The ironic thing is the money usually goes missing. It gets given to some VIPs brother, who is supposed to give it to VIP, but doesn’t.

The important thing is it not go missing while you are watching it. It can go missing later - just not on your watch.

Cars fixed that. And introduced other problems. But there are always trade offs.

Things have been getting better over time. Good enough for me.

The real source of “economic equality” is a ready supply of jobs for blue collar workers - oil, fishing, tourism, etc.

And the fact poor people leave, and don’t come in the first place.

I’ve heard similar things about Sweden: social welfare to avoid massive deaths by ice.

By the time Matrix came around, punk was out. Not a bad thing. Things come and go.

But sadly the cyber and punk parts got confused: Steampunk and Biopunk, which aren’t very punky.

I’m usually not a genre stickler, but I just got done reading anthology of early 80s cyberpunk punk. It was shocking. Really shocking. It was more about heavy metal and raves than technology.

Then add a telescope or sextant.

This is lots of fun, if you’re into that sort of thing.

But taking it away was worse.

Once “not using it” isn’t an option, government intervention becomes reasonable.

The Selective Service auto-registers people from various data sources.

But this puts me in a weird spot: I've never actually registered. I am registered. But I did not register - which is the requirement.

There are Kafka-esque parts of the US government where this distinction could matter.

Informally, it's put forward as one of the most successful government programs in history: it succeeds at all it's objective, comes in at or under budget, employs few people, and avoids the scope creep that kills other successful programs.

It's only shortcoming: it doesn't actually do anything.

Breaking encryption is illegal. Making encryption is difficult to profit from.

Other than that, what’s the value add?