Increasing their productivity is helping humans.

So, no, I am not too worried about Amazon removing my $9.99 book.

So what are you ranting against?!

> Own nothing and be happy.

Ah, here it is. Only governments can confiscate our property and force us into that. Governments and politicians that keep telling us how evil corporations are…

So my grandma shouldn't have been be deliriously happy with the new washing machine that saved her hands from bleeding weekly because the evil capitalist laundromat owners charged a few quarters per load?!

It also did diddly squat in the market place and the company producing it ran out of business.

Again, a product is a set of tradeoffs. Those tradeoff include functionality, cost, logistics to build, even marketing and sales. Maximizing a feature to serve a loud minority (headphone jack!) but thus ignoring other features will simply make a product fail in the market place in time...

Really?! So instead of the person hired and paid specifically to select and decide what the product should cost, look and work like, the person whose very pay depends on how well she chooses those product features for you - instead you'd rather have a faceless nameless bureaucrat who never pays the cost of his wrong decisions, who instead gets more power and money the more he panders to the vocal minorities that push populist agendas completely detached from the market place.

> not giving a fuck about any other criteria

That is simply not true, such a company would go out of business fast. As I said before, any product is a set of tradeoffs. Cost (and profit) is just one of the factors. Ignoring the others does not make successful products.

> profit

I love it when a company I buy from is successful. That means it's gonna be around to create more stuff for me to enjoy. It also means the awesome people working there get paid and are successful themselves. Finally, it means that its investors will back up more of this kind of companies that create useful products and services. Profit is great!

At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs.

I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market.

I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.

The entrepreneurs invested in or built from scratch organizations able to deliver an incredible amount of value to our society in the form of products, services and jobs. These organizations, called businesses, are the unsung heroes that differentiate our lands of plenty from the hunger and cold of countries suffering under communism.

The professionals (doctors, lawyers, programmers) worked in such organizations and added significant value ensuring their success in the market place.

Finally, politicians managed to convince a sufficient number people that only they can solve their problems and thus got themselves elected into positions where they control significant flows of money and/or influence.

Lots of stuff under communism was cheaper on paper. It was also extremely crappy and/or unavailable.

So black markets were thriving, even though, as you rightly point out, used hard to get, expensive currency.

https://x.com/paulg/status/2041363640499200353

Ironically, you (along with a significant number of others) deciding to buy from a competitor will eventually lead to financial trouble for Safeway and thus to layoffs and losses for their investors (pension funds among them).

So, do you find your decision to buy from Fred Meyer "absolutely immoral"?!

If they buy startups, a thousand more will spring up hoping to be bought. Investors love this game.

And if you think undercutting works, read up on the story of Dow and how they broke the German bromine monopoly [1].

There is no such thing as a natural monopoly. Only governments can create monopolies, usually through regulation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Henry_Dow#Breaking_a_m...

And the fact that a 3rd party supports an opponent does not kill any politician's career. Biden retired by himself, following his own party's pressure. And Harris is still around, I believe.

Didn’t Harris actually raise and spend more than Trump on that election?

Any example of a politician carrier killed by an attempt to enforce antitrust?

Actually I've been lucky to practice what I preach all my life. Early in my career I realized that salaried employment is a rip-off: you pay through your nose for an illusion of safety and stability you don't want nor need. So I embraced risk and switched to contracting.

Having leftover income this way, I looked into investing. That's when I realized that being financially prudent, saving and investing was actually punished in the USA, taxwise, while borrowing and spending was encouraged. So I left the USA and returned to Eastern Europe.

Understanding that selling your time is much worse than selling a product drove me to entrepreneurship. Luck threw a little success my way and turned me financially independent.

Now I am semi-retired living from investments and small gigs and spending time with my family. My tax rate (income only, not consumption or VAT) is well under 20% on most of my income. I didn't do any effort to optimize it further, but I could if I must. I actually do not mind paying taxes, but I do respond to incentives and I am not afraid to relocate.

> If you manage to get rich enough to be able to optimize your taxation

Actually I did a little research and you don't need to be rich, you can do that with very little money. But then the gains for a few percent reduction aren't that great anyway so...

> you pay more taxes overall than people holding a few companies

I probably do, but I don't mind it. I think the rich are a net positive to our society because capitalism ensures they contribute to the society orders of magnitude more than they manage to keep. Also I lived under communism pre-1990 in a world without rich and I've seen how bad it is.