[benreesman]

Analogies between physical commerce and what the Cartel is up to are offensively wrong by 19 orders of magnitude or so.

There is no useful analogy from an idyllic high street with people shopping at leisure to what happens when you give sociopaths unbounded compute and legal carte blanche.

I struggle with this as a meme and I have a more and less charitable theory. My more charitable theory is that people never learned finance seriously. My less charitable theory is that people stand to benefit personally and are indifferent what it costs, as long as someone else pays the cost.

None of these concepts are in the bedrock law of the land: shopping mall, home owner’s association? Which amendment protects HOAs?

It is completely possible to change all of this, and while we should deliberate thoughtfully before making sweeping change, I mistrust anyone who just asserts dubious shit as bedrock laws of nature.

Maybe we’ve got a pretty sickening system composed of dubiously legal and strictly unethical status quos and it’s time to make some changes at arbitrary effort and cost.