I think the key to avoiding depression is to have a good idea from the start, not something that relies on advertising to make money

You're confusing "likelihood of success" with "likelihood of continued success". There were a lot of competitors to be eBay, Netflix or Amazon. Most startups will fail. Those that eventually succeed will often look like they are going to fail. Devoting 1/5 of your productive life to something that fails is pretty depressing.

How can homomorphic encryption ever work on integer math? It's easy to acquire "1" (X/X) and therefore "N" (1 + 1 + 1 ... etc).

You said, and what you replied to quoted, that the government should take the medallions back and pay them the $0 that the medallions initially cost in compensation. The apparent principle is that the government can undo a transaction (with it) for the purcahse price.

Since most land west of the Mississippi was given away for free, your idea seems to imply that the government (using said principle) could repossess it.

What makes you think I carry it with me all day?

Also you left out camera, but I dispute internet traffic monitor.

They should buy them back for the price they sold them for: $0

So the US government should be able to repossess the vast majority of land in the midwest (and a good portion elsewhere?)

That's not true at all. The law isn't "no monopolies" or "no cartels". It's about fermenting competition. And two companies can compete with each other while still locking out third parties from competing with them.

In preamble, you don't know what my response will be. This is because you lost the point.

I specifically mentioned insurance when the taxi is on the way to pick up the fare. At this point, there is no cost to the customer if a collision occurs.But there is a huge cost to society. Because driving to pick up a fare is a commercial activity, and most Uber drivers do not have commercial insurance. Therefore, they are, at that time, an uninsured driver. And society, will pick up that cost. Either through some government program, or through the "uninsured motorist" portion of whomever the Uber driver collides with.raising the costs (and therefore rates) of all car insurance.

As a rule, when your business model involves forcing other people to pay more money ten they where before for no additional benefit (ala a protection racket) we agree it's probably a bad thing.

In the law, the difference is whether it's a job or not. This is spelled out to a large degree by the IRS. Because of the tax deductability of business expenses, they had to solve that fuzzy line.

It has to do with whether you are trying to make a profit.

Making money for 3 out of 5 years is considered proof. But they consider ow much money is being made, esp. as a percentage of income, the percentage of time you put in, etc. It's complex.

So, an office worker making maybe 50k a year getting $10 on the side every month after investing like 40 hours of driving would probably not count.

In practice, they reduced the number of cars of the road. Uber increases that number.

By what mechanism is that value conveyed to the purchaser? Especially consider when some of this value is to society (insurance while driving to pick up a fare) rather than to the purchaser.

Umm... both of them can be subject to anti-trust actions. A duopoly is totally within the scope of the act.

I don't think it's tyrannical of the government to force the walled gardens open. Trust breaking, whether a monopoly or a duopoly, is a government interest.

Remember when the government broke up Standard Oil, how that led to tyranny? Or when they told MS they couldn't force their desktop monopoly onto the internet (well, the browser)? Oh the tyranny.

TL;DR. The solution to the catch-22 is to have the government fix the problem and leave the ideological hand-wringing at home.

people will be able to buy Holy Tiger-Repelling Rocks!

Buying holy items within a repressive communist government area? Check

Making the "tiger rock" joke about a country that has at least two variants of tiger? Check

You're still in "No true scotsman" level arguing. I'm claiming that your entire point is based on extrapolation. I believe at least half of the examples that you use are incorrectly categorized. Therefore your point is unsupported.

That's before we get into the fact that socialism and/or communism are in no way related (neither directly nor inversely) with the free market. But all you did was assert that the free market is better. The US abandoned a pure free market before Lenin took over Russia and NYC implementated a medallion system before Mao took over China.

Do they know the difference?

Evidence please?

North Korea historically disrupted a lot of markets, but that wasn't good. Greece didn't really try to stop market disruptions... they had a bubble burst.

Meanwhile, I don't expect China to welcome market innovation at all... they use tried and true methods at a huge scale.

Hell, Cuba has a lung cancer vaccine!

Before you complain about Nitpicking... I'm saying that the majority of your examples seem off. You kinda just made a socialism and/or communism vs. capitalism argument in a different cloth. Which has nothing to do with whether regulations exist.