When gov't takes away people's rights that is to be expected but when it sets out to benefit the people then it is being forced? Yes that sounds about right because that is how gov't works. When setting up the rules as how to create a ruling body it is important to make it so they serve the people, the best way to do this is if they are forced to. So when gov't forced businesses to protect workers rights, that was gov't working the way it should. It doesn't always do that and that is a flaw of how it is set up, not of gov't in general.

>i consider any position of authority "government".

Fair enough but what you call the institution that built the schools and determines minimum wage?

Even if you consider them to be established by some non gov't entity it is still the authoritarianism gov't that enforces these rules. It is by authority you pay taxes thus funding education. It is by authority employers must obey to work place regulations.

A little authority is needed to keep order, although to much and you have a police state. Moderation is the key.

Mine seems to overlap on top of the comment box on some posts: http://i.imgur.com/0goUt.png

Not really a problem but I thought I'd just report a bug. My resolution is fairly small so that might be the issue.

Firefighters failed when it wasn't supported by the gov't.

Education. You can have parents teaching their children but that creates an endless cycle were those born into poverty can never escape except by incredibly luck.

Minimum wage and work place safety. Before the gov't stepped in during the industrial revolution children were mining in dangerous coal mines for barely enough money to survive.

Even if you offer people this rebate, where would the jobs come from? I'm sure there are jobs in Michigan that pay decent but in some cases you might see a post graduate debating between a 50k year job out of state or 45k year job in state. In the long term, you would take the 50k a year job assuming the cost of living is the same as in state.

Also, what about people abusing the system? How long do they have to stay with the employer before moving out of state to receive the rebate? In all honesty I might view the rebate as a way to find a nice job to add to my resume before looking for a job out of state that I would settle with.

>Every year, the state spends an enormous amount of money on educating students who will leave the state immediately after graduation.

I don't like the wording of this. It feels like you are trying to make it sound like they are wasting the money. Having good public education attracts people to live in area. And for whatever reason, most people do not move, whether it be for family reasons or just preferences a large majority of the earth's population do not move that far from their hometown.

In all honesty I like the idea of trying to attract people to stay in state. But I think it would be better if you spent the money encouraging businesses to set up shop in Michigan, not creating a larger workforce. The latter can lead to the former, but it will take time and it is not a guarantee.

I'm not at all tech savy but isn't this similar to filter bubbles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

r/atheism's strong views can most likely be attributed to group polarization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization

If you take any group of people unified by a cause and put them together their previous views will become much stronger then before they met. It happens with most groups and Reddit is a perfect place to observe this. I don't think asshole atheists join r/atheism, but they become assholes after hearing only one sided arguments were opposing views are discouraged due to how people upvote/downvote.

For the quote I looked it up on google quickly and didn't find any reliable sources. I saw a few things stating it but nothing trustworthy. I assume it may be possible but I can't confirm that.

Somewhat related, here is an interesting article on octopus intelligence:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474...

I'm slightly interested as to what groups have Netherlands genes in them. The article says they found 1 to 4 percent in Eurasian people. That is a pretty large area of the world and would assume that all groups, except those born in Africa, have some neanderthal DNA in them.

Here is a map of the data here if anyone is interested: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Gini_Coef...