In my last post on the topic, I somehow forgot to mention Aereo, which has already been outlawed by judicial decree in some jurisdictions. Its fight against broadcasters is headed to the Supreme Court, where the (supposedly tech friendly) White House is lobbying against it.

Meanwhile, Marginal Revolution has some frightening statistics on our crumbling infrastructure. Also, we now have measles outbreaks in San Francisco and New York City, thanks to ignorance and complacency.

Quinn Norton, writing on Medium, has published a powerful piece on how money rules all in the United States:

There is no place with more personal debt and heavier patterns of obligation than the Land of the Free. We are free to try to get expensive degrees to get jobs that barely exist, we are free to spend most of our lives paying student loans, we are free to lose everything we may have gained the moment we get sick. Along the way we can buy more things and get into more housing debt than almost anyone in the world, making our freedom one of consumption — consuming and being consumed by the systems we are born to.

We are free to vote in gerrymandered districts, and free to vote for two federal parties that are largely identical. We are free to vote on machines and systems that it is often illegal to audit for security purposes. We are all free to talk at once, and listen to no one at all. We are free, ever free, to chase as many dollars as we can, all the way to Hell.

It’s time to call America what it is: a kleptocracy, run by corporations and governments with only cosmetic distinctions. It is full of good people whom the kleptocrats keep fighting against each other, as they have for over 150 years, and will until the good people drown in rising saltwater or epic storms, or simply die, exhausted and used up.

Is there any way to fix this?