The public perception of crime is persistently incorrect for many if not most people and this incorrect, emotional rather than evidence-based view of the world is unfortunately what drives political pressure.

The easy acceptance of this authoritarian governing style has been one of the most damaging to the idea of democracy. America's democratic institutions have great marketing but many of us outside the country and not subjected daily to that marketing have long known it is an particularly weak form of democracy and open to corruption, demagoguery and populism. Americans have a susceptibility to authority and hierarchical normalisation, has left them open to this.

Until recently in the UK you did not need any ID to vote, that was introduced recently as an echo to the US stolen election conspiracy, as demagogues love to steal ideas from each other.

Ah, the good old days when we wrote JS function to do something, or copied from dHTMLZone. These days the first 10 lines of JS is loading hundreds of lines of JS libraries. (Yep, I'm an old man yelling at clouds!)

Antiterrorism and anti-disorder laws sold to the public as needed to prevent serious threats have been used extensively outside of what I think most would consider reasonable to surveil people, restrict freedoms and harass. The prime example are the stop and search laws, used to search a large numbers of people, predominantly based on racial stereotype, with zero impact on terrorism.

Remember that the Met police is known to be institutionally racist & sexist. It is not an organisation to be trusted.

The effects of salmon fishing in Norway aren't limited to the local communities, it influences the whole area, back to the county government. Politicians lose a lot of support if they go against the money because despite driving our electric cars to our cabins and loving going to walks in nature, us living in Norway really, really like the good life and don't want anything to impact that. (To be fair, this also applies to the majority of the planet's population.)

Musk wants X to be an everything app but I don't think anyone else wants that. People are happy with it as social media they can either rage on or ignore. Limiting Money to Premium users is a terrible business decision as it limits customer base when it needs the opposite.

An everything app is Musk's dream and he talks about it like it's some high goal, a new idea that he wants to push forward. Whereas in Asia everything apps are part of daily life. Having recently spent time in Asia I have an app on my phone that does everything from my immigration arrival card, payments in store, person to person transfers, processes bills, pay road tolls and road tax, invest, order food, buy movie tickets, get insurance, book a holiday and the list goes on. Some in the West dream of a tech based future, whilst many in Asia are already living it.

Israel was very early in developing a military propaganda unit focused on social media. It was very effective, as well as providing a safe & air conditioned office for a chosen segment of their population's military service. Combined with their extensive political, religious & social lobbying they still control the majority of the narrative. Even when obvious war crimes are committed, investigated & accepted as the truth by allies, the narrative is always forgiving. Their talking points still take priority in the majority of the social and traditional media, even when presented with evidently more truthful counterpoints.

The result of this is high prices and waitlists for many of their products, which is the exact opposite of what private equity and conglomerates want.

Another interesting example from the UK is Howies. They were bought by Timberland, which then in succession got bought by VF, a big US conglomerate. The Howies brand was small and insignificant globally so the management of Howies were allowed to buy the company back and it continues as a niche

Private equity companies exist in a range of sizes, some buying big multinational brands and others buying small local brands. It's a omnivorous predator and it's down to the owners of companies to resist the temptation of money.