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Right now circa 10% of the economy GDP is being wasted on IT.
See e.g. IT expenditures as a fraction of GDP.
Imagine if someone else came up with a "new refrigerator" and the efforts on maintaining the "new refrigerator" came to suck up 10% of the economy.
There would be a "slashdot for refrigerators" and a bunch of nerds would be lamenting how they are actually helping the econmy by sucking up 10% of it.

I've given some thought as to why we've become such a litigious society. One of many contributing factors is the increasing wealth disparity. People cannot afford health insurance, are constantly in debt. Suing a company is orders of magnitude more probable than winning the lottery. Desperate people go to desperate measures to support themselves. If we had affordable healthcare, affordable housing and a more educated populace, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in.
Some random stats I dug up, these are not meant to justify anything I've said. I'd be interested to know if Finland, New Zealand, and Turkey have similar litigious issues.

we can accomplish almost all the same goals via robotic exploration

And if you can't, it means you need to build better robots. You need robots for any work on Moon and Mars anyway - there are no cheap laborers there, and every minute outside (esp. on the Moon) is dangerous (radiation, micrometeorites, damage to spacesuits, etc.)

However exciting a manned trip to Mars may be, it is certainly not justified at this point in time. Humans would be needed there only if we are pretty sure that there is sentient life on Mars and we need to establish contact. But a dead planet - which Mars largely is, as it seems - doesn't warrant sending people just to put boots on the ground. If a person chips a piece of rock away he will carry it to a robot, to do further analyses. If you need a more complex analysis, bring rocks back (you have to have this technology first anyway.)

As an example, if you have some money allocated for Mars and you instead want to divert it to Earthly projects, you can start with things as simple as solar panels for everyone. They last a long time and produce a lot of power (I know because I have a PV setup; my heating is now free, with lots of kW*h to spare.) But there are many other things to do too - clean water, for one, or food, or housing, or a 1 Gbps Internet link for everyone :-)

This is in fact *more important* than a trip to Mars. The human civilization is rotting from the inside; the level of education falls, the level of "I want $foo right now, waa!" is rising. Nobody wants to work, and nobody needs to work, as it seems. Ghettos keep growing, gangs keep growing. Those problems are killing us faster than Ebola; Mars is not even in the equation. We can fly to Mars, but how much good will it do us if the spacefarers don't have a planet to return to?

And this is how I know you didn't understand it. You are in agreement with her when you think you are arguing against her: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anarchism.html [aynrandlexicon.com] Her entire point is that the government's duty (the only moral duty) is to prevent initiation of force by anybody against anybody else, and here you are arguing that without government, someone (corporations) will be able to use force against someone (I guess individuals?). She agrees! Laissez faire capitalism is not anarchy. Itn fact it cannot exist without the rule of law, which means government.

The problem is that Rand convolutes physical violence and economic coercion when she talks about the government controlling you, but then turns around and only addresses physical violence when it comes to what we can do to each other. She's changed the definition of "force" mid-argument, and you've fallen for it wholesale.

This is completely wrong. Bill Gates has billions of dollars. In a society where there is rule of law and the government monopolizes physical force, can he make you do whatever he wants? How?

You can't really pick an example from within our controlled economy and have it say anything about a laissez faire system. If all regulation today were dropped, Bill's corporation could stomp out products competing with his, and then they could control how you or anyone else interacts with a computer. Or, if he took a more personal dislike to you, he could purchase every piece of food out from under you when you try to buy it until you submitted. At that point, he would have as much control over you as the government does now (the government can't actually currently make you take whatever arbitrary action it desires)

Industrial revolution era abuse of lower classes? Is this how they were abused: http://images.tdaxp.com/tdaxp_upload/real_income_per_person_in_england_md.jpg [tdaxp.com] You can draw a chart exactly like that for every aspect of the standard of living, life expectancy, child mortality, income, education etc. By today's standards worker conditions during the industrial revolution were bad. But, and this is very important: they were enormously better than the conditions that preceded the industrial revolution. In fact, short of invention of agriculture, industrial revolution improved the life of ordinary people more than anything else in the history of human race. If that is what you call abuse, then your expectations are unrealistic. Note that this huge improvement in people's lives was accomplished entirely by private sector with government in England wisely staying mostly out of the way, something that current governments could learn from.

The awesome thing about your chart is that it is not descriptive at all of the quality of life for the bottom quintile of income earners during the same time period. That graph could look like that even if the poorest people got twice as poor, provided the people at the top made enough more money. Even if everything you say is true, though, that does not actually mean that the workers were not being abused. The point of comparison isn't what life would be like if the technology had not been invented. There is not a single shred of evidence you can produce that having laws to protect workers actually stifles innovation (The united states ranks #40 in patents granted per capita, far lower than socialized countries like Sweden and Norway), so they would have gotten the quality of life improvements the technology provided whether they had to work in inhumane conditions or not. The only point of comparison is how those workers would have done if factory owners were not allowed to walk all over them. What you are claim

Unfortunately these questions can only be answered by Japanese. The statistics come from the UN and do state that it often shows willingness to report the crime. I would state one thing however, the difference between the #1 spot (South Africa) and and #54 (Japan) is quite substantial. The difference isn't quite as much between #9 (US) and #54, but still a marked difference. NB: This data is from the 1998-2000 survey, the 2008 data can be found here, but it's not as easily readable and is not ranked.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita

The USA is the country that has the highest percentage of its own population in jail: 715 per 100,000. New Zealand is in 55th place with 160 per 100,000. Find your country here.

So why doesn't the US government use this fact to mop up all suspected terrorists/undesirables/commies and chuck them all in jail, then re-arrest them as soon as they come out, rinse and repeat?

Possibly because it's utter bollocks?

They eventually filled the jails, build lots more and over filled them too and the trend hasn't stopped, even though we have the largest percentage of people in jail. So what's utter bollocks?

I think you're probably working with outdated information. Neither the Iran-Iraq conflict nor the Gulf War provide useful examples, because by the time of the US operation against Iraq, Iraq's armed forces were substantively less prepared in terms of both training and equipment.

I haven't seen any assessment that claimed Iraq's armed forces were in such a state of disrepair. In fact, during Desert Shield, the concerns seemed to be quite the opposite.

In addition-- they simply caved, showing little resistance and no cohesion behind Hussein. The regime toppled. I don't think that's going to happen in Iran.

While this isn't true across the board, I agree that things would have been considerably rougher for US and allied forces if there wasn't a large amount of defection. But keep in mind that there were forces that stood their ground and, where they did, they were defeated.

And in contrast, Iran is now spending roughly a quarter of it's GDP on military expenditures. A lot of that is indeed the nuclear program-- but a lot more is weapons programs of all sorts. The Revolutionary Guard and the military are spread throughout -- and generally control -- most areas and most of society.

Data that I'm finding seems to indicate closer to 3 - 5% of their GDP:

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:IRQ:IRN&tstart=567993600000&tunit=Y&tlen=21&hl=en&dl=en

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ir-iran/mil-military

It should be noted that, beyond the debatable manpower numbers, Iran is noted for it's arsenal of rockets and missiles. But what seems to really get everyone's attention is "asymmetrical forces" which, again, is not conventional warfare.

This isn't the puppet dictatorship of Hussein, it's an aspiring regional superpower, preparing for a regional confrontation in which it might well be willing, as Avner Cohen points out, to use nuclear force and/or to sacrifice large portions of its population. Could it roll over and die? Sure, maybe. But unlikely. More likely its going to take a lot of blood just to prevent absolute disaster.

Again - you seem to be really eager to downplay the strength of Iraq but sell the strength of Iraq. I don't see why Iraq's regime was any more fundamentally flawed than Iran's or vise versa.

I do agree with your point about the willingness to sacrifice population. We've seen that willingness during the Iran-Iraq war. And we've seen Iran's investment in chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons as well as rocket and missile weaponry as another lesson learned from that conflict.

The US pays vastly more per capita than any other developed country, with generally worse results (measured in life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity rates, teen pregnancies, etc). So the data appears to be on the side of single payer.

We actually have fewer of certain resources per capita: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hos_bed-health-hospital-beds

The cost savings comes from reduction of bureaucracy and overhead, not actual medical expenses. I don't know about you, but I'd rather my health-related money go to R&D and treatment, not some bean-counter trying figure out how to deny me coverage.

Another way to reduce health care costs would be to end certain kinds of marketing. The US is one of the very few countries where direct-to-patient marketing ("ask your doctor") is actually legal.

Its already started!

So the differences between the US and Sweden's murder rate couldn't be because there are 30 times as many people in the US? Or the difference in social programs, level of education, job opportunities and so on? I mean is it just that simple that it's the number of guns? I mean they were number 2 on the UN's development index in 2004 after all.

But lets look at this a little deeper why don't we. The median age in the US is 38 years old and 42 in Sweden. Not much of an age difference but likely a maturity difference there. According to numbers in the CIA world fact book, unemployment in the US is at 9.3 and 8.3 in Sweden. Again, still no big differences but perhaps with the differences in government services, it's a huge difference. There's also compulsory military service in Sweden up until 2010. I'm sure people who serve in the military are a little more disciplined then those who don't. I'm also pretty sure the US is the leading Cocaine consumer and has a relatively high drug use population.

But lets look at gun ownership. Switzerland has a higher gun ownership rate then Sweden does. It's like 46 percent to 31.5 percent. Yet Switzerland has a lower murder rate then Sweden does. Now let's look at England. The UK's gun ownership is a dismal 5.6%. That's quite a bit lower then Sweden's 31%. Yet the UK's murder rate is much higher then Sweden's. In fact, it's about 5 times higher.

I'm not going to get into your gun theory on "spray" weapons outside of saying that it's illegal in the US to own a fully automatic weapon unless you have a valid permit for one and pay a pretty high fee for it. It's not like you can go to walmart and purchase a fully auto mac10. People who get a hold of these things are generally either responsible individuals or criminals violating the laws in the first place.

Anyways, I believe it has more to do with the socio-political realities of the countries then gun ownership and availability.

Take a look at what happened in Australia when guns were banned.

What? Gun nuts produced far more FUD about banning guns? Or where the previous ten years before the ban there were 13 mass killings, and there were NONE in the ten years after?

I find it interesting that one of the local TV station's call letters in Tucson is "KGUN".

Too bad the Fox News crowd and other right wing paranoid freak tea baggers can't figure out that there are far more people killed in the United States by gun toting fools than any "terrorist" could ever hope to match. Since 9/11, there have been tens of thousands killed in gun violence in the United States (over 90,000 firearms related murders when extrapolated over nine and a half years). Maybe these idiots should recognize that gun violence needs far more attention than plane passengers X-rayed crotches. Seriously, there are third world countries that are far safer to live the United States. You are far less likely to die from a gun crime related death in Israel (even from terrorism... even from bombs... even surrounded by enemies) than you are in the United States. Idiots like you are the reason so many people die. You stick your head in the sand whenever the truth about firearms is mentioned.

If you want to protect your country from the government join the army... it is made up of normal citizens who are just as patriotic as anyone else, and who want the best for their country.

How could this possibly work? Farmers ship millions of tons of foodstuffs every year, unless they're spreading an equal volume of human excrement on their fields they'd be farming in pit mines after a few decades.

I never thought about the question until I read this article, and I suspect that many people are in the same boat. (I do work as a biologist and biochemist, but the issue hadn't crossed my mind before, and I don't know if my 'gut feeling' would have been right or not.)

But then I thought a bit more about the question. In the United States, cereal crops (wheat, rice, oats, barley, etc.) yield an average of about 6000 kg of grain per hectare each year. That's just 600 grams (a little over a pound) per square meter of cultivated land. Assuming soil density falling somewhere between 1 and 1.5 grams per cubic centimeter, that works out to shaving off between 0.4 and 0.6 millimeters - about two hundredths of an inch - each year. And that doesn't account for the water content of the crop, which we all know is added by rain or irrigation, and shouldn't count against our soil use.

In other words, the amount we take off, even if it came entirely from the soil, would only consume a couple of inches every century. On geological timescales that's a fair bit, but it's totally imperceptible over one or two growing seasons, and only meaningful to a farmer if he stays in one place for several generations. Even then, our hypothetical science-minded farmer who wonders why his field doesn't sink away might suspect that the soil is being topped up by deposition of dust from the air, or the continuous slow wear and erosion of the bedrock beneath his field.

Incidentally, the above calculation is something that science students really need to know (or be taught) to do: basic back-of-the-envelope order-of-magnitude calculations for testing the basic reasonableness of hypotheses.

I can only suspect it is because our oil reserves are from unconventional sources like the tar sands, and we haven't actually been producing a lot. According to NationMaster we are second in terms of oil reserves, but seventh in terms of production; behind such countries as the US and Mexico.

You, sir, are a fucking idiot. A fucking idiot who can spew a lot of academic-sounding verbiage, but a fucking idiot.

I don't need to have hours of nitpicking discussion about what is and isn't a murder, followed by your ridiculous home break-in axe murderer bullshit scenario, to realize that a situation with guns involved more often escalates to death, than one with knives or sticks and stones, and that gunshot wounds more often, by their nature, create fatal injuries.

To wit:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

Yes, you can question the "reliability" of the underlying methods to hell freezes over. But that chart doesn't include the 40,000 plus deaths per year, that occur because your so called "freedom" results in children shooting other children in the US.

Think of it this way. If I had a gun, and you were standing in front of me, I'd be sorely tempted to use it to put you out of my misery-- that's my freedom. Are you saying you'd like someone to "restrict" it?

Yeah right. You're logically inconsistent blather.

Que? How many people in first-world countries have children at 22-25 now? Most people aren't even married until in their 30s. And if they have any sense, they'll leave it even later.

Have you checked the statistics? The average age of first child birth for women in the United States is 24.5. That's the average, so assuming a normal distribution, about half the people in the US are having kids before they're 25.

Marriage stats are about on par, with 25 being the median age for women and 27 for men. I'm 30, and I'm the only one in my group of friends that remains unmarried, which is why I thought your numbers looked suspect. After all, the group I hang with is a bunch of people with M.S. and Ph.D.'s, so if anything they're the ones you'd expect to be getting married at an older age.

Yeah, you are totally right, it is not a cliché, it is a fact : http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

The Guardian says you Euro guys are fatter than those American guys. Got any other retarded copypasta you wanna spew?

Yeah, you are totally right, it is not a cliché, it is a fact : http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

According to this, the Internet is used by 22% of Venezuelans, and 49% of Spaniards.

Well, given that Canada has twice the violent crime rate of the United States in all major categories except murder...

• ASSAULT: Canada 23 per 1000, US 12 per 1000
• RAPE: Canada 0.73 per 1000, US 0.30 per 1000
• MURDER: Canada 0.015 per 1000, US 0.043 per 1000

I'd say... no. Canadian police aren't very good at stopping crime, nor particularly well-behaved (especially the Quebec Provincial Police, who have a pretty bad human rights record). Plus there's the matter of Constable Adam Josephs, a.k.a. "Officer Bubbles", a Toronto paragon of virtue who will sue you for a million dollars if you dare say a single word against him.

The bit about Canadians being less violent than Americans is pure myth.

Well, given that Canada has twice the violent crime rate of the United States in all major categories except murder...

• ASSAULT: Canada 23 per 1000, US 12 per 1000
• RAPE: Canada 0.73 per 1000, US 0.30 per 1000
• MURDER: Canada 0.015 per 1000, US 0.043 per 1000

I'd say... no. Canadian police aren't very good at stopping crime, nor particularly well-behaved (especially the Quebec Provincial Police, who have a pretty bad human rights record). Plus there's the matter of Constable Adam Josephs, a.k.a. "Officer Bubbles", a Toronto paragon of virtue who will sue you for a million dollars if you dare say a single word against him.

The bit about Canadians being less violent than Americans is pure myth.

Well, given that Canada has twice the violent crime rate of the United States in all major categories except murder...

• ASSAULT: Canada 23 per 1000, US 12 per 1000
• RAPE: Canada 0.73 per 1000, US 0.30 per 1000
• MURDER: Canada 0.015 per 1000, US 0.043 per 1000

I'd say... no. Canadian police aren't very good at stopping crime, nor particularly well-behaved (especially the Quebec Provincial Police, who have a pretty bad human rights record). Plus there's the matter of Constable Adam Josephs, a.k.a. "Officer Bubbles", a Toronto paragon of virtue who will sue you for a million dollars if you dare say a single word against him.

The bit about Canadians being less violent than Americans is pure myth.

Just for comparison http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_deb_ext_percap-economy-debt-external-per-capita

It does seem Ireland is in a bit of a bind. It *is* the case, however that Irish people massively benefitted from growing this debt. The sad fact of the matter is that most countries are in worse shape than the U.S. Yes, even post-Obama (the US could probably get away with financing it's social security obligations 4-5 years on borrowed money, even if there'd be hell to pay after those years). Of course, the US cannot borrow as much per-capita as other countries, due to being the main lender of last resort for other countries. One might think this was appreciated, but far from it. The sad fact is that if you bankroll other countries, you might think they'd be grateful. That doesn't seem to be true, you'll be universally despised. Why ? Because first, giving all this money gives you power, making you a scapegoat for all sorts of problems ("why can't you just give us more money"), and ... of course, one day you'll stop (or being forced to stop) doing that, meaning that "due to America" massive cuts are necessary. This has happened in many countries.

Of course, historically, all bankers have always been near-universally despised. From the Persian empire, over Venice in the middle ages, to today. Also true, of course, is that bankers were the source of the wealth these countries had during their relative peaks, or at least you could say they were absolutely necessary.

Look at Japan! Sure, they have probably the most strict gun control laws of any place -- even police rarely carry guns. But does that stop murders and mayhem? Nope! It just making the killings more gruesome and painful.

The statistics seem to disagree with that statement:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita (Japan is 3rd from the bottom)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_murder_rate (4th from the bottom)

That's what you believe. The fact is that gun control prevents gun crime:

http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gunaus.htm
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-crime-murders-with-firearms

I did some research and, well, there's a dimension to this I had not considered:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tra_air_tra_pas_car-transportation-air-transport-passengers-carried

Basically the US moves about 5 times as many people through planes as the next most active country. Assuming that any system could scale up perfectly, we should still expect 5 times as many terrorist attacks at the next country. All I know is I'm glad I'm not flying this thanksgiving.

Thanks. The US expenditures is a joke. What a waste.

Compare http://www.statemaster.com/graph/mil_cos_of_the_mil_percap-military-cost-per-capita

with

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig_percap-expenditures-dollar-figure-per-capita

where you can the at the Nationmaster list is topped by Israel, understandably. That would rank them as the 25th state in expendures in the US.

Norway, the 3rd on the list spends $883 per person and year. That would give them rank 43rd in the US.

The formerly glorious United Kingdom would be second last among the US states...

Why not make the economy stronger? China will win this race within a one hundred year, but not because of a stronger army...

Norway and Canada have roughly the same population density yet Norway has nearly double the number of mobile phones per capita that Canada does.

As a Canadian living in Norway, I can definitively say it's because the laws are stricter here regarding price/competition, and the requirements of infrastructure are much greater on the carriers.

God, I love it when irrational people jump straight to Godwin's law *. I have to ask are you really so simple that you equate an orginization which is a little too conservative in my taste with Hitler? Do you think everyone with a different point of view is evil? Seems a little sad to me. May I suggest reading the first artical for a European example of why this is true.

Also depending on the type of crime some EU contries don't look all that hot...
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rob_percap-crime-robberies-per-capita

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

You'd be surprised how many people are "closet hams"--I just got my license this summer and when I mention it in conversation I am frequently surprised when my acquaintance fires back with their own call sign. You probably know a few people who have licenses or were licensed in the past, even if they never talk about it. Granted, only a fraction of licensees maintain functional HF stations, but they all know the technology exists and where to find it.

There are 694,429 licensed hams in the U.S., 2.26% of the population of 307 million, and that percentage has been steady over the last decade of population growth. Worldwide, there are 2.77 million licensees, or 0.04% of the world population of 6.7 billion, but ham radio is getting very popular in developing nations like China and Indonesia and not every operator has a license.

It's 82% actually, but I don't see how that invalidates GP's point.

How many computers total are in the US compared to other countries of the world?

I don't know how accurate this is, but it is claimed to be based on numbers collected by the world bank, if so it should be a reliant source.

I'm kind of suspicious about the numbers from Scandinavia though. In my experience most homes in these countries have at least one personal computer (more than one if old ABC, Commodores, Ataris and other computers from the 80s count) and almost all workplaces have more then one PC per employee (even in the lunchroom of the garbage collectors), there are also lots of public computers in public libraries, senior clubs, youth clubs et.c.. So I would have guessed there where a lot more then one PC per capita. Perhaps they mean PCs that is switched on per capita ;-)

The US does have fewer criminals to fill up the database with: US crime rates are substantially lower (and decreasing) than, say, in Europe (where they are increasing). And a large part of US crimes is concentrated in illegal alien populations or inner-city (gang?) related.

That comes across like a bunch of ignorant stereotyping. Let's take a look at actual numbers. The US has the 24th highest murder rate in this survey at 0.042802 per 1000 people. Aside from Poland, the only European nations with a higher rate are former Soviet Bloc Countries. Wikipedia has a more complete table showing a very similar picture.

Countries do not collect stats on other crimes in a manner similar enough to develop an international comparison.

As for your comment on illegal alien populations being responsible for "a large part of US crimes" I haven't seen any statistics on that and I doubt anyone else has either. There is no good way to compile such statistics. It does however make sense. If someone can not ask law enforcement to help settle disputes they will take the law into their own hands. The person they retaliate against will retaliate back. The simple solution to that is to open up the gates to legal immigration. Black markets work the same way. It is why the war on drugs drives up the crime rate.

In addition to having the largest number of prisoners by headcount, the US has a comfortable lead in the largest percentage of its population (715/100K) in prison. Russia and Belarus (core of the former Soviet Union) are the closest competitors (554-585/100K), followed by an assortment of various small "third world" countries, other former Soviet-bloc states, South Africa, and Singapore. Not great company. The first western-European country – the societies that the US is supposedly closest to in culture and values – on the list is Spain at #61, with 144/100K; most of western Europe is under 100/100K. Canada is at 116/100K. Granted, I wouldn't want to live in some of the countries toward the bottom of the list either; something tells me that they're doing something wrong, too. But a country that has more people in prison than it has in New Mexico? Something's clearly wrong there.

Stats: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

Err, I linked the same statistic twice. Here's the other one:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

While the extra tax revenue doesn't hurt, that isn't where most of the money is gained on this.

Consider the ridiculously huge number of people in prison for a harmless crime, and the fact that many of them get longer sentences than rapists. Now figure out what it costs to incarcerate them at taxpayer expense. (Hint: we have 106% of Canada's crime per capita, but 616% of their prison population per capita.*) Now calculate the lost labor from having them rot in prison instead of doing something productive. Now add in the cost of paying all of those cops who do pretty much nothing but go after potheads. Now add in the huge amount of Mexican border security needed vs. drug gangs with the power of small armies, which get all their money from... yep, pot. This goes way, way, into the billions. Not throwing all that money away would make a huge difference. Any tax revenue gained from selling it legally is just a bonus.

* - Here's my sources on those 2 statistics I quoted:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita

As for the dealers selling it tax free? The dealers are out of the picture. They can't keep up with the prices a large-scale commercial operation is going to be able to sell it at. When's the last time you purchased alcohol from a dealer on the street, vs. one of the 97 gazillion liquor stores? If you're most people, the answer is "never." Now sure, some set up their own mini-distillery (or get some from a neighbor who does), and they obviously aren't paying tax on it, but that's such a ridiculously small minority that it's statistically insignificant - and even most of the ones who do that don't use it as their sole supply due to the sheer impracticality of producing large amounts of beer with something you made in your basement.

Last but not least, in additional to the many billions we wouldn't be throwing away, we'd be some lives by weakening the gangs up here, and a LOT of lives in Mexico, where the drug lords pretty much own the country thanks to the virtually limitless income they're making from US pot users.

I don't smoke pot... it simply doesn't appeal to me. However, it's actually *less* harmful than alcohol, in that it's quite possible to OD on alcohol (although you generally have to be pretty stupid to manage that), while it's physically impossible to OD on pot. As for the short-term impairment of being under the influence of either, I don't really see one being significantly worse than the other. The only issue I'd have is people driving while high, and we already have DUI laws to cover that. Just add an "or pot" everywhere those laws mention alcohol.

While the extra tax revenue doesn't hurt, that isn't where most of the money is gained on this.

Consider the ridiculously huge number of people in prison for a harmless crime, and the fact that many of them get longer sentences than rapists. Now figure out what it costs to incarcerate them at taxpayer expense. (Hint: we have 106% of Canada's crime per capita, but 616% of their prison population per capita.*) Now calculate the lost labor from having them rot in prison instead of doing something productive. Now add in the cost of paying all of those cops who do pretty much nothing but go after potheads. Now add in the huge amount of Mexican border security needed vs. drug gangs with the power of small armies, which get all their money from... yep, pot. This goes way, way, into the billions. Not throwing all that money away would make a huge difference. Any tax revenue gained from selling it legally is just a bonus.

* - Here's my sources on those 2 statistics I quoted:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita

As for the dealers selling it tax free? The dealers are out of the picture. They can't keep up with the prices a large-scale commercial operation is going to be able to sell it at. When's the last time you purchased alcohol from a dealer on the street, vs. one of the 97 gazillion liquor stores? If you're most people, the answer is "never." Now sure, some set up their own mini-distillery (or get some from a neighbor who does), and they obviously aren't paying tax on it, but that's such a ridiculously small minority that it's statistically insignificant - and even most of the ones who do that don't use it as their sole supply due to the sheer impracticality of producing large amounts of beer with something you made in your basement.

Last but not least, in additional to the many billions we wouldn't be throwing away, we'd be some lives by weakening the gangs up here, and a LOT of lives in Mexico, where the drug lords pretty much own the country thanks to the virtually limitless income they're making from US pot users.

I don't smoke pot... it simply doesn't appeal to me. However, it's actually *less* harmful than alcohol, in that it's quite possible to OD on alcohol (although you generally have to be pretty stupid to manage that), while it's physically impossible to OD on pot. As for the short-term impairment of being under the influence of either, I don't really see one being significantly worse than the other. The only issue I'd have is people driving while high, and we already have DUI laws to cover that. Just add an "or pot" everywhere those laws mention alcohol.

There are a total of 370,993 burglaries and 106,484 assaults per year in France. (Source http://www.nationmaster.com/red/country/fr-france/cri-crime&all=1)

So "only" 1308 people are robbed per day. (Assuming all assaults are robberies).

Things are not as bad as you seem to think.

I'll try and answer but bear in mind this is the perspective of a single European...

While you are mystified about the European attitude towards guns, many (most?) Europeans are equally mystified by the American attraction towards guns.

Guns are rarely encountered in everyday life over here and many people would become concerned if that changed. For us, the lack of guns reduces the amount of gun violence (check the per capita. The US isn't the top, but it's just below places like South Africa, Colombia, Zimbabwe and others (source: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir_percap-crime-murders-firearms-per-capita)).

In the UK, when gun crime does happen, the police armed response units appear to adopt a tactic of shoot to kill. The last two instances where there was a stand-off, the gun wielding individual ended up dead. Whether this is a deterrent or not is arguable, but gun crime is pretty rare (although regrettably, knife crime is on the increase because more young people are carrying knives).

Hope that makes sense.

I think you had a typo.

You were trying to write HIGHER crime rate than the US right?

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita

Before you complain about the weak nationmaster source you can go to the original sources but honestly I don't care enough to look those up.

So your choices are:
a) accept you are wrong
b) refused to accept you are wrong and try to prove it only to discover you are wrong and the original sources confirm it
c) live in denial.

the violent crime rate in 2003 was 475.8 per 100,000 in the U.S. and 6,650 per 100,000 in England and Wales

The statistics are recorded differently by different nations. What exactly is considered "violent crime"? How is the figure derived? The UK report points out that "The majority of incidents categorised as violent crime involve no significant physical injury to the victim". In fact, "harassment" accounts for 15% of that figure, and an "assault" that resulted in no injury at all accounts for another 37% of the incidents.

For comparison of national statistics, it is better to use a specific metric, or a specific rate for a crime like murder, where the definition is very simple. Per-capita homicide:

United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
United Kingdom: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people

Most people on Slashdot are technically competent enough to Google things for themselves. As you're apparently incapable of using Google though, enjoy:

Happiness:
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/global/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index

Crime:
(rapes) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
(murders) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
(firearms murder and accidental) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
(burglaries) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

Health:
(life expectancy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
(cancer deaths) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer
(obesity) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

As you can see, there are some stats where the US is equal to or above a handful of European nations, but in pretty much every case the US falls below the European average, and in some cases, is below that of all European nations.

Most people on Slashdot are technically competent enough to Google things for themselves. As you're apparently incapable of using Google though, enjoy:

Happiness:
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/global/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index

Crime:
(rapes) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
(murders) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
(firearms murder and accidental) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
(burglaries) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

Health:
(life expectancy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
(cancer deaths) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer
(obesity) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

As you can see, there are some stats where the US is equal to or above a handful of European nations, but in pretty much every case the US falls below the European average, and in some cases, is below that of all European nations.

Most people on Slashdot are technically competent enough to Google things for themselves. As you're apparently incapable of using Google though, enjoy:

Happiness:
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/global/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index

Crime:
(rapes) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
(murders) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
(firearms murder and accidental) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
(burglaries) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

Health:
(life expectancy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
(cancer deaths) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer
(obesity) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

As you can see, there are some stats where the US is equal to or above a handful of European nations, but in pretty much every case the US falls below the European average, and in some cases, is below that of all European nations.

Most people on Slashdot are technically competent enough to Google things for themselves. As you're apparently incapable of using Google though, enjoy:

Happiness:
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/global/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index

Crime:
(rapes) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
(murders) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
(firearms murder and accidental) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
(burglaries) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

Health:
(life expectancy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
(cancer deaths) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer
(obesity) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

As you can see, there are some stats where the US is equal to or above a handful of European nations, but in pretty much every case the US falls below the European average, and in some cases, is below that of all European nations.

Most people on Slashdot are technically competent enough to Google things for themselves. As you're apparently incapable of using Google though, enjoy:

Happiness:
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/global/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index

Crime:
(rapes) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
(murders) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
(firearms murder and accidental) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
(burglaries) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

Health:
(life expectancy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
(cancer deaths) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer
(obesity) http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

As you can see, there are some stats where the US is equal to or above a handful of European nations, but in pretty much every case the US falls below the European average, and in some cases, is below that of all European nations.

This is false, according to nationmaster.com. In fact, the murder rate in the States is 3 times that of the UK.

Could you clarify where you got that statistic from? According to my research, the relative murder rates* are:

US: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
UK: 0.014063 per 1,000 people

i.e. you are more than 3 times as likely to be murdered in the US.

*Source http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

Which, of course, completely explains why the violent crime rate is lower in the UK, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Canada, France, Germany, and a whole host of other countries where firearms are strictly regulated.

State your reference, please. I've often seen similar statements that try to correlate firearm ownership to violence without references. As far as I can tell US crime has been falling here the UK has a higher amount of total crimes per capita than the US here and the Australia ban caused an increase in crime here.

I'm sure you can find articles that show the reverse. Crime statistics fluctuate and there is no clear correlation to gun control laws.

It is true that South Africa has a high homocide rate (near 40 per 100000, with the world average at about 7 per 100000), but it is not quite the highest in the world, which is El Salvador according to that Wikipedia page. Even Nationmaster thinks they're only second.