This is the first time I see anyone arguing that market domination by brand X (in any market) is good because of the network effect.

Ditto here. The dominance of brand X is good because its products are so idiosyncratic that you need a lot of people to use it so that you could have a pool of people from which you could hire someone to manage it. I'm not sure what particular logical fallacy this is but I'm sure there is one.

If that's what he's saying, then he's correct, there's no such right.

Around!? You do realize that in order to even conceive this notion, they'd first have to make a bold leap of thought regarding the sphericity of our humble middle realm of existence? There aren't many things I would put past them but I think you're too much of an optimist.

Except that most Jews around here are smart and quite nice (if a bit weird) people (with the exception of the orthodox ones, of course), whereas most Muslims are just plain wackos detached from this world's reality, believing in some of the most batshit crazy stuff I've ever heard.

If you have, say, more than just a few different copies, it's all a matter of diffing and voting by concensus. If the distribution of the canary edits is any particular document version is random, any one of them is likely to be absent in a majority of the copies.

In the realm of DRM and encryption, that's basically how things work. Once you break it, the only ones being punished are the paying users of the "official" edition.

I'd think that with proper automation and robotization, they could also be great for carrying an assortment of non-bulk goods on short-term prearraged schedules.

It's a rental cal. Do rental cars need this taxi nonsense? Also, I find it interesting that a supposedly "right-wing" (compared to, say, Europe) "pro-free-market" country erects market entry barriers of this kind. In my country, the equivalent entry barrier is about $1,000, and that includes not just the license fee but also the costs of a mandatory exam by the state authorities, the price of the taximeter, and the cab light, the last two of which are physical articles that you own (and assuming that you already have a suitable car for the job and you don't have to add one to your costs).

You know what this sounds like to me? The Thirty Years War era (and Napoleonic wars era) system of military officer commissions. It was the same kind of bullshit, and armies abandoned it centuries ago. I guess that 21th century US hasn't quite advanced to that point yet. :-)