I can agree with most of this. Capitalism, and society in general, banked rather hard on Galileo’s old saying,

“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable that which is not so.”

They took that to mean, "Give every facet of everything an objective measure in order to determine how make imaginary lines go up so imaginary numbers in our bank accounts go up.

For the landlocked, may I recommend the Dead Drop Protocol? Leave the message in a place that everyone knows about, but only the intended recipients knows a message is there to be read. Like the Message in a Bottle, it supports all encryption methods and is disconnected from the Internet.

There are a couple drawbacks, though. For one, unless you are watching the drop point, you have no way of knowing whether your message made it to the intended recipient or if it was intercepted. Vice versa, if you are the intended recipient of a dropped message, the only guarantee you have that the message is authentic is if the message uses a self-authenticating encryption method. Also, there is a potential that any drop point you use may be under surveillance, so make sure to not use the same drop point too often.

Removed the ability to communicate cryptographically. Our only tool.

Not entirely. The old methods still work. I’m talking about old fashioned pen and paper. OTP ciphers and dead drops. Messages, hidden where only the intended recipient knows it’s there. The problem is, there’s no dead drops in cyberspace. There’s no place one can leave a hidden message that can’t be seen by others in cyberspace. And while quantum computing might break OTP, it’s too expensive to use for that purpose.

There’s a certain artistry to the old ways. Invisible inks, dead drops, One-Time-Pads, and the like. Cryptography existed long before computers. Those who would be our rulers have bent so much of their energies towards preventing our communicating in cyberspace that they’ve neglected those of us who studied the pre-Information Age methods. And we can still use them. A guy walks by a trash can, and throws away a seemingly innocuous food wrapper, and a couple hours later another guy goes and collects it, knowing that there is a message written on it in ink that can be revealed with the use of heat and lemon juice. If their intent is to return the USA to the “good ole days”, then let’s use the spy tricks from the “good ole days”.

And why his current wreckage of government still has many conservatives approving: they believe he is answering, kind of.

Now, if only we can get them to see that he’s got people in his orbit at billionaire techbros who think they’re all going to be John Galt, and that the “capitalist utopia” he builds in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” is what they’re trying to build and it won’t be good for them. They think they’re all going to live in their own Galt’s Gulch when it’s going to be more like Andrew Ryan’s Rapture.

And now they’re trying to make it about race, check this out.

I’m speaking, of course, of greedy, wealth hoarding dragons like Smaug. Who would slaughter an entire mountain of Dwarves to get his claws on wealth he will never spend, just to have it.

Walgreens is a bad choice. They’ve invested a ton of money into cameras and surveillance for their locations. Almost on the level of Target for loss prevention.

Yep, they should form a union and demand hazard pay on their CBAs.

Nah, they need to do it at Black Rock HQ.

Alexa, Play The Rebel Path(Cello Version)

As an aside, another proposed moniker for this hero is “Lancelot”, as he has clearly slain a dragon. Three cheers for the Dragonslayer!

I’d like to inquire as to what, specifically, you disagree with. I understand that you don’t think any person is inherently evil, however I hold that actions are a reflection of one’s character. While this CEO may indeed have done a couple good turns for people he personally knew or cared about, his actions and decisions as the CEO of a health insurance company have inflicted incalculable suffering upon hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people and their families. As a human being, I could never imagine doing such things, nor do I want to.

This, to me, reflects a deeply sociopathic character. Selfish, arrogant, greedy, and malicious. This was a person who saw themselves above mere mortals such as you and I, whom he saw as tools, disposable and replaceable. And when you see yourself as above mere mortals, would you not want the mortals to believe it, as well? Is it then, so surprising that the mortals stop seeing you as human altogether?

A couple things. I don’t see any billionaire as a human, and to be frank, they did it to themselves. They’ve spent decades spinning a narrative that they’re this special untouchable caste of modern-day demigods. That we have to try them differently and respectfully, because they have more money, and the closer you get to “God”, the further you get from “Human”.

Secondly, he chose to do evil. He willingly and without hesitation discarded his humanity. I can’t be bothered to feel bad for someone like that.

Well, really, they did it to themselves. We didn’t turn them into greedy, avaricious weath-hoarding dragons, they did. The closer one moves the slider to “God”, the further it moves from “Human”.

See my other comment:

When a dragon is slain, we don’t mourn its death, we cheer the Dragonslayer.

I fully agree. If I were a billionaire, I would be “let’s get a team together and come up with a strategy” levels of nervous. See, the 1% has sort of dehumanized themselves, by creating this decades-long narrative that they’re this untouchable caste almost on the level of Demigods, and the closer you get to God, the further you get from Human. Now that one has been shot and killed in broad daylight in the middle of NYC, and again with the idiots on the homemade submarine, that narrative is obviously untrue. When a dragon is slain, we don’t mourn its death, we cheer the Dragonslayer. So, if I were in the 1%, I’d be very worried about appearing all too human, all too quickly.

Any silver I get I’m feeding to the furnace and casting into bars.

Look, I’ve made some bad choices in life. I’m in my 30’s, I live with my girlfriend and her mother, and my credit only just recently got above 600. But because of the rules the CPFB put in place, I’ll be laughed out of ANY bank if I walk in and ask for a mortgage for just a bare plot of land with nothing on it. And maybe I’m being selfish, but the CPFB hasn’t done dick to make home ownership more affordable, or to keep private equity from snatching up all available inventory.

On the other hand, it’s because of the CPFB that one must have absolutely sterling credit to even think about getting a mortgage. Prior to the 2008 housing crisis that led to its creation, banks were handing out mortgages like Halloween candy, all anyone had to do was walk up and say “Trick or Treat!”. Didn’t matter whether or not the person getting the mortgage made enough money to even pay the interest, the mortgage and the house were both there for the taking.

And Kamala’s strategy for relieving pressure on the housing market was a $25,000 credit for first time home buyers?

This was also going to be coupled with a large tax credit to construction companies for building single-family homes and another tax credit for selling them to first-time homeowners.

Taken together, that all sounds pretty good. But I think what really needs to change is zoning laws. The problem is that the federal government has no control over the zoning ordinances of local communities. Hell, state governments barely have control over that. Usually whenever a rezoning of a neighborhood is brought up, it causes a firestorm at city council meetings.

Probably says “Fit for human consumption”. Humans can actually eat mealworms.