If you're curious, a book The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGilchrist goes over many of the differences in "personality" of each hemisphere which is not as simple of a divide as is commonly heard. It is not so much a logic vs. feeling/art split but maybe more of an isolation/abstraction vs. broad/networked default mode for each.
You find this everywhere there is a centralized "authority". Incumbants use every trick to keep their tribe in power at the expense of what that central power was nominally "supposed to do".
The purpose of the system is what it does. The purpose of seemingly all regulatory institutions is to gain and maintain power for the tribe in power.
You're suggesting government step in and stop the market from adapting around existing regulation? But that's how we got where we are right now. If government weren't in the way we'd have even more happy buyers.
You point out US consumers might be annoyed at bad local options and are looking elsewhere then suggest that this is a failure of the market when in fact it is this market action that permits the consumer to find a better solution for their problems. All government can do if they "step in" is make this even harder.
And this Kei Truck response is a good example of how a market (free or not), while seeking to find all profits, uncovers an unmet need in the market and adapts for the mutual benefit of the consumers And the producers.
I think optics of being advanced aren't the main goal. Some form of "justification", no matter how flimsy, especially if it's hard to audit how the "AI" came to it's conclusions, is the goal. Now anyone is a target. Similar to cops in the US "smelling weed" or dogs "signaling". It provides the means to justify any search, or in this case, any kill. The machine grinds away..
It's more than open source. A political party I tried to join organized via Discord. A hardware project offered support only through Discord. Seems most "communities" have one now. But I hate Discord and it's a poor tool for those jobs! A subreddit might have been better as I wouldn't need an account to view proir posts for troubleshooting, or organizing meetings.
The privacy of the world's populace sounds like a pretty big problem to me considering the damage that can be caused by that information getting into the wrong hands.
For the kombucha, you can grab a bottle of your favorite brand and use a bit of it to start your own culture. You'll also need some tea for flavor, sugar to feed it, and some cups to ferment in IIRC. It's been years since I've done it, but it is pretty straitforward and low effort. Go for it!
Can you go into more detail here? My understanding is that a free market requires capitalism (privately owned wealth) to function. And capitalism needs free-ish markets to actually use the wealth.
I'm also unsure how libertarianism is anti-capitalist.