Governments will use whatever technology is available to combat their primary enemy - their own population.

Reparations - not just aid - should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and - together with other criminal states - for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.

Adam Smith is an egalitarian, he believed in equality of outcome, not opportunity. He is an enlightenment figure, pre-capitalist. He says, suppose in England, one landowner got most of the land and other people would have nothing to live on. He says it wouldn't matter much, because the rich land owner, by virtue of his sympathy for other people would distribute resources among them, so that by an invisible hand, we would end up with a pretty egalitarian society. That is his conception of human nature.

The internet is something created largely by public funding.

The US is to an unusual extent a business-run society, where short-term concerns of profit and market share displace rational planning.

I'm into eating as little as possible, paying as little attention as possible. I never cook. Never use the stove or anything.

The 'free-floating intellectual' may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.