY they lost most of the money in their stocks.

Lotta manipulation out there, man - even to the people that had the discipline to work somewhere for 20-30 years and decide NOT to retire...and a lot of them are working at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Home Depot right now....heck, a lot of the guys I know worked on some of the first RAM in the world - designed it from scratch, and they're working for places like that right now. It's revolting, sir....very revolting to watch.

Yaroslavvb - quite an interesting point you have, that the impact of a horrible insurance system/health care system should show in the national death rates.

Just for your information, this one comment of yours sparked a call this morning, a call by myself to the department in charge of the CIA's World Factbook to inquire about the representation of the figures you quoted. I will post a CSV file, along with a SQL database when I am finished, but I recommend that you do not blindly use figures that you have not actually looked into the relevance of.

In other words, by your logic, we have the 104th, out of the 222 countries surveyed within the CIA World Factbook, WORST health care system in the world, or the 118th best(again, out of the 222 countries surveyed within the CIA World Factbook) healthcare system in the world(please note that Canada and Cuba, which do have "free, universal healthcare" have a lower death rate than we do - although their healthcare system is irrelevant to that statistic.).

As I've stated above, I will post the CSV and SQL tables of the CIA's World Factbook when I am done. The CSV's analysis, which I intend to contain with the SQL file, as a PDF in the package, will explain just what the death rate DOES correlate to. You shouldn't be surprised to know that it has literally NOTHING whatsoever to do with the quality of health care in a nation.

Now, as for "Given your anti-tax stance...," - you misconstrue my words again - I am not "anti-tax" as you generalize, I am "anti"(or rather, "opposed to") illegal taxes. If you'd gladly turn to U.S.C. Title 26, you can read who IS actually taxable, and if you read through the entire Title, and all subsections, you'll find that it does NOT define the majority of American workers as being taxable - only those that engage in international commerce, which is within the bounds(defined by the United States Constitution) of the Federal branch of the government to do.

Besides that fact, alone - had the Federal branch of the government chosen to spend much of my tax dollars on Universal Health Care, and had actually amended the Constitution as per the methods outlined within it, to ALLOW them to do so(with the consent of the other member states, of course), I doubt that I, or much of anybody else, would have looked into the technicalities of Title 26 to find out how it defined a taxpayer...

...but the Federal branch did NOT. INSTEAD, what they did was use the money gained from my paychecks to pay the interest on loans to a bank that should be under their control(as per the Constitution, and within their power), and to send my brother and sister to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain, and Egypt.

At this point, you could say that I am quite dissuaded with civilization(I imagine, quite like the Anasazi, even).

I have never stated anything about going "without access to modern medicine and nutrition" - again, you generalize the terms I am using.

I imagine that, in your mind, you see tribalism as a form of societal organization to be feared, that it would somehow mean struggling and strife, and a "new age-ist return to nature" - in that case, you are more than misguided - you have not actually considered tribalism to be nothing more than a form of societal organization.

You are generalizing, from the same history books that you have been taught by, to believe that, somehow, tribalism = life of mud, hunting, gathering, and strife.

That is so far from what I am saying, that I will not address your "hunter-gatherer groups" reference, but instead will point you to a book you should read.

The book is named "Beyond Civilization" by "Daniel Quinn." In it, he outlines ways that the human race can return to forms of tribalism, and still be able to utilize, and even expand upon, the knowledge we have gained in our misguided attempt to hold up a civilization that does not help us.

If you can not yet see, I reference "tribalism" and "civilization" without innuendo, as precisely the things they are - methods of organizing humans to work together.

In one, namely "civilization," there is very little room for individual advances and exploration of interest, except by years of standardized testing, that spend more time testing the things a person is NOT interested in.

In the other, namely "tribalism/new tribalism," the tribes themselves are formed of individuals that are tasked to advance and explore things that they ARE interested in, of their own individual choice.

Neither of them would be a "utopia," but only one of them allows room for the individual to do the advancement of self and exploration they CHOOSE to do, in most of the cases.

In our current system, only one student out of every generation of students in a given school district ever gets to the point that they are accredited enough to perform the role they have chosen. That statistic is from the Department of Education's own website, cited as though it were something GOOD!

I know of very few people that want to become a cashier for Wal-Mart or K-Mart or Home Depot when they get into the workforce, even though much of them don't have a choice in the matter. That is the way the "civilized" method of organization works.

That is why it is such a tremendous failure, for most of the individuals participating in it.

As I have stated above, when I am finished with the statistics within the CIA World Factbook, I will post them here, most likely as a zip package. Until then, you may either do the same, as the statistics within the factbook are public and updated on the CIA's website once every 2 weeks, or you may wait for my package to be posted, and refute my analysis then.

Watch it, gorgon - it doesn't say so much WHO was involved, only that we do not know the true extent of the story. Most of the people that are involved in asking questions about what happened on 9/11(and I'm NOT talking the "9/11 Truth Movement" here) would probably back off in a heartbeat if the government released something saying that the 19 hijackers somehow found a way into any of the 3 towers that collapsed that day, and planted explosives, themselves.

Most of the people that believe that we don't know everything about 9/11 are just asking for a new investigation - it's only OPINION as to who would have done it - heck, the gov't could come out and say that elite Iraanian squads could have planted explosives in the buildings, under a new investigation or whatnot, and what would the entire 9/11 "Truth Movement" do?

Many of them would probably put their tails between their legs, and just go home - they got their new investigation, and it turned out that something else happened, they found out - they got what they wanted. Not really hard to appease many of these people - just give them their new investigation and that's it.

Of course, you'll have your percentage of extremists that just won't accept anything unless the entire system's fallen apart, but they've always existed.

Yes - when you are taken to an emergency room, you are treated first, but ~70% of all visits to a hospital do not come through the emergency room, and if you have insurance, and go through the emergency room, you are the one who has to haggle out whether or not that visit was covered by your insurance company.

Otherwise, if you are in the ~70% of people that do NOT go through the emergency room, your doctor has to haggle with your insurance company, in most cases, to determine what is deemed as "covered" by the insurance company. It is in this stage that many people die waiting to be treated - sure, the possibility to treat them is there, but if their insurance company won't cover it, they usually can not afford it...and the insurance companies will deny most every treatment they can.

Well, we'll have to see what happens in Massachusetts then - as Capitalism goes, a 100% demand for something most often raises the prices of it. Do you not think that a 100% demand for insurance will cause insurance companies to increase advertising in Massachusetts, just to get a piece of the pie? Do you not think that such advertising will create more of an economic dependency on the insurance companies, and in turn, they will be forced to raise prices? After all - they're certainly not going to lower them. The risks involved in insuring even just single individuals stays the same, regardless of whether they have one person covered, or an entire state.

"If you look at the past, you'll find people suffering from diseases and facing early death at a much higher rate than today" - oh, so you've seen statistics, eh? Please post the data source here, so I can actually review it. As it stands right now, I have subscriptions to 3 major data warehouses and can't seem to find much of anything prior to the late 1800's(and I've looked, and charted death rates from then to now - if you want them in CSV or any other format, I will export them for you).

No - you learned from your history books that "if you look at the past, you'll find people suffering from diseases and facing early death at a much higher rate than today" in quite a broad sweeping generalization that has very little statistical backing...or actual statistics, for that matter. It's pretty well known that, around every 60-80 years, the human race suffers from a bug that infects around one fifth of it's population, and kills off literally millions - the last happening around 1918(The 1918 Influenza Pandemic).

Now, even with the discovery of antibiotics, the human race is learning of "antibiotic resistant" strings of pathogens - unusual? - I think not. Would it really be all that surprising if another bug infected around one fifth of the human race, starting some time within the next 10 years? Not really - and yet it's just another thing that civilization has not actually helped with.

Oh - they're not "denied," per se - just that the process is delayed so long by the bureaucratic process that many people die before they are taken care of. Like I said - ask the craigslist community. I used to write up inquisitive posts, years ago even, on craigslist, and just take note of statistics based on the stories I'd receive about certain insurance providers.

What a benefit to make medical insurance mandatory - essentially that makes the demand for insurance 100% in that state, and even though there really is no such thing as "supply" in the insurance industry, you better believe insurance prices are going to rise there.

Was I speaking of hunter/gatherers? No - I was talking about the invention known as civilization versus many earlier methods of societal organization - hunting/gathering represents only a small portion of that, as most tribes in existence prior to civilization were not involved in hunting or gathering themselves - they traded services and products for other tribes' services and products...i.e. - today we'd have electronic engineers and computer programmers, but they would be organized into tribes, in very much a similar way to the tribe of Masons that has existed for centuries. Nowadays, members of the Masonic tribe often do not practice actual Masonry, but where do you think they originally came from?

I think you forget to recognize one important fact of modern hierarchical "civilization" - much of our society does not actually enjoy life - they simply enjoy the THINGS they receive from it - ask almost anyone, and you'll get the ignorant reaction of "you gotta do what you gotta do." That is quite indicative of the type of society we now live in, where very few people even do jobs that they want to do, and are governed by laws that should not actually be applied across the board in the way they are.

It does not have to exist like that. I'm of the opinion that George W. Bush is right when he says "This is a war for the very fate of civilization itself." It is - civilization is not helping us be happier, or live more productive lives - it's only helping us accumulate more stuff we don't need.

Let's assume that the figures you quote above would be the same in a tribalistic society. Do you not agree that humans are adaptive creatures, that if such a fact were true around the globe, humans would not begin to figure out ways to solve that, as well? Currently, the individuals that are responsible to see to it that humans do not die in the number you quote above are motivated, most often, by the same system most roles in this world are - a belief that money will help them, when in fact, most often money will not(as is evident by insurance companies' using technicalities to deny certain services).

Please note that the civilization we currently subscribe to was just an ill-conceived evolution of the tribal system that existed before it - a time that, of course, was not by any means "utopian," but in which humans most often held roles that they chose, that they knew, and that they cared about.

How many people do you know that are working in places/working on subjects they really want to work with?

(note to self: besides the "Honey Wrestling," Lithuania is looking more and more appealing...)

I do not have faith that a competitive free market is a workable scenario for ALL services and/or products, even. Fact of the matter remains that, for many services offered under a competitive free market, the efficiency is actually quite low.

Yaroslavvb - you mentioned health care...do you realize that, for many URGENT procedures, here in the U.S.(cancer treatment, for one), in many cases there's no real "waiting list," but many patients often die waiting for their insurance companies to negotiate the terms of the treatment with the hospitals?

Cancer treatment is, of course, only an example - many other examples can be found with a simple craigslist ad, as often the most urgent cases do not reach the hospital until all of the details between insurance companies and service providers get resolved.

In my opinion, the insurance system is an incredible fraud. It exists to minimize risk, essentially, which allows many conspicuously expensive lawsuits to occur simply because, when it comes to court, it ends up being one person and his lawyer versus somebody else's insurance company. The risk to be minimized is often not explained, and falls on the "common person" to pay the penalties of, as the insurance companies often do not explain the technicalities of the risks they cover(nor do "common people" expect their language to be convoluted in such a way as to deny them service on a technicality).

It is also another opinion of mine to have noticed that the risk that is often to be minimized by such fraudulent insurance companies is often the risk of loss of stability - a stability which never existed in the first place, and still does not exist, no matter how much insurance a person has.

No - I think that the answer to American health care problems can not be solved by private industry. To me, the entire system that we are upholding, in such a way, makes an excellent analogy to Isaac Asimov's conception of Trantor in his "Foundation" series of books - that the United States is, in essence, a country mostly devoid of manufacturing and production capabilities(except for many insignificant, and essentially useless products like movies and music), and exists only to attempt to serve as a bureaucratic "glue" for what may some day become a global empire.

There's just one catch - the "common person" can not see beyond the forest for the trees, so a "global empire," to them, is quite nonexistent - even if those humans that do not represent the "common person" perceive it any differently. For this reason, a system to minimize risk, to attempt to hold onto "stability" as desperately as it can, can not exist for long.

Please note that "common people" represent 99.x% of the population of this planet. When it comes time that they are truly fed up, they tend to act with swift, and often painful, consequences.

One could generalize and say that they are not "civilized," but I ask you - what benefits have we gained from subscribing to this wonderful invention known as "civilization?"