The issue with the Sherman Act is that it is broad and sweeping and leaves discretion up to the government.
So the answer to your question is: monopolization is illegal according to the the Sherman Act, and the power to regulate markets is well within the (extremely broad) scope of existing laws (including the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Act).
I don't really have a strong preference for IRV (over, say, approval or score voting), but it does seem to be widely accepted as an improvement over first-past-the-post and also an option that has a realistic chance of adoption (due to slotting into existing electoral schemes without giant overhauls).
I don't disagree with you about the problems related to wealth distribution. (I just watched the documentary "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" about 2 days ago and so I'm feeling primed there.)
I do think you're being excessively cynical about electoral reform.
Ultimately, we live in a democracy, and voters have power. The parties putting forward these reforms are advocating for things like democracy vouchers:
which is a very anti-oligarchic/anti-plutocratic measure.
Reforms like instant runoff voting make third parties more viable by eliminating spoiler effects. In our present system, if you run as (or vote for) (say) a socialist candidate, you end up helping the right-wing by preferentially stealing votes from the moderate left-wing candidate. In this scenario, it's not rational for you to participate in politics because you end up hurting your own interests. Electoral reform can eliminate the perverse incentives here. In this scenario you can imagine the socialist candidate would say, "Hi, I'm the socialist, I care about issue X; and make your option 2 the green party candidate because of issue Y; or your option 3 the democrat because of issue Z". There are incentives for politicians to act civilly (since transferable votes mean they no longer strictly compete) and to offer better options to voters.
Today I learned: Electoral reforms are one of the goals for the Forward Party and the Common Sense party. If you're a voter in California, you can help them with this by changing the party affiliation on your voter registration to the Common Sense Party to help them get recognition (they need 72,000 members).
I would really like to see some form of electoral reform passed that would reduce spoiler effects, make third party movements more viable, and change the incentives for politicians in elections (e.g. instant runoff voting as endorsed by https://fairvote.org/ or https://cfer.org/ ; or proportional representation ).
I think you're oversimplifying animal behavior. Some thoughts:
There's a famous study involving capuchin monkeys that shows they have a sense of fairness.
I think many animal species are more sensitive to the suffering of other animals than you're giving them credit for: think of the way mother cats or bears act when they hear their offspring crying. Or the way mother dogs discipline their puppies about nursing.
Think of how donkeys are used commercially to guard sheep and the social instincts of the donkey (again it's linked to maternal behavior).
I think many birds are intelligent enough to want to pursue and punish potential threats.
We don't generally apply the concept of nature vs. nurture to animal behaviors but we really should.
An August 2022 Gallup poll showed that US approval of labor unions was at its highest point since 1965 (71%, up from 48% in ~2010; comparable to levels of 70-75% in the 1940s-60s). [1]
I agree with the sentiment about media sensationalism but I don't think "space junk" is an issue we should be so quick to dismiss.
Just because the problem hasn't gotten too bad yet doesn't mean it isn't real (especially because the problem involves a positive-feedback "domino effect" and junk might be infeasible to clean up).
With regard to Starlink: I was a little bit concerned because of the large number of satellites they're putting up, but as far as I understand, Starlink isn't actually a big risk right now as far as space junk goes because the satellites orbit at low altitudes (340 miles) and are expected to naturally de-orbit relatively quickly due to atmospheric drag. (The decision to put them at low altitudes had to do with network latency.) If Elon were to say tomorrow, "hey we're moving Starlink out to 500 miles" I would hope some kind of regulation would be able to prevent that.
"We share the admirable goals of protecting civil rights and eliminating all forms of prejudice and discrimination, including based on caste. As such, the question is not whether we deal with allegations of caste discrimination, but how. If and when caste discrimination allegations emerge, they should be adjudicated under the existing protected class of ancestry, just as the state of California did in California Department of Fair Employment Housing v. Cisco Systems, Inc."
"All of these measures can be traced back to allegations being made by a for-profit, activist entity called Equality Labs which stands to profit from its caste competency training services."
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I'm inclined to agree with them that caste discrimination is probably already illegal on the basis of ancestry.
My impression was that Anduril wanted to own the software for multi-(thing) coordination.
i.e. consume information from multiple sources (satellites, ground stations, planes, drones) and use it to coordinate the action of other drones/planes/etc.
There was an announcement last week (and yesterday) about a "Replicator" initiative from the DoD (using large numbers of cheap drones) that seems largely aimed at countering China in the Taiwan Strait; I can imagine this is the sort of business they want to be involved with.
"""
With Replicator, we're beginning with all-domain, attritable autonomy, or ADA2, to help us overcome the PRC's advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine again last February, they had that advantage too. Yet we've seen in Ukraine what low-cost, attritable systems can do — not to mention other commercial technologies.
They can help a determined defender stop a larger aggressor from achieving its objectives, put fewer people in the line of fire, and be made, fielded, and upgraded at the speed warfighters need, without long maintenance tails.
At DoD, we've already been investing in attritable autonomous systems [...] and in multiple domains: self-piloting ships, uncrewed aircraft, and more.
Now is the time to scale, with systems that are harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat than those of potential competitors.
"""
"The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union."
I think there's a tendency for discussions about the south's position in the civil war to end up with slavery poisoning the well.
"We share the admirable goals of protecting civil rights and eliminating all forms of prejudice and discrimination, including based on caste. As such, the question is not whether we deal with allegations of caste discrimination, but how. If and when caste discrimination allegations emerge, they should be adjudicated under the existing protected class of ancestry, just as the state of
California did in California Department of Fair Employment Housing v. Cisco Systems, Inc."
"There is only one legal case on the issue of caste-discrimination in the United States to date. It involves an allegation of caste-based discrimination in the US."
"So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts." - James Madison
This reminds me of how historians trying to find out about the historical Jesus have come up with some (objective?) criteria about what to accept as true.
Examples:
* Multiple attestation. Do we have multiple independent sources telling us the same thing?
* Contextual credibility. Do people behave in a way that's plausible given their setting (the languages they spoke, what they knew at the time).
* Embarrassment. Is this detail actually inconvenient for the person relaying it (and not the sort of thing they'd make up)?
Overall, I'm happy they're actively involved. The hands-off attitude in the US is terrible.