In the 50's and 60's? Most of them.

No, see, that's the problem. You, as a voter, are presented with a choice. Do you vote for the candidate you actually want, knowing full well that the American system, as currently implemented, is specifically geared against third-party candidates? Or do you game the system, and aim for the best realistic outcome?

It's a democracy.

Given that the American government setup was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to avoid 'too much democracy,' I'd have to disagree with you, champ.

Nonsense. For example, if you voted for Ross Perot, you're directly responsible for the Republicans losing the White House. If you voted for Nader, you're directly responsible for the Democrats losing the White House.

Either go back to your government as intended; that is to say, without political parties, or accept the fact that there are, in fact, political parties, and change your government setup to work with that.

Microsoft isn't static. Take their utter dismissal, followed by 180 degree turn around and headlong rush into TCP/IP and the Internet. They're surprisingly agile, for such a large company. If they weren't, they'd have been eaten long ago.

The only reason Microsoft still has it's 'monopoly' is it's ability to change and refocus, thus preventing it's competition from disrupting them.

Were Microsoft static, it would have been supplanted long long ago. When is the last time, for example, you saw a piece of software which advertised, as a system requirement, "IBM PC or 100 percent compatible?"

this sounds great on paper, but in the real world youtube content creators are subject to trolls, prudes, angry bigots, spam, false DMCA notices, people with a lack of humor, and market saturation. youtube starts as profitable but over time the benefits stop rolling in and some people completely go to a less public venue when ironically trying to reach out to new fans, simply because a less public venue will have fewer of these problems at first. online life is not that different from real life, but was often promoted as being different.

market saturation is like this, someone collects fans who watch their content, perhaps multiple times. this nets them money, but then people learn people are making money making youtube channels and then there are millions of channels then billions because of this the consumer of this content doesn't grow as fast as the channel production supply grows. so eventually everyone has a youtube channel and all the viewers wind up spending so long trying to see the best videos that they get sick of the time sink that it is and thus revenues drop.

Progress is what allows one to maintain a monopoly. History has demonstrated that static monopolies die quick, natural deaths.

"Heads, I win, tails, you lose" isn't a new scenario.

The militaries of the world take people who are 'just' farmers all the time. Most equipment is made to be operated by and maintained by average guys of average intelligence. (Depending on the level of mechanization of the farm, the proverbial farmer may be overqualified to operate some machinery)

He's one cowboy away from a Brokeback Mountain.

How do you lose the advantage of the skin when it is cut prior to cooking? I'm seriously at a loss here.

(As far as your other observations, I don't know. Seems odd to me that you couldn't find something considerably better than TH for considerably less than $100. I suspect part of the problem is not knowing the area and which non-chain restaurants to hit. Chains are almost invariably aimed at the lowest common denominator)

As a monopolist you don't -want- any innovation.

Why do you say this?

There's a helluva lot of territory between Tim Horton's and $100 meals.

And what's wrong with fries fried with skin on? Most of the nutritive value of a potato is in the skin.

"Works for me. Close ticket"

That's not how science works.