If only someone had warned us in 1867, 1885, and 1894!

I completely agree with you that the results (monopolies and oligopolies) are undesirable, and you’re doing a great job of explaining why the results are undesirable. But you’re not explaining why you think monopolies and oligopolies are not the natural outcome of a free market. The free market is not a good thing.

What are you talking about, this is the natural conclusion of a free market.

This is maddening. It will never stop. The democrats refuse to campaign on progressive policies, which are incredibly popular among the entire electorate (yes, also among republicans, see the recent ballot measures in Missouri on paid sick leave and higher minimum wage, for example), instead opting to position themselves as “republican light”. They completely capitulate to republican messaging on pretty much every issue (border wall, fracking, pro war, etc), and predictably lose to the people who invented this messaging. And then comes the worst part: angry libs start blaming the electorate instead of the people who lost. It’s not the lack of the dems even mentioning universal health care, no it’s the trans people. It’s not the genocide that the current democratic regime is committing, no it’s probably actually latino voters. It’s not the fact that the Harris campaign asks us to pretend everything is hunky spunky with the economy, offering nothing to relieve the 80% of the population who live paycheck to paycheck. Noooo you know what it’s actually white women and muslims faults. You fucking morons.

Can’t wait for the 2026 anti-transgender dem ticket, and the anti gay marriage ticket in 2028. It’s gonna be great.

The definition of genocide according to the UN genocide convention consists of two parts. The first part is action which is subdivided into five subcategories:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Ticking one of these boxes is enough to qualify for the action part. Certainly, Israel ticks the first box, probably the second, and if Yoav Gallant’s words are anything to go by, also the third:

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed, we are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly"

This quote is actually a nice segue into the second part of the definition of genocide, which is intent. Performing the actions outlined above only counts as genocide if it is done with the intention of destroying (in whole or in part) an ethnic, a religious, or national group. This is usually a bit harder to show. Not in this case though!

"“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”

““there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”

“The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave”

These are all quotes from high placed Israeli officials (one of them is even president), all said in the context of justifying and directing the current attacks on Gaza. There’s many, many more, each more overt and disgusting than the last, outlined in South Africa’s 80 page document accusing Israel of genocide.

Back in december 2023 it was already indisputable that Israel is committing genocide. Even more so now. One more for good measure:

“Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children.”