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Huh, it seems other actually is a blanket exception for anything a country decides is a national security issue. But if the US decides to start using that in bad faith, it could end the WTO, which is in no ones interest.

it could just be the thing that finally breaks WTO.

you see, USA is regularly harboring such dissidents from other nations.. so if it goes to that, everyone is under sanctions.

As pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there seems to be a blanket exception on everything a country deems to be national security. However, using this in bad faith could be the start if the end of the WTO.

Huh, it seems other actually is a blanket exception for anything a country decides is a national security issue. But if the US decides to start using that in bad faith, it could end the WTO, which is in no ones interest.

The gp understands the reality that with the exception of Cuba, N. Korea and perhaps a few others, no nation on Earth will risk trade troubles with the US over Snowden. The US is the biggest single sovereign importer of finished goods in the world and therefore holds an economic trump card over every other nation.

One more reason why the US being the planet's trade whore is bad for everyone.

And no, sanctions for harboring Snowden won't violate any trade laws. This is "national security" and every trade agreement you can think of has a great big national security exception. The President can invent a trade sanction against anyone at any time for anything plausibly related to "national security."

Yes, but it's not entirely clear that "monitoring makes that impossible". For example, as long as the government doesn't interfere with a political rally, can you really show harm to 1st Amendment rights by the mere fact that the government databased everyone who attended?

In a word, yes. Here's an excellent legal argument from the Harvard Law Review that details how surveillance influences the exercise of First Amendment rights. From the abstract:

Surveillance is harmful because it can chill the exercise of our civil liberties, especially our intellectual privacy. It ialso gives the watcher power over the watched, creating the the risk of a variety of other harms, such as discrimination, coercion, and the threat of selective enforcement, where critics of the government can be prosecuted or blackmailed for wrongdoing unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance.

The author goes on to explain in detail how the chilling effect applies, citing sources for his claim that knowing you're being watched influences even how you think. The practice of widespread, untargeted surveillance has an insidious effect on freedom, and should therefore be subject to significant legal constraints.

Get the fuck over it.

Right back at you.

... piracy had a "technical meaning" in the seventeenth century: "a pirate was someone who indulged in the unauthorized reprinting of a title recognized to belong to someone else by the formal conventions of the printing and bookselling community." Beyond this technical meaning, piracy "soon came to stand for a wide range of perceived transgressions of civility emanating from print's practitioners."

-- Copyright and Incomplete Historiographies: Of Piracy, Propertization, and Thomas Jefferson

It is possible to reform the patent office and mitigate the incentives to grant poor patents. But, first we must acknowledge that we have made some fundamental mistakes. In my opinion, they most critical mistakes are:

• 1) More patents are not better than fewer patents. Patents are not Innovation. Patents are not Progress. Patents are simply grounds to file a lawsuit against an industry. More Patents are simply more grounds for more lawsuits. An occasional lawsuit might possibly spur innovation. BUT LAWSUITS DO NOT PRODUCE. Lawsuits are parasitic on innovation and production.
• 2) Running the US Patent Office as a cost-recovery operation is a mistake. The US Patent Office is a very small, but critical component of the US economy. It's purpose was "..to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.." (US Constitution Article One, Section 8(8).) But, once the USPTO became completely cost recovery in 1990's, that primary goal became overshadowed by the more pressing goal of securing funding via patent fees. The primary effect of cost recovery is to guarantee continued regulatory capture by the patent industry.
• 3) It is a mistake to organize the US Patent Office to create economic incentives to grant poor patents. Currently most of the revenue of the US Patent Office comes from GRANTING patents. See the USPTO FY 2013 President's Budget page 37: www.uspto.gov/about/stratplan/budget/fy13pbr.pdf "..More than half of all patent fee collections are from issue and maintenance fees, which essentially subsidize examination activities." A recent study by the Richmond School of Law found that the US PTO's actual grant rate is currently running at about 89%. In 2001, it was as high as 99%. See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2225781 page 9. In 2001, it didn't matter if an application was overbroad, obvious, trival, a duplicate, or unreasonable, they ALL got granted. Things haven't improved much since then.
• 4) Scaling up the Patent Office to produce more poor quality patents is a mistake. Currently, we expand the number of patent examiners based on demand. See the USPTO FY 2013 President's Budget, page 60, Gap Assessment: "Meeting this commitment assumes efficiency improvements brought about by reengineering many USPTO management and operational processes (e.g., the patent examination process) and systems, and hiring about 3,000 patent examiners in the two-year period FY 2012 and FY 2013 (including examiners for Three-Track Examination)." Again, the assumption is, more patents are better, even if it means decreasing examination, and increasing the number of untrained examiners. Poor quality is an inevitable result of this patent process.
• 5) It is a mistake to grant all patents that meet minimum standards. A review of the last couple decades changes in the patent approval criteria will reveal that the minimum standard for granting a patent has consistently shifted downwards during the past few decades. We must abandon the idea that any patent that meets minimum standards is granted. Over time, the standard always degrades. Reform is easy. You rank Patent Applications according to an agreed measure of quality, and only grant the top few percent. Over time, the pressure will be to improve the quality of patent applications, instead of degrade them.

Real patent reform is possible. The pressures that currently give rise to bad patents are fairly obvious. We can mitigate those pressures and institute processes that tend to increase patent quality. If we can somehow summon and maintain the political will to admit our mistakes.

Nobody has nothing to hide. The people who say they have nothing to hide aren't very likely to consciously help others hide. They're either lying or delusional about what privacy means.

Well, "dura lex set lex" - should you ever be so unlucky to be fined for downloading say the new Iron Man movie, then I suggest that you find a stronger legal defense than that.

I'm not making a legal defense. I'm saying that the law itself is bad, and strictly speaking, it doesn't pass a strict Constitutional muster. The law as it stands is clearly following a different philosophy than the only justified one (public benefit), so it should not be respected, and if anything, should be actively defied. Believe it or not, the law can be wrong, and often is. Also, your broken latin phrase doesn't apply, since the law is not harsh, but injust. It is often grossly disproportionate to the extent that there have been Constitutional challenges to statutory damages, and the harshness of the law is a major concern, but the bigger flaw is that it's based in medieval economics, and has no place in the modern world. The relevant terms are themselves quite telling. 'Copyright' originated from the right to copy, back when it conveyed a positive right to make copies, because it was part of a censorship regime in which proliferation of unsanctioned knowledge was forbidden. If you are ignorant on the matter, look up the Stationer's Company. 'Royalties' are another big hint that the system is antiquated, although a number of prominent organizations calling themselves 'guilds' doesn't help the matter much.

simply freeloading the result of someone's hard work because you can, is not the answer either. I find it unethical. I don't find it wrong to pay a reasonable price for music, movies or books that interest me. And for those that I don't want to pay the price for, well then I don't download them.

Sweat of the brow arguments are legally invalid in regards to copyright law, per Feist v. Rural. And ethically, sharing information is generally a good thing, with only a few exceptions. I do no oppose supporting the arts, and I likely have done more towards that end than you have.

You've also thrown out the term 'freeloading,' yet another sign of an incompetent copyright proponent. Are you TRYING to fill up your bingo card on that? I would direct you to read Mark Lemly's paper on the subject.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! And wrong!

It's a common fallacy spouted by those who foist surveillance on us. See here, here, or any other of the many hits when you search for privacy "nothing to hide"

It goes right along with the "privacy and security are mutually exclusive" fallacy.

People like you that are trading your long-term liberty and privacy for a current sense of security are going to rue this day eventually. These essential freedoms need constant vigilance. Many of our forefathers died defending them. They're rolling in their graves now seeing how so many are nonchalantly pissing them away.

Here's your homework. Go read the Constitution of the United States of America. No, really. Read it line by line and understand why some say it's the most important and influential document created in the last 1000 years.

None of that is necessary. Just broaden the research exemption, which has been proposed many times.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1124465

http://www.brinkshofer.com/resource_center/85-the-hatch-waxman-act-research-exempt-from-patent-infringement

You seem to have a very romanticized reading of the constitution

Only if you view the Rule of Law as romantic (which many do).

and are ignoring all the precedents set in actual implementation.

Ignoring, no. I understand that many SCOTUS decisions are wrong and ought to be overturned.

I think you are native born citizen of America, who got citizenship without doing any hard work.

Correct, being born requires little work. What happened after that, you don't have information about.

Not like me, I am an immigrant and I studied the constitution in theory and in practice, and I chose America voluntarily.

If you're suggesting you've studied the US Constitution, the State constitutions, the process of the formation of the General Government, and the case law around it more than I have, then you're probably wrong. If you accept that laws which are passed that are contrary to the Constitution are valid, then you've missed the point of a Supreme Law and the bargain that the States made in forming the General Government in your studies. Try reading the Federalist Papers (and the Anti-Federalist papers for the range of perspectives at the time).

I certainly won't argue against the point that many of the legislators and judges are corrupt or that the Rule of Law is largely in effect in the US anymore.

In fact the Obamacare law was uphled by Justice Roberts precisely because the government can pretty much tax anything and compel people to pay for anything for any reason.

No. If you'd like to understand the taxing powers issues and Roberts's decision, I recommend this paper.

Over the last 20 years Knapp's State Theory of Money (also called the chartal theory of currency, well stated by you and still taught in Economics classes nearly everywhere) has been empirically disproven by the continued existence, acceptance and convertibility of the Somali shilling within recognizable free markets. See Luther & White (2011). Somalian currency is not permissible for tax payment anywhere in the world, but you can buy food with it so it is money and has value.

There's a lot to ponder in regards to the reasons chartalism turned out to be wrong - I don't think anybody's proven the why of it - but it's definitely been proven wrong. See here for a somewhat Austrian-slanted but interesting discussion of unbacked fiat currencies with a focus on Somalia.

Before anyone spouts off with the old, "if you have nothing to hide..." line, please read this recent study out of the Harvard Law Review, entitled "The Dangers of Surveillance":

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239412

The jury is still out on that question. You might enjoy this PDF. It might even alter your thinking on your question.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239412

I've read it three times now, over the course of a week or so. Yeah - IMHO, surveillance is worrisome.

  Filter error: That's an awful long string of letters there.
Instead of the PDF, you get the web page, with a download link.

unfortunately for your accusations, O'Reilly IS a technolibertarian, overtly supports outsourcing of critical government functions, is mostly concerned with getting government "out of the way" to allow corporate "innovation," and the responsibility part of government is of little interest to him, as Morozov's piece suggests. Read: O'Reilly's "government as platform": http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596804350/defining_government_2_0_lessons_learned_.html Harvard Law Professor Jennifer Shkabatur's "Transparency With(out) Accountability: Open Government in the United States": http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2028656

Nothing relating to international law is clear cut. In this case, you forgot Article XXI of GATT, "Security Exceptions."

"Nothing in this Agreement shall be construed
(a) to require any contracting party to furnish any information the disclosure of which it considers contrary to its essential security interests; or
(b) to prevent any contracting party from taking any action which it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests
(i) relating to fissionable materials or the materials from which they are derived;
(ii) relating to the traffic in arms, ammunition and implements of war and to such traffic in other goods and materials as is carried on directly or indirectly for the purpose of supplying a military establishment;
(iii) taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations; or
(c) to prevent any contracting party from taking any action in pursuance of its obligations under the United Nations Charter for the maintenance of international peace and security."

The great thing about this article is it's self-judging -- in particular, XXI(b)(ii) can be interpreted to apply to almost anything. Cf. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2079608.

Here's your list: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/f/201207_cfpb_list_consumer-reporting-agencies.pdf

Here's some why: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2222822/

Just imagine what they could do if they controlled the prosecution, defense, and judge of a trial.

The Peculiar Story of United States vs. Miller

No. Being a monopoly is perfectly legal, abusing the power is not. They are not abusing their power, and they are not even close to being a monopoly.

There is much more to antitrust law than monopolies. For example, there are "contracts, combinations..., or conspiracies in restraint of trade or commerce" in violation of the Sherman Act. I did not suggest that WebKit was a monopoly. I suggested that competitors (such as Google and Apple) were colluding to dominate the HTML rendering engine market. That kind of concerted anticompetitive action is precisely what the Sherman Act is aimed at preventing.

I am not the first person to suggest that collaboration between competitors via open source projects can raise antitrust concerns. See, e.g., Stephen M. Maurer, The Penguin and the Cartel: Rethinking Antitrust and Innovation Policy for the Age of Commercial Open Source .

Basically, you have no idea what you are talking about and just throw around words that make you sound clever.

I am an attorney. You may want to rethink that accusation.

Almost all papers from the fields of economics, administration and the like are posted (many even on draft status) on http://ssrn.com/ for free.Even if they are selected and put into a journal after, you will probably will have free acess to them if you just look for then into there.

and in fact government protection of polluters has been a consistent feature in wide-scale environmental problems.

So what you're saying is that if there wasn't any government, the small guys would be able to stop the big guys from shitting all over their air, water or land? Because without something like the already pathetic EPA, I just don't see that happening and think you're full of shit. Also, it's one of those things that just can't magically be undone after your little free market experiment falls flat on its face.

Can you not tell the difference between criticism of government protection of polluters and criticism of the existence of government?

and in fact government protection of polluters has been a consistent feature in wide-scale environmental problems.

So what you're saying is that if there wasn't any government, the small guys would be able to stop the big guys from shitting all over their air, water or land? Because without something like the already pathetic EPA, I just don't see that happening and think you're full of shit. Also, it's one of those things that just can't magically be undone after your little free market experiment falls flat on its face.

Because I just can't resist feeding trolls, a free market is dependent on property rights. In a free market, those whose air, water, or land was polluted could take the polluters to court, and in fact government protection of polluters has been a consistent feature in wide-scale environmental problems.

According to the data in the paper, the increase in illness started about the same time that Gossip Girl premiered. Clearly that TV show made people sick.

My conclusion makes exactly as much scientific sense as theirs. In other words, their "science" is bullshit.

If you go to the source paper you'll notice both authors are from law school. So, that being said, why are they writing about a medical issue and using questionable statistics?

Unintended effects of legislation is an important study area of legal scholarship. However, getting expert help on non-legal subjects like stats and medicine is obviously a good idea.

If you go to the source paper you'll notice both authors are from law school. So, that being said, why are they writing about a medical issue and using questionable statistics?

Is it actually relevant that they are in law right now, or is this ad hominem? Would you have been less inclined to criticize if both had stopped at their Ph.D. Economics instead of continuing into law?

If you go to the source paper you'll notice both authors are from law school. So, that being said, why are they writing about a medical issue and using questionable statistics?

Here is the abstract:

"Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase. "

Along with that look at this:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1924831

It points out that mortgage securitization has failed every time it has been tried.

Read this paper: Startups and Patent Trolls by Prof. Colleen V. Chien, Santa Clara University School of Law.

No, the best approach is to discuss the case with competent legal counsel.

That might not be true in this case. According to this story at Ars Technica

The best strategy for target companies? It may be to ignore the letters, at least for now. “Ignorance, surprisingly, works,” noted Prof. Chien in an e-mail exchange with Ars.

Her study of startups targeted by patent trolls found that when confronted with a patent demand, 22 percent ignored it entirely. Compare that with the 35 percent that decided to fight back and 18 percent that folded. Ignoring the demand was the cheapest option ($3,000 on average) versus fighting in court, which was the most expensive ($870,000 on average).

The "Professor Chien" referred to is a law professor and the author of Startups and Patent Trolls.

Glenn Reynolds just posted his essay Due Process when Everything is a Crime relating in part to the Aaron Swartz case.

Cases like the Aaron Swartz prosecution are a direct result of the huge, intrusive, abusive government we have. Unfortunately most Slashdotters seem to support this government and want to make it even larger and more involved in everyone's daily lives. Will Slashdot learn anything from Aaron Swartz's death? Or are we still just a few more government programs away from living in a utopia -- this time for sure?

There are substantial problems with your linked source. The 'number 1 life expectancy' work by Ohsfeldt makes use of a flawed econometric model to estimate unobserved accident rates in the 1980-1999 period. See: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1466986

Life expectancy after medical intervention is also problematic. The US really only does well in certain types of cancer - the article mentions heart attacks, but doesn't show anything to back it up. And the US only does well, if we assuming the patient is receiving treatment in the first place. Far from guaranteed.

Wow. Bitcoin is not just about easy Internet money transfers. It's a distributed/decentralized system of accounting between N untrusted parties where N can be arbitrarily large. In my view, it is the seedling of the future of financial infrastructure simply because it is more efficient and cost effective. The latter is in view of society as a whole. I see it as becoming to the financial industry what robotics was to manufacturing.

That's a digression though. The big "broken spoke in the wheel" has to do with the power we give banks and the risks for society posed by the defacto standard of bailing them out when they're in trouble. It creates the wrong incentives.

From http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=227162

"Our theoretical analysis shows that an economic underground can come to life if firms have an incentive to go broke for profit at society's expense (to loot) instead of to go for broke (to gamble on success). Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations."

The nearest I can find is this, to appear in the Houston Law Review: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2125515

Particularly these sentences on pp. 3-4:

"In 2012, Google spent $12.5B to buy Motorola Mobility and its patents, and $5.2B in 2011 on R&D. In 2011, Apple spent $2.4B on R&D but contributed more, approximately $2.6B, to a single transaction to buy patents from Nortel."

There are citations on all four figures, including a note that Google says $5.5 billion of the price for Motorola Mobility was for their patents.

The author, Colleen Chien, is actually a law professor at Santa Clara, not at Stanford. According to her CV she did her undergrad at Stanford and had a fellowship at the Stanford law school for eight months in 2006, but she doesn't list any more recent affiliation with Stanford. There is a draft of her article under Stanford's domain: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/ipsc/Paper%20PDF/Chien,%20Colleen%20-%20Paper.pdf

Regardless of whether this is actually the NYT's source, and why--if it is--they affiliated it with Stanford, the numbers seem good (you can find the citations on the draft linked above).

[I tracked this down by googling "site:stanford.edu apple google research and development patent" which brought up the draft I linked as the third result. After verifying that it contained the relevant information it was easy to find the listing on SSRN and to track down Colleen Chien's page at Santa Clara. Now that you know my tricks, you, too, can become a master of google-fu, and not have to rely on me to find sources for you!]

Facebook's Afterlife
Jason Mazzone
University of Illinois College of Law
2012

That's all the TSA is. Since the implementation of gate rape, more people have been driving instead of flying. Since driving is more dangerous than flying, this has lead to an increase in deaths on the road. Specifially, 1,200 deaths per year can be attributed to the TSA, and that was the estimate in 2005. I can only imagine it's gotten worse since then.

What this means, if you add up the numbers is that Janet Napolitano is responsible for more American deaths than Osama Bin Laden ever was. We are literally ruled by terrorists.

Our expectations of privacy from government intrusion aren't set by specific technical processes; they are set by the 4th amendment.

You are saying that the 4A protects us where we have a reasonable expectation of privacy but then that REP is set by the contours of the 4A. That's circular.

Here's a good overview of the way the Supreme Court has expanded and operationalized the test for REP:

The Fourth Amendment protects reasonable expectations of privacy, but the Supreme Court has refused to provide a consistent explanation for what makes an expectation of privacy reasonable. The Court's refusal has disappointed scholars and frustrated students for four decades. This article explains why the Supreme Court cannot provide an answer: No one test can accurately and consistently distinguish less troublesome police practices that do not require Fourth Amendment oversight from more troublesome police practices that are reasonable only if the police have a warrant or compelling circumstances. Instead of endorsing one single approach, the Supreme Court uses four different tests at the same time.

"Read about it here:"

I did. But I think I read it a bit more thoroughly than you did.

The first sentence of paragraph 2 says:

"Although laws and concepts behind copyright and patents are not new, the term intellectual property is relatively recent, dating from the 19th century."

Which is pretty much what I stated earlier, in another post. Further, the reference [2] given at the end of that sentence is this paper, which discusses why "intellectual property" is not actually property.

I don't think ST:TNG prior art is nearly as compelling as this 1994 *working prototype* from Knight Ridder: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1381528/Knight-Ridder-tablet-looks-just-like-iPad-17-YEARS-OLD.html This should really make Apple STFU. I certainly hope it does. Even more, though, I hope we get over this stupid idea of software and process patents. They're a total waste - like $500 billion since 1994: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1930272

The Law of Group Polarization, Cass R. Sunstein, Harvard Law School, December 1999, University of Chicago Law School, John M. Olin Law & Economics Working Paper No. 91
Abstract:

In a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments. For example, people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent global warming. This general phenomenon -- group polarization -- has many implications for economic, political, and legal institutions. It helps to explain extremism, "radicalization," cultural shifts, and the behavior of political parties and religious organizations; it is closely connected to current concerns about the consequences of the Internet; it also helps account for feuds, ethnic antagonism, and tribalism. Group polarization bears on the conduct of government institutions, including juries, legislatures, courts, and regulatory commissions. There are interesting relationships between group polarization and social cascades, both informational and reputational. Normative implications are discussed, with special attention to political and legal institutions.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=199668

Anyone who solves this basic problem of human nature will, for sure, win an instant Nobel Prize, or, in the alternative, be assassinated before the news can spread.

I agree entirely. But how are we to convince the rest of the population who take pride in the fact that they have nothing to hide from the government?

A family member of mine claimed she changed her stance after I gave her a copy of Bruce Schneier's essay, "The Eternal Value of Privacy."

Schneier also recommends Daniel Solove's essay, "'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy."

Someone else posted this very good article earlier today: "Debunking The Dangerous 'If You Have Nothing To Hide, You Have Nothing To Fear.'"

There is some criticism in here too...
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1712765
http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2011-08-16/capital-markets-cooperative-research-hft
http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/hender/HFT-PD.pdf
https://www2.bc.edu/~taillard/Seminar_spring_2012_files/Hirschey.pdf

That should get you started. There are plenty of references to the literature for you to follow if you're so inclined.

Some quotes:
On net, it is probable HFTs have a positive impact on market quality. (Hirschey 2011)
The emergence of HFTs has coincided with a substantial decrease in quoted and realized spreads on exchanges (Castura, Litzenberger, Gorelick, and Dwivedi 2010).
In our interpretation, HFTs are traders that make the market extremely ecient, by incorporating information as soon as it becomes available. (Jovanovic and Menkveld 2011)

Confirmation bias certainly exists throughout the political spectrum. However, it does seem that political partisanship has made it worst in the right end of the political spectrum than the left end. In particular, the more educated self-identified conservatives are, the more they doubt climate change is real. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503&http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503, but the reverse occurs for nuclear power and liberals, or vaccines and liberals, the more educated they are, the more likely they are to agree with the scientific consensus despite the views associated with their end of the political spectrum that run against it. This breaks down pretty badly outside the US though http://www.esds.ac.uk/doc/5357/mrdoc/pdf/5357userguide.pdf. Similarly, there's some evidence that conservatives respond more poorly than liberals to data that undermines their ideological claims (there was a Slashdot article that linked to this but I can't unfortunately find it right now). The upshot is that while there's definite political tribalism and confirmation bias throughout the political spectrum, at present there seem to be cultural issues that are making the problem more extreme among self-identified conservatives, although why is not at all clear.

It is the 'corporation' (technically not a corporation until the 'government' is functional) that creates the government. Nobody else has the resources. It takes lots of money. Where's it gonna come from? Who finances the start up? And thus creates all the rules? The US was set up by aristocrats. Some more pragmatic about individual freedoms than others. But only they were able the borrow the money to pull it off. And today it is corporations that are setting up the regimes in various strategic places around the world.

The government will protect corporate interests because "it" sees those interests as it's own.

  Yes, that's right. If it wants to stay in business the government will accede to corporate demands. The fact is that the government and corporation are a single entity. The government's military enforces the finance rules set up by the corp. In practice, that is its only function. It is an armored car company that moves their money from point A to point B. All other 'benefits' to the rest of the population are purely ancillary. The best balance is achieved through a mathematical formula called the 'riot index'. A ratio of money saved through austerity measures to the resulting property damage. It's no different than any other cost/benefit calculation.

Remember, the government is a service. The ongoing debate seems to be who it serves. Pretty silly actually. The answer is quite obvious. Has been for thousands of years.

To me the terms 'government' and 'corporation' are pretty useless. Two different names for the same thing. Rule by those with the resources to do so.

Perhaps a recipe has been declared a state secret?

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1079364

What a load of bullshit. Everything you said thoroughly refuted here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625

This post is one of those that sounds good on the surface in the "crowd pleaser" sense, but the argument presented is based on assumptions so flawed that it makes for a great example of "not even wrong".
Nearly everything you've written is is trivially refuted when you take an ounce of understanding of macroeconomics. Start here http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625

For those who argue that they have nothing to hide, I suggest they read Daniel J. Solove's "I've Got Nothing to Hide and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy" for a succinct explanation of the issues.

For those with more detail-oriented interests, I suggest picking up a couple of his books on the issue of Privacy. A partial list can be found at his website.

A paper on privacy and why "monitoring is no problem because only criminals have something to hide" is a poor justification. If you compare the benefits of monitoring for the good of society against the usually slight or non-existant damage to an individual from being monitored, society always wins out. However, privacy is not just monitoring. What affect does it have on society when everyone is aware that there are large databases of information about your life and people will use to make decisions about you, but you can't know what is in it, you have no means of making sure it is correct, and you don't know who is using it and for what purposes? There is much more to it than this, and the paper is worth reading for a deeper view on privacy issues.