California has increased the minimum wage. After several steps it will reach $15 in 2022.

The UK's foreign aid "for the poor" is being diverted to consultants in the UK.

The UK pays to discourage coal-fired power plants, then pays to keep them running.

Such a policy contradiction can also be seen in the area of trade secrets: the US adopted the patent system explicitly to discourage trade secrecy, then adopted specific trade secret laws to encourage trade secrecy.

Senator Wyden's speech for a bill to defend encryption from state interference and to narrow the "third party" doctrine that is the excuse for so much state surveillance.

These would be major advances, but what we really need is to prevent systems from keeping records about what people do. We should require digital systems to offer the maximum possible level of anonymity.

GlaxoSmithKline announced it will not patent its new drugs in countries that are the poorest of the poor, such as Afghanistan, Rwanda and Cambodia.

I wonder, though, whether this apparent magnanimity will have any practical effect. I don't think there are generic drug factories in countries such as Afghanistan, Rwanda and Cambodia. If the countries such as India that actually make generic drugs are not covered, if GSK continues using patents to prevent the manufacture of generic drugs in those countries, this gift will turn out to be an empty gesture.

The reason this problem exists is that the World Trade Organization treaty requires India to allow patents on drugs.

The real solution for this is to abolish the World Trade Organization.