I don't think it's plausible, but an authoritarian president invoking emergency powers and deploying military and paramilitary forces to exert control on the streets is, on the basis it's already going on at a limited scale. All it takes is for that scale to gradually dial up over time until the frog's cooked.

The problem you have is these elected kings. Not just any king, pretty specifically the majority of the powers enjoyed by George III in the 1790s. The fact that you still have this, unreformed over 200 years later and still think that somehow your constitutional system is modern, is a matter for despair. Get yourselves a proper parliamentary system, with maybe a head of state as a figurehead.

It's not for me, but I can see the appeal - minimalism, distraction elimination, geek cred, and the sort of flow state one gets from working in a low latency, high muscle memory environment.

The problem isn’t the present tense. The problem is once those artefacts are destroyed then they’re destroyed forever.

They might find some important writing that can shed light on history.

Those people live in a museum-- Rome would be nearly empty if not for the tourist attractions, as it was for so many centuries.

Yes. I travel around the world looking for such things.

Is it encumbering? It seems like it's not at all.

Is it really worth? YMMV, but yes if you ask me.

That's the kind of corporate baby-talk I use when I'm trying to resist doing something.

Amazon extracts a lot of the value of a purchase from the seller's take. Sellers risk sanctions if they sell a product cheaper thru their brand website.

It's normal for wholesale prices being at 50% to 60% of what the retailer will sell it for. It's always been like that.

And those wholesalers would not do business with you if you undercut their retail price.

Amazon's practice is normal throughout the industry.

I know this because my business in the 80s would wholesale my products through mail order retailers.

Note that populist demagogue started a trade war and threatened allies with invasion. That tends to put a damper on friendship. And that's before the idiotic blunder with Hormuz.

What a coincidence. I also read the book and can't recall what it was about. Umm, what were we talking about again?

While true, that doesn't make it acceptable. In a functioning society, companies would be punished harshly for this behaviour.

> In a functioning society

Have you been alive for the past decade?

Obviously he thinks society is functioning for HIM just fine. What's your problem?

It's because they never have been meaningfully punished and won't be that this happens and will continue to happen. Act accordingly.

all societies are dysfunctional...

They should have gone all in and published the travel history of elite politicians, CEOs, and celebrities. That'd get a lot more media attention and potential for consequential legislation.

It's an unstable equilibrium: companies can always make more by adding ads, therefore they do so. This isn't the consumer's fault.