drcube

I can sleep at Burning Man with ear splitting sound camps blaring mere feet from my tent. It's called earplugs, they work well and they're very cheap. I've used them to equal success at home on the Fourth of July, too. It simply isn't a big deal. Let Cletus light firecrackers and work on his car in his own drive way. Who the hell are you to tell him otherwise? Go live in an HOA if you want to tell your neighbors how they can and can't behave on their own property.

I've had a couple employers offer to transfer my personal number to my work-provided cell phone. I said no thanks, and carried two phones around instead. But it was a surprisingly popular option among my coworkers. They'd rather let their boss own their personal, everyday smartphone than carry around two phones.

And yet, kids still drink and smoke. Yes, age restrictions are foolish and invalid, century of public policy notwithstanding. Not every policy that has existed should continue to exist.

That's no different from showing yourself to your theater seat replacing ushers, or throwing your hamburger trash away replacing busboys. Pumping your own gas. Or bagging your own groceries at some grocery stores. This is a very old trend and self-checkout is nothing different.

Why would you expect more people to miss books? Books didn't go anywhere. Anyone who wants them can easily buy them or borrow them.

You know what I miss? Dead tree user manuals that used to come with hardware and software. That's something that has gone the way of the Dodo, unlike most other books. Luckily I can still buy printed manuals from the FSF.

The main answer is "minorities". Look at the American South during the Jim Crow era.

Minorities need protection from majorities in democracies. And not just racial, religious or ethnic minorities. Everyone is a minority in multiple ways.

You have hobbies, beliefs, goals and connections that the majority in your country doesn't have. And they are all at risk under a democracy. This is why we don't have a "pure" democracy. This is why the Founders put many anti-democratic features in the US Constitution.

Every right you enjoy is a point where society drew a line and said "this will not be subject to a vote".

Democracy is not a synonym for "good". Whether something is democratic or not tells you very little about whether it is worth keeping. Most things are not democratic, nor should they be.

If a homeless person was living in your home, even if you invited him there in the first place, you still have every right to kick him out of your home if you decide you don't want him there anymore. Even if it's winter, and he'll die of starvation or freeze out on the streets without your hospitality. It may be a cruel and heartless thing to do, but it's perfectly legal, and should remain so. I believe we should have at least as much autonomy over our own bodies as over our real estate.

Farm living shows it isn't a paradox.

1) Animals on family farms are actually treated pretty well. "Torture" is absolutely not the word for it, though it probably does apply to varieties of factory farming, in effect if not intent.

2) More animals die, in absolute numbers, from plowing fields and harvesting crops than are slaughtered for their meat, mostly because we choose large animals for their meat while small animals like to live in grain fields. The only way to conclude that vegetarianism is more ethical is to discount the lives of smaller, wild animals in comparison to their larger, meat-producing cousins, or else define having habitats and homes destroyed, starving to death, or being snagged on a thresher as more humane treatment than being stunned and having their throat slit after being fed and cared for until adulthood.

In general, living closer to nature shows that death and suffering is unavoidable. Certainly we should strive to minimize suffering, but interruption of a huge source of food for most of the human population is a bad way to go about it.

If a fish were living inside your body, you'd have the right to expel it, too. That has nothing to do with the treatment fish deserve or don't deserve, and everything to do with human bodily autonomy.

What if it prevents one accident today, but causes two accidents tomorrow?

This is a "feature" I actively avoid. Why in the world would anyone want to buy something online without a chance to review their purchase? Other web pages don't even let you leave the page without asking "are you sure?".

Consider the question of why humans evolved to make art in the first place, and you'll probably conclude that it was sexual selection. In other words, artists get laid. Though it may be that artists get respect in general, which improves chances of survival in a social species like ours. So I respectfully disagree with Mr. McCloud's definition.

I'm not trying to weasel out of anything. Of course they're monopolies.

My point is simply that a monopoly isn't some sort of God-emperor who can do anything without consequence. Even monopolies have to bow to customer pressure, they're just less sensitive to it than companies in more competitive industries. Supply and demand applies to monopolies, too, that's why their prices might be higher than they would be in a competitive environment, but their prices aren't infinite. "Going without" is always a choice, even if there are no competitors.