Electric utilities are the definition of a natural monopoly. As such, they need to be regulated so tightly that they can't even fart without government permission. Most utilites can't increase prices without begging/bribing the government for permission. I guess that's the real problem: bigger monopolies can afford bigger bribes.

Remember when the British government "protected" their domestic car manufactures by require all the parts to be made in Britain? How's the British car industry doing today, after that brilliant move? Most historic British car brands are now owned by foreign parent companies. Tata (India) owns Jaguar and Land Rover. BMW (Germany) owns Mini and Rolls-Royce. Volkswagen (Germany) owns Bentley. Geely (China) owns Lotus, and SAIC (China) owns MG.

I, for one, believe we should modify the genetics of the entire human population to make sure they never, ever produce another Trump. Who's with me? "If you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs!"

I've been saying agentic AI is a bad idea from day one. I've worked enough with computers that frankly I don't trust them a bit even without them having free will. AI acting on it's own judgement is truly a nightmare!

Agreed, the problem has always been there. The prediction markets just made it a lot more difficult to enforce the existing laws banning insider trading. Honestly, it should be illegal for ALL politicians!

I agree a lot with (regulated) capitalism and fiscal conservative. Trump is neither.

I think the point is that insider trading should be a lot more illegal than it already is and should carry 100 year prison sentences. If you have any more knowledge about an event that Kalshi bets are being placed on than the general public, then by definition you are insider trading. Needless to say, lots of bets on Iran war events are coming from inside the White House, and yes, those people deserve serial jail time!

That sounds like one of my sci-fi story ideas: an assassins guild entirely paid by betting on when people would die. Great to see we now have the infrastructure in place to make that dream a reality!

The white hats understand the problem much better than most government employees. Who better to do a penetration test on poorly designed government systems?

Maybe this life-arising-twice thing is the early filter.

i.e. Lots of places have life, but only a very few have had it arise twice ( maybe the first prevents the second ) and that very few only got intelligent life because of the two lifeforms merging.

The second arousal is always the best.

Sorry, but it seems it was my AI that hacked that bank last year and took all the money.

It also spent it all on whores and drugs and a new Lamborghini.

Nothing to do with me, obviously, officer.

Thanks, Bill Gates!

Bold of you to assume the BMW buyers were ever making rational buying decisions in the first place... it's the car of choice for spoiled children.

Dealers have reported cars that were not stolen as stolen, and police have used Lojack to trace the cars and arrest the driver. In one, the cop car rammed a guy's brand new pickup for no reason as he was backing out of a parking space, damagine the cop car and the pickup, then arrested the guy and took him to jail... only to discover the dealer had screwed up the paperwork and falsely reported the vehicle as stolen. Problems are opportuniites: we need to start a service to disable Lojack transmitters!