Now when I'm lazy and don't support some standards in my open source projects, I'm just going to say its for security.

So we're using Bush era torture to justify inaction against fascism? Idk man seems a little weird.

I get voting isn't enough and half the problem is people often limiting their involvement in society to a ballot once every four years, but I'd really like to prevent The Palestinian Chair from being used on anyone deemed an enemy of the state by a man who is talking about deporting 11 million people.

You can lick pure beryllium just fine. Just don't grind it into a powder and snort it.

404 Media is worker owned; you should pay them.

Vertical integation and scale are not inherently monopolistic. Some monopolies formed because they exploited these advantages, but there are competative industries today where several vertically integrated companies compete.

Monopolies in econ 101 are not called inefficient because they extract profit. They're inefficient because they don't respond to market forces. Since they control all supply, they can disregard demand.

I mean if central planning can be redefined to mean decentralized capitalist markets, I've got a book gor you to read too.

My dude, did you even read the Peter Theil article you linked? His entire speil is in no way congruent with your point. He's basically just saying the rent seeking from a gaining a monopoly can make high risk investments worth it. His argument is still grounded in market logic. He leaves out the people who started high risk companies they thought would be monopolies but turned out to be undesireable.

And I don't even agree with his point, neither Google nor Amazon needed massive capital to hit the market, they needed massive amounts of capital to operate at a loss to squash their early competition to create a monopoly; something that can only be done by the horrible market distortions of a governmnet or rampant late-stage capitalist billionaires with equivalent piles of money.

Edit: I would also point out Theil is a believer in autocracy, known widely for literally owning a company whose product is disinformation, and is shilling to prevent the breakup of his monopolies. I wouldn't trust him under any circumstances.

China has some more central planning than the US, but they lean on the same market mechanisms that the US does when it comes to most solutions, ie tax penalties/incentives and subsidies. An excellent example is their smog reduction plans.

Its also great you linked an article about Chinese steel because they do the same stuff there

There isn't a party planner in every steel mill determining output, they let individual companies react to market forces they shape with tax structures and subsidy.

People's republic of Walmart

Good thing Walmart wasn't supplanted by Amazon who delegates most of whats sold to 3rd party sellers. They certainly havn't copied that for their online sales, right?

Out of curiosity, do you think the USSR collapsed because all its own citizens thought the government was doing too good a job?

China introduced private corperations and capital because they increased efficiency and production.

Are you saying every government whose ever tried tons of central planning just messed up or randomly decided to scale it back just for funsies?

Are we just gonna ignore the fact that the whole critique of centralization is that its inefficient, ineffective, and unresponsive to peoples needs?

Like as capitalism is becoming more monopolistic, its becoming increasingly bad at delivering goods that people actually want and just becomes better at supressing and controling them. You know the same critisism thats pointed at autoritarian communism.

I don't think this is the W you think it is.

There are plenty of known religions that share no significant similarity with Sumerian beliefs, ie basically every First Nation/Native American religious system. People have been in the Americas longer than Sumer existed.

And thats just stuff I'm even vaugely familiar with. I'd wager 0% of Subsaharan African religions, aborigional, and probably most Asian religious beliefs don't have any Sumerian influence.

Casablanca. Its a classic.