REGULATED capitalism is good. Unregulated is not. Personallly, I feel our government is doing far too little antitrust regulation right now, hence the media monopolies. Hoping the Dems will break them up when they regain power.

We agree on them installing methane extraction pipes. The actual details of the methane ignitions are pretty shaky, mine was based on hearsay of oral history, so I'm not sure where the methane ignited. There don't seem to be any reports of people being harmed by it. I think we agree on the area smelling bad from long before the Amphitheater was built to long after it was built too. In retrospect, probably not a good idea to build anything on top of a huge pile of rotting garbage!

Matching a bad picture of a license plate should not be considered probably cause for an arrest. It certainly doesn't prove who was actually driving the vehicle...

Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California was built on a garbage landfill. Hilariously, during some of the first concerts there, at that moment when everyone raises a lighter at the start of their favorite bands set... there were some ignitions of the methane leaking from the landfill. So they had to go back and do an expensive retrofit of an massive pipe network under the (outdoor) amphitheater to vent the methane to someplace safe. Yeah, that's the same place I was ushering a Grateful Dead concert, demanded to see Bill Grahms's ticket because i didn't recognize him, and he just said "I work here" and brushed right past me. (He didn't carry a pass, he just expected everyone to recognize him.)

I will agree to some extent, as in my response to most complaints about Republicans is "Not all Republicans". Tarring all Republicans with the MAGA brush is wrong, but most Republicans have been too spineless to speak out against the loss of liberty.

The grid itself is a natural monopoly, and is expensive to maintain. Agreed that once you get the load balancing down, multiple power generators should function like a frictionless economy, always buying from the cheapest source and adjusting every millisecond.

I'm on Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative, which also provides my internet connection. In theory, it's controlled by the customers, just like a community credit union. In practice... well, I suspect they are too small to be worth a huge bribe. That being said, I'm pretty sure the billionaire building a $15 million megamansion down the beach from me can afford to bribe all the public officials he wants. I can't really complain; he's taken over maintenance of our beach access and private road, and he has the resources to do it right.

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!