That's how they destroyed their competition and established a monopoly - predatory pricing.

Yes, they destroyed their competition by dramatically and permanently reducing prices to the consumer. Standard Oil revolutionized the technology of kerosene production and made their supply chain highly efficient. This made a lot of their competitors mad, which is why they got such bad press. But it made lighting incredibly cheap for consumers.

The problem is that there has never been an example of "predatory pricing" where the prices to the consumers go back up to the consumer. It is a nice idea, but practically it never happens.

Lest Comcast become the 21st century version of Standard Oil.

I hope so, because in 1865, kerosene cost fifty-eight cents a gallon; by 1880 it was just 9 cents a gallon.

But somehow I doubt that Comcast TWC NBCU will be able to reduce cable prices as much as Standard Oil reduced kerosene prices. After all, Standard Oil did not depend on local government monopoly franchises to achieve their monopoly, but instead only depended on the market.

[Read Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company]

Any boat traveling the river had to pay or face the cannons of the castle.

Only the Holy Roman Emperor could authorise the collection of tolls along the Rhine - which is just like local governments granting monopoly cable franchises.

[Technically only those requiring tolls outside the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor were known as robber barons (German: Raubritter).]

I wonder if anyone under 50 still uses cable or POTS "phone" service anymore.

I'm under 50, but have a POTS line over cable provider so that when delivery people call us in our apartment we can "buzz them in" the door (would be annoying if they called to our cell phone, but it was on the other side of town or the planet, and we never know which one of us will be home to get the delivery).

Of course no manual shopping any more. It is all Amazon Prime and online grocery delivery.

Indeed, this paper finds that 23% of the variance in educational attainment is due to heritability, and 41% is due to shared family environment. The heritability of education attainment is less than is typically found for cognitive outcomes (such as IQ) for young adults.

Your reasoning baffles me.

My reasoning is that effectively there never was a 91% top tax rate. People who entered that tax bracket in the 50's and 60's largely hid their income from that bracket.

Thus it is silly to compare the 91% top tax law of 50 years ago with putting in a 91% top tax rate today. Today we have a tighter tax code with fewer loopholes and also massive computer power and enhanced federal ability to track bank accounts (thanks to the War on Drugs, among other things). Putting in a 91% top tax rate today would be very, very different than it was in the 1950's.

You might be happy that it would be far more effective in collection today, but I would be concerned that it would be far more damaging to the economy today as it would actually be a 91% tax rate, and not just a joke.

US Federal income tax, $billion:

1960: 62.2
1961: 62.3
1962: 66.1
1963: 69.2
[tax cuts]
1964: 72.2
1965: 74.3
1966: 85.5

"Why is CEO pay so entirely disconnected from the value of said CEOs to society as a whole?"

This study notes that "that CEO wealth has been strongly tied to firm performance since the 1930s, and that relationship strengthened considerably after the mid-1980s."

It is possible that paying a CEO a lot of money to make them wealthy is part of making them be effective CEOs. Rich people command respect and attention from most people. Rich people like other rich people. Being rich may allow for CEOs to make the business connections with other rich CEOs. Being rich may allow for rich CEOs to command respect from those they manage.

Anthropologically, it is similar to the concept of the Big Man. You see this not only with CEOs, but also with gang leaders who end up reaping significant pay as a key element to maintain their status as a leader.

"The 80%-90% top marginal rates in the USA didn't drive out the rich in the past"

Yes, and after the Kennedy tax cuts reduced top marginal rate from 91% to 70%, income tax revenue increased in 1964 and 1965.

So if tax rates are cut, yet revenues went up, how could that be?

Perhaps there was a tremendous amount of tax avoidance by the rich?

1) "The ratio of large-company CEO pay to firm market value is roughly similar to its level in the late-1970s and lower than its pre-1960s levels"

2) "Realized compensation was highly related to firm stock performance. In every size group, firms with CEOs in the top quintile of realized pay were in the top performing quintile; firms with CEOs in the bottom quintile of realized pay were in the worst performing quintile."

3) "CEO turnover levels have increased since the late 1990s, so CEOs can expect to be CEOs for less time than in the past. CEO turnover also has become increasingly related to poor firm stock performance"

4) "Consistent with that, top executive pay policies at over 98% of S&P 500 and Russell 3000 companies received majority shareholder support in the Dodd-Frank mandated Say-On-Pay votes in 2011."

Executive Compensation and Corporate Governance in the U.S.: Perceptions, Facts and Challenges

If you are really worried about your kid's IQâ¦

â¦only mate with someone with a high IQ. That will go a lot farther to raising their IQ than taking away your kid's BPA bottle.

Heritability of IQ is about 50%-80% depending on which study you read.

There is zero evidence that TDCPP when used as a fire retardant leads to cancer in humans. I wouldn't want to drink it, but that goes for a lot of chemicals.

On the other hand, 2500 people die from fire in the US every year, and 13,000 are injured.

If you want to read a good rebuttal on the fluoride study, see here.

They mention that the high-fluoride areas in these countries reached levels as high as 11.5 mg/L, more than 10 times higher than the optimal level used in the U.S. The authors also added that "reports of lead concentrations in the study villages in China were not available", which could be a major confounding factor.

MP4 is a media file container (technically MPEG-4 Part 14, or ISO/IEC 14496-14).

MPEG-4 Part 10 aka ISO/IEC 14496-10 aka AVC aka ITU-T H.264 is a codec that is often found in MP4 containers (except when it is found in MPEG transport streams, such as in Apple HLS).

There are other video codecs that can be in an MP4 container, such as MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-2, or MPEG-1.

By the way, HEVC (aka ISO/IEC 23008-2 MPEG-H Part 2 aka ITU-T H.265) is amazingly efficient and everyone should switch to it immediately :)

I don't want to have to uproot my family, find a new job, and start a new life in another state just because the state I happen to live in wants to push religious beliefs onto my kids through the public school system

Socialist monopoly education is its own reward...