door5

The end of which was an extremely regulated market with partial nationalization -- exactly my point

This may seem radical, but this antagonism will only get stronger over time. The capitalists who run these businesses are certainly aware of and worried about this future, & at least one presidential candidate (Elizabeth Warren) is thinking in these terms.

political struggle (higher minimum wage, stronger regulations, unions, etc) drives wages up.

I'm not saying we should ban these companies, I'm saying their workers should be paid much more than they currently are.

It's easy to be cavalier if you ignore the effect on Taxi workers. Ride sharing replaced a stable, unionized, middle class career with low-paying, low-benefit gig jobs. It ruined people's lives and destroyed a stable field of work. This wasn't a technological innovation -- it was a legal one, where they figured out a way to evade regulations to undercut the current system and drive down wages.

If someone tells you there's a 1% chance that if you don't evacuate millions of people would be exposed to dangerous radiation, would you give the order? 10%? 50%? these are not easy questions

I support nuclear power, but to say that it is without risks and the public is just irrational is disingenuous.

Public transit. Electric cars hardly put a dent in climate change. We need higher density cities, less sprawl, more robust public transit, and a nationwide high speed rail network. These all require political will, policy change and public money -- no private company will do this.

> As individuals, we are generally quite powerless in the climate crisis. The world is being ruined by companies and governments that we generally cannot influence.

Right now the green new deal is an extremely popular idea in public consciousness, and activists have pushed it to the point that nearly every Democrat running for president has signed off on it. We are not powerless, use your platform and your resources to advocate for political change.

And almost certainly because of this struggle, the next City they try and go to isn't going to give them nearly as sweet a deal. They will demand more. Struggles like this are effective.

Bring up Muslims or Roma people to a European and you'll find this isn't a uniquely American problem.

There exist organizations that treat software as a public good -- Software for the Public Interest, GNU, the Linux foundation, etc. These are relatively small in terms of funding but have a disproportionately large positive impact. Imagine if an organization the size of Google or Microsoft existed like that with public money, or if one or more of the big 5 tech companies were nationalized? It sounds unimaginable because of the political climate in the United States, but I can't see how this would be anything but a good thing. Tech companies behave much more like infrastructure, and thus are in my mind a very reasonable target for public ownership.