One could argue that reduced maintenance costs are a value from the cloud providers. E.g. when my AWS VM dies I can get a new one back in <10m (faster with automation). When my self-hosted server dies I need to have planned for that with a warm spare and someone needs to physically be connecting new hardware. AWS allows you to pay more but have a predictable constant cost.

But I think that you're right that it's lack of vision. Everyone's following the VC-backed company path, where it doesn't make sense to save money for next year because we'll be selling some entirely new company then.

To be fair to New Hampsire: it was the libertarians across the USA who wanted to take over the state (then had to scale back their plans and took over one tiny town). The state government and the majority of state residents were not enthused by the Free State Project. However, the state's politically-conservative roots meant that they didn't have the cultural or administrative tools to stop that train-wreck.

If that settles the tariff negotiations

I agree that if there was a magic "fix this shit for good" button but you had to crawl around and call Trump "sir" a lot that would be worth it. But what's actually going to happen is that he'll hear a loud noise and forget who any of these people are and he'll be like, "two million percent tariff on the uk!!"

We're talking here about garbage code that we don't want. If the choice is "let me commit bad code that causes problems or else I will quit using computers"... is this a dilemma for you?

The website only works with Chrome

OK, cool. That definitely helps things.

I think where we're disagreeing is that I think in a capitalist society the promise of money will inevitably corrupt the government (because it's made of people). Maybe it can be avoided if the government performs additional regulatory action to stop anyone from getting too wealthy, but that sounds like beyond the limits that you want to set for government.

Without force

Whoah, whoah. Why'd you rule that out?

Your business plan: quality goods at reasonable prices. My business plan: hire some goons to kill you and take your stuff.

Historically, this has a lot of precedence.

I don't mean to suggest that there's nothing to be done or that having society provide you with community is the solution. Just that it used to be that way and we're in a state of transition.

No one is depriving these people from joining the same organizations today

Right. But I'm saying that previously you were raised into an organization. You pretty much had no choice but to be a member of whatever group your family had been a member of. Now we've got a more free-form society and finding a group takes effort. And because you're not being forced to stay in by societal expectations, it even takes effort to stay with the group.

I think it was. When I think of Wikipedia, I'm thinking about how it was in ~2005 (20 years ago) and it was a pretty solid encyclopedia then.

There were (and still are) some articles that are very thin. And some that have errors. Both of these things are true of non-wiki encyclopedias. When I've seen a poorly-written article, it's usually on a subject that a standard encyclopedia wouldn't even cover. So I feel like that was still a giant win for Wikipedia.

I have no idea how well it works in reality, but I can imagine the Lifetime Pass being a good business model for them: only the most enthusiastic user will pay for 3 years up front (lifetime currently costs 3x the yearly). So when they get a Lifetime pass they're getting 3 years paid up front and an evangelist who will probably tell their friends about Plex. If that Lifetime subscriber gets even one person to sign up for a yearly sub who otherwise wouldn't have, then Plex came out ahead.

• talks loudly in an open office when he take phone calls

That one's my least favorite. Might as well just grab me by the shoulders and shout your conversation in my face for how little work I'm getting done.

When Democrats are in power, the Republicans can stall things because they only have a slim majority and the extreme measures that they'd need to take are unpalatable to 5-30 of the most regressive Democrats. So their majority doesn't count for a lot.

Overall, I think this is partially just that Americans are pretty regressive (possibly because of all the propaganda, possibly because of our poor education). And partially the successful efforts by Republicans to control local government, which allows them to do things like gerrymander federal districts.