There is already a highly functional and efficient (socialist kind) healthcare system in US. Medicare sets prices for what they are going to pay. I don't think they negotiate. However, rest of US healthcare system is banned from using medicare system, because of structural reasons: maximize theft from population using a variety of health care organizations.
Most land holdings are very very small. 1 acre to 5 acres maybe the vast majority. These are all odd sized and shaped and most likely doing different crops based on water availability. To leverage the benefits of mechanization, we need larger land holdings. The farmers have no other ability or income sources, so they hang on it it. Electricity is free. There is no income tax on farming. Govts provide many incentives to get farmers votes. Each state does different things, but they end up copying each others schemes and it gets worse and worse.
Farmers in most regions are no longer poor. Land prices exploded 100 - 500x in a 100 - 150 km diameter around metro areas. Most farmers are now millionaires, yes millionaires in USD. They held on to their land because they didn't know better, the land was useless (no water) and nobody bought it. Now they are going to HODL.
There are mechanization instruments suitable for 5 acre plots, but manufacturers are limited and the potential gains are smaller. Its the same problem as small cheap consumer cars, big investors and capitalists don't want to put money into high volume low margin business with limited market cap. And without mass production costs are significantly higher. Thats why people still maintain 70 year old farmalls and planters and shit spreaders and plows, modern replacements are either crap to be cheap or expensive from low volume.
If people like us who understand the long term value of having these things[1] available don't buy (and encourage others to buy), then we can't have nice things. I would always recommend students to buy anything other than apple (most Windows machines can now run Linux), run Linux on it and learn how to make it work. Todays students will be distributed all over the world and they have the skills to run Linux on the desktop, but far more importantly, make it work in the workplace ecosystem. Remember our governments are spending massive amounts of money buying Microsoft services and Apple products.
In fact, we should also highly encourage students to use Linux phones. It is important to get the next generation ready to get out of all these locked in extractive ecosystems.
[1] A standardized commodified market place of parts, available to assemble as new or as replacements for long term repair. There is no compelling reason modern machines (phones/laptops/desktops) can't have second and third lives. Remember how much Apple fights against repairability laws.
Writing is a forcing function for thinking. These days, most people are using AI to generate lots and lots of content, the 'writer' loses an opportunity to learn and understand, and creates garbage content for others consumption.
I believe all these engineering/technology/economic discussions are missing the human element, humans do human kinda things.
The #1 feature of housing in US is to keep the undesirables out. The best way to implement it is costly housing via zoning, deed restrictions and HOAs. And with costly housing, emerge good schools. Which creates a vicious/virtuous cycle. People who want to live in safe places (and/or good schools) create more demand in these specific locations even though they may not have the original motive (of keeping the undesirables out). This is the power of defaults.
Now, add to this that most of the wealth in US is housing, it creates a perverse incentive to stop any more supply, which they can accomplish at the city/county level.
Note: The above is US specific. There are other things at play in other countries. I'm not sure what drives costly housing in Canada and Australia.
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