Keep in mind that the "natural" price of a book is the cost of making a copy. The only reason why it's possible to charge significantly more than that is because of copyright, which is itself an artificial construct created by the government. As such, it can come with arbitrary strings attached, including "price fixing".

As far as having less choice - is that a real problem these days? If anything, we're drowning in content, especially once you include self-publishing. I read every day, and yet my reading queue has grown non-stop for the past decade or so, at an increasingly accelerating rate.

Did you graduate top of your class in the Navy Seals, by chance?

Allow me to demonstrate, then.

Two days ago, you wrote - and I quote directly from your comment: "regardless of the fact that we are attacking your fundamental rights or limiting your fundamental rights, and the charter says that is wrong, we're still going to go ahead and do it".

Sounds like you hate freedom. Should you hang?

I'm no fan of Trudeau. I'm merely pointing out that you're spreading outright misinformation. "He's a bad guy anyway" is not a valid excuse for that. If you want to criticize him, cite data that actually supports that argument, don't fudge it.

You mean the video in which Trudeau specifically criticized the "notwithstanding clause" that allows the provincial governments to override the Charter?

I doubt that's what OP had in mind by "leftists", but libertarian left is a thing.

It's fair as a general principle, but there are other considerations at play when some private platforms become so large that the "public space" becomes controlled by a small oligopoly.

It wouldn't be the first time the textbook gets reused like that. In a similar vein, some states enacted "nullification" laws that prohibit state law enforcement agencies from helping feds to enforce federal gun laws, modelling them after similar state and local laws on immigration (sanctuaries etc).

The only uniqueness that NFTs provide is that of the token on the blockchain. The only exception to that is digital art that's small enough to store directly on the blockchain itself (e.g. small pixel art), although even in that case nothing precludes storing it more than once. Either way, if the NFT author wants to issue multiple tokens, there's nothing preventing them from doing so. They're still "non-fungible" in a sense that you can distinguish between them - and, in particular, know which ones were issued earlier, and thus e.g. who the current "owner" of the first one is.

Toyota is just looking for a way to turn a thing you buy into a subscription so they can get additional money.

The problem with this diagnosis is the prescription that follows.

The article laments inequality, then, wants to solve it by creating a super powerful government. So, the wealth is never really obtained by the individual when someone else is taxed. It's saying, "I'm going to help you by taking money from someone else". It's a total lie, is what it is.

The way to ensure money "trickles down" is to ensure that it must be risked and therefor spent. As long as governments run massive, chronic deficits, then, there's always an investment place of last resort in guaranteed treasury bills. Additionally, lending must be deregulated, along with the legal recourses given lenders due to default. The idea of creating equality is to create an economy where one either uses the wealth they have, or they lose. If they use it wisely, then, naturally, things will work out for them. But generational handoffs are much less likely to occur.

Additionally, deregulating private property is also good. To create wealth is to create savings and investment. However, one cannot go up the ladder when the cost of doing anything keeps going up due to regulation. While they may be good for some people, the fact is, all the expense around home ownership, building, and so on, is directly related to all the mandated costs and mandated hiring regulation creations. Whenever you get a dollar, there's someone you are mandated to spend it on in their interest, not yours. In that sense, what socialism we have is actually working very well, in that, it is keeping the middle class permanently suppressed.

Taken together, it seems the real story is, "we've ruined everyone else's life by creating economic stagnation, but now we need to ruin the lives of the people that did break out, too."

Left wingers hate individual success and surprises and above all they hate freedom, so they want to make it as impossible for anyone to succeed as they possibly clan by fooling us into thinking that individuals are not capable of anything. One man, as it is, can do a lot, and they on the left just hate that some men have more will and talent than others.

So this middle class man stuck forever who supposedly needs a liberal rescue will stick his wall in the sand with this quote:

"If you want me to care about the planet and all the things you say I should care about, then you can bloody pay me with all that money you are trying to steal."

You should learn the difference between "capital" and "money", for starters. It's kinda important to understanding the meaning of the word "capitalism", and why that's not the same as "free market".

As for "Marxist professors"... I was a radical ancap in college, actually, arguing with them. The real world cured me of this cultism quickly enough.

Thank you for reiterating what I said - the wealth is produced by someone else, the only thing that the investor brings to the table is the capital to produce it with. The person actually performing the work is entitled to more than the person providing the tools to do it. Especially when the reason why the latter can even do that is because they hoarded them.

But of course. In an unregulated labor market, employers - i.e. owners of capital - are going to extract as much economic rent from their workers as they can get away with. The higher the concentration of capital, the more rent can be extracted this way.

There are only two ways to get away from that. If you want to keep the ability to concentrate capital without limits (i.e. capitalism), then you have to regulate the amount of rent that can be extracted via non-market mechanisms, such as legislation - i.e. ditch the free market on labor. This is the typical Western welfare state model. The problem is that it requires a strong centralized state to enforce such regulation, and that power will not stay confined to economic matters long term.

The other way is to allow free market on labor, but prevent unlimited accumulation of capital, so that the disparity between the average employer and their workers is not large enough to strong-arm the latter.

You're assuming that your "steps and advice" are universally applicable because they worked for you. The truth is that luck is a major, if not primary, component in most such cases. Yes, you do have to work hard etc to dig yourself out of poverty - but you also have to get lucky for all that hard work to pay off. There are far more people in the world who also work hard, but don't have anything to show for it.