> My philosophy degrees prove quite definitively that I do.

At best your degree proves that you read carefully at one time (and even that is open to doubt because your degree manifestly did not imbue you with the ability to identify logical fallacies like over-generalization and argument from authority).

> Joe Politician doesn't personally call you on the phone unless you have big money.

That depends on what you consider "big money". It only takes a few hundred dollars to get a meeting with a congressman. A few thousand will get you an audience with a senator or a governor. And once you start writing checks, your phone will be ringing constantly. It actually gets annoying after a while.

> everyone isn't against you

I never said they were. The poker analogy was not meant to imply that life is a zero-sum game, it was just meant to illustrate my actual point, which is that deception is not generally effective if you do it constantly. To be an effective deceiver you have to be judicious. You have to appear to be honest. That makes it hard to tell the difference between an honest person and an effective deceiver.

And BTW, not all deception is bad. There are "white lies". There are even professions -- magic and acting -- dedicated to honing deception literally to the level of a fine art. In the right circumstances, people actually pay good money to be deceived.

> His supporters simply don't care.

Some of them don't, but there is a significant contingent who actually believe he is telling the truth.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/21/poll-trum...

(See my point above about people paying good money to be deceived.)

> you didn't ask me what I meant either

Because it didn't matter, and it still doesn't. Any feature you describe in the non-political market, I can find you an analogy in the political market. For example:

> I reside in Wisconsin, and we have a lot of bars and taverns.

OK. You also reside on planet earth and you have a lot of national governments to choose from. About 200 in fact. If that's not enough variety for you, or if changing nationalities is too much friction for you, you can just come here to California where we have seven officially registered political parties and God only knows how many different activist organizations and fringe groups. So how is your choice of tavern different from your choice of government?

> while Apple and Google have a duopoly over operating systems, they don't have a duopoly over employment

Of course they do. If you want to make a living writing mobile apps, you can write for Apple devices or you can write for Android devices. Those are quite literally your only options.

This limited choice extends to nearly every part of software development. If you want to write desktop apps, you have two and a half choices: MacOS, Windows, or Linux (that's the half-a-choice because no one is actually making a living writing desktop apps for Linux). If you want to write Web apps it won't be long before your only choice is Chrome. And if you want to write enterprise apps, well, you're pretty much just hosed.

Yes, there are lot of different companies for which you can go to work, but this is an illusory choice because one way or another your work will be constrained by one of the (very few) major players. It's kind of like the apparent choice you have of what hotel to stay in. On the surface it looks like there is a lot of choice, dozens of different hotel brands, but in fact they are all the same, just with different signage, because they are all owned either by Hilton or Marriott. It's the same in just about every industry. There are lots of different brands of eyeglasses but they are all owned by Luxottica. There are a lot of different restaurants, but the vast majority of them are chains.

This is not to say that there aren't any fragmented industries left -- obviously there are a few (charter private jets, for example). But the overwhelming trend is towards consolidation. And it's easy to see why: once a company starts to dominate in its industry it can use its power and influence to crush competitors even the competitors offer a superior product. That becomes a positive feedback loop and so an established leader becomes nearly impossible to dislodge unless they somehow shoot themselves in the foot or the government (!) intervenes.