No, they aren't.

Comcast doesn't give you a free TV or computer if you promise not to cancel for two years and pay more than folks who already have the device.

This, though, is correct. It is easy for "competitors" to collude against the consumer. For example, if AT&T raises prices in a way which is irrational unless Verizon does the same, Verizon and AT&T can collude to raise prices in their entire industry without any direct communication or signalling.

This is contradictory. If credit lets me buy the phone outright (and then save more than the cost of the phone on reduced service fees over two years), why would I need a subsidized phone or an installment plan?

Easy credit doesn't explain why people accept grossly higher costs for contract phones. Instead, it raises the question: why don't people use credit to amortize the up-front cost of the phone, and then save money on service fees?

Or as a person with a limited budget? I think a lot of people can basically afford to overpay, and maybe they know they're overpaying, but they think it's not worth their time to figure out a better option.

Which is the inverse of all private assets.

Just because you're smarter than the average consumer doesn't mean you understand the modern financial system (or double book accounting).

Yes, I agree, we should ignore all monopolistic behavior, and eagerly bend over for without discussion.

Also, "Chevy" gas and "Ford" gas contain different additives (wired vs. wireless) so they "aren't competitors" even though they basically sell the same products: cars and fuel.

Pretending not to be in competition with other firms in the essentially the same markets is another method for fixing prices.

I don't understand why you want Comcast, rather than the market, to have a veto over my entrepreneurship.

I don't disagree with any of that. The two points I wanted to make are 1) modern agriculture is not 'closed' and 2) if we've already decided to make plant-based biofuels, the choice of corn over, say, switchgrass can only be politically motivated.

It's not closed when you are using large quantities of fossil fuels and petrochemical inputs to grow the corn.

There are better feedstocks than corn, for reasons of both environmental impact and efficiency, which also don't drive up food prices in international and domestic markets.

We use tons of petrochemicals to grow corn.

...a giant space dragon with a round shadow, to boot.

The four lunar eclipses occurring every six months starting next week, and visible from the west coasts of North and South America, ought to do the trick.

Fair enough. It's just that since redeeming public debts has no impact on private net financial assets except for the loss of future interest income, any consequences of a drastically larger QE program would probably have more to do with institutional risk assessments than, say, consumer price adjustments.

If they didn't "assert themselves," does that imply that they did exist? I think that this way of speaking is a little confusing, because we believe that current "laws" represent special cases of more general laws, rather than different laws entirely.

Massless particles inherently move at c. They can't be accelerated or decelerated because they have no inertia, although they do have momentum.

As far as we know, this was just as true right after the big bang. Particles, or field excitations or whatever, had no mass, and moved at c. They did have energy, and an energy density, and therefore were gravitationally attracted. This attraction would be described by quantum gravity, instead of General Relativity.

Once the particles acquired mass via the Higgs mechanism (probably at or about the same time that the modern-day forces became completely separated), the universe was still an ultra-hot quark plasma, so the newly massive particles still moved very rapidly. Just not at c.

I agree with you, but I do consider "nobody knows" to be consensus if we all believe that.