We are experiencing a lot of late stage capitalism issues.

With the increasingly valid excuse of uncertainty, mega corps ‘must’ make more money now because they don’t know what kind of economic hardships they will have to be prepared to endure in the future.

That risk is built into the cost of goods, and can’t easily be quantified, so a bill capping profit margins isn’t really feasible. And let’s not forget who really crafts legislation these days.

In my state, there is a limit to the number of liquor stores one person/corporation can own. They recently increased it from one to three. This law makes a lot more sense for housing than it does for liquor stores, but unfortunately there are too many billionaires with skin in the game.

A crash in housing prices comes with its own set of problems as well, so whatever changes are necessary, they should be taken slowly so as not to cause another collapse in the housing market. Home ownership is still the primary way for the average American family to develop any meaningful wealth, good or bad as that may be.

Whatever changes need to happen, they must be gradual and sustained over a long period of time. Massive and abrupt changes create instability which will have unanticipated consequences.

We want these mega corps to be like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot. Eventually, monopolistic and racketeering like practices could be diminished while millions are lifted out of poverty. If it is to happen, it will take time.

If I were a betting man, I would say that meaningful change is unlikely. Mega corps will continue to squeeze every penny out of the people, leaving us only enough to continue buying their shit. Bernie may have been able to do it, but sadly that ship has sailed.

Tech firms and lawmakers still want more specifics on how this is all supposed to work. But if things go as planned, the success of the program would be a major win for the White House, which has been eager to display American technological and industrial might.

So, if it goes according to plan and is a success, it would be a major political victory for the White House/Biden in terms of their eagerness to “display American technological and industrial might”.

It’s something they want to do, and which if this goes as planned, they will manage to do it. Hence, in politics, a “win”. This is different from passing normative judgment as to whether or not it’s a good thing: It’s a win in the same sense destroying the Supreme Court was a “win” for the previous White House.

Not at all, your interests don’t always align with mine, and any use of force has downsides. But of course I’ll usually prefer that my country not be at the mercy of someone else’s use of force.

I’ll also say that humanity is flawed, violent, ruled by baser emotions and …… one of the benefits of it being the US over some other possibilities is that we’re all (especially us citizens) free, even encouraged, to speak up where we have concerns. If you have a specific conflict in mind, I’d just like to suggest such things are never simple or straightforward: try to look at the conflicting requirements and goals, as well as history of the conflict

We’ll never be at peace anyway. If we lay down our weapons, our enemies will not do the same. They’ll just conquer us.

I’ll be happy to be at peace with a country who also wants peace. Russia and China do not want peace. Their actions have overwhelmingly proven this. Rolling over to let them do whatever they want in the name of the paradox of tolerance is how we got here in the first place.

The strategy that California is pursuing is providing subsidies to more and more groups of people, giving government a greater say in prices over time. Eventually the goal is to have government pay for everyone’s health care so they can negotiate prices to a fair level. Sounds feasible to me.

Sure, but the point is we’re getting there. Vote blue and we’ll get there faster.