I'm guessing they never even get close to seeing marriage this way as the relationship probably doesn't reach into courtship past dating. Just a hunch.
Planet Money did a great breakdown on this. Essentially it comes down to international agreements on the cost of doing the past mile of shipping for other countries.
Your analysis of American politics makes it sound like the entire voting block of US adults supports these policies, wanted this man as president, and watches Fox News. Fact of the matter is 3 million more people voted for the other candidate but this guy won on a technicality. The majority of Americans do not support these policies but our representative election processes are designed to prevent simple majority rule. Couple this with a legislative branch that cedes authority to the executive over the course of decades in the name of political expedience and we are where we are today.
You're forgetting Intel's trouncing in the Pentium4/Athlon XP days also. It's been a while, but I for one am looking forward to a very competitive marketplace for desktop CPUs.
I wonder how much of this was a result of the "born again" evangelical movement. I watched my parents in the 80s go from apathetic Catholicism to fervent Protestants. During which things got weird. Suddenly Satan was real and things like Halloween were up for debate.
Oddly enough if you're corporate entity large enough you're doing better than the government. A friend of mine works as an assistant state's attorney and he says some of the cases are ridiculous when the well funded persons and organizations are involved; sometimes it's one man for the government vs an one or more entire law firms and on cases of important to public interest no less.
I'm wondering what competition looks like in this market. My wife loves Snapfish and I'm thinking each album she creates and purchases in 2020 is going to be considerably more expensive.