Counterintuitively, a bureaucrat making a mistake and being unable to fix a problem is often great for their career. When a problem isn't solved, it'll usually just get more money thrown at it. A bureaucrat will get even more power and influence through a mistake. When a bureaucrat is competent and actually fixes a problem, they might get their funding pulled because the problem isn't as dire. Great incentives for success!

I hate this meme because nobody should have to ever learn how to do taxes :)

To me, this comment glows.

There's never any reason to kill yourself when any hope still remains.

Personally, I think the vaccine is more likely to have fertility related side-effects than mass deaths.

Alternative platforms, and decentralized technologies have sprung up everywhere.

The big blocker is payment systems. Any alt-tech platform that tries to go against the grain gets their infrastructure (hosting, domain registrar, DDOS mitigation, email, payments, etc) leaned on by the usual activists. This is highly effective in shutting down many alternative services after they achieve some base level of popularity and get on the radar screen.

I believe that various crypto technologies will largely solve this in the long-run, but it's going to be a while before you can easily run a business without being blocked by the usual suspects at MasterCard, PayPal, etc.