I look forward to paying $1000/Mo for my HBO-Tube-Warner-Discovercast-NetPrime Plus Premium membership because the shorter mandatory ads are a great deal over the $950/mo Sony-patent ad-supported version.

Welcome to techno-feudalism, where the state only exists as a military to protect the corporate oligopoly from the populace.

David Zaslav should eat a polonium dick.

Having LESS Competition is how Trump is going to Keep Costs DOWN!

Yep. Big corps are going to have their payday. Fixing Trumpism and the whole, “I got mine, fuck y’all else” American attitude is a problem I have no solution for.

Rampant capitalism and corporate feudalism, there are many different solutions to resist it. Some are violent, but the ones I would prefer are starting more collectivism in the local community. Just like how in the Fediverse and FOSS communities, like-minded individuals share thoughts, knowledge, crafts, media. This can be expanded to all fields, some easier than others. There are obviously pain points (moderation, doomscrolling, poor default filtering, clashing ideas and just straight up trolling, limited features, reliance on tons of unpaid volunteer work and so on), but what we’ve got here is impressive despite all that.

Community gardens with shared harvests, municipal and community-owned broadband networks, employee-owned grocers and retail, slowly and broadly expanding outward with a federated and negotiated supply chain model between interested parties.

It’s difficult, will encounter lots of problems as it grows and would cost more time, effort, and money, but this would bring power back to the people rather than those at the top.

Why? Because:

Mega-mergers like these could face fewer obstacles under the Trump administration.

Let’s bet:

• AMD + Intel
• Ford + GM + Stellantis
• Tesla + Rivian
• Walmart + Target
• AWS + Google
• Apple + Starlink