FOSS clones for software just to work on closed overengineered standards is stupid. We have had markdown for decades but still prefer oblong zip-xml files for writing rich text and slides!? Absurd.

Excel is the only MS Office product that makes sense to exist, and thus carries the brand to dominance largely by itself. Docs and slides have already been solved; I wish devs just focused on making the perfect Excel clone and abandon looking at all other MSOffice programs.

The cause is very likely just mundane - phone cord manufacturing supply chains disintegrated as landline phones themselves disappeared, so that kind of cabling just isn’t economical anymore to scale for commodity use. Deviating from standards is expensive.

Capitalism is dominant because it is the only model known to survive with stability long term over massive populations.

A LOT of (especially former-colonies) countries started out socialist and many were communist. They all had to recede back to the one stable model eventually to survive. It has been inevitable, at least till date.

The only ones who have retained mild socialist elements like powerful public welfare, are those who have already matured as capitalist states, whose population load against state income is distinctively low, and whose society is (consequentially) high-trust enough not to immediately corrupt it.

Although, with AI and the commoditization of intelligence, it will be interesting to see how things will evolve. Perhaps we might even see the dismissed “impractical” models coming back as actual alternatives somehow.

It is quite interesting how women often are the first in line to victim-blame in such situations. Almost like they feel discomforted by someone who had the courage to come forward.

100%.