Property is an easy one:

Don’t tax us and we’ll bring jobs to your area.

I mean yeah

Just like how US conquered all of Vietnam and Afghanistan.

US would lose a land war with Iran. They’d lose it spectacularly too.

Iran is on a level so much worse than even Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, there are some mountains, but they are in the middle. The Taliban fucked off into the mountains and they couldn't do jack.

Iran on the other hand is a plateau fortress lined by mountains on all (accessible to US/western allies) sides. A land invasion of Iran means no supply lines and no way out. The words "one does not simply" come to mind. It is essentially the ultimate meat grinder unless you can win decisively in days, which is impossible because the entire apparatus you are trying to destroy is distributed within aforementioned mountains and operates with decentralised/autonomous command that has been preparing for this exact eventuality (being invaded by an opponent with vastly more firepower and overwhelming air superiority) for the last 40 years. Not to mention absolute fucking hellscape it will be for troops on the ground with FPV drones and Shahed flying into clusters of US marines and being broadcast on Telegram.

A land invasion of Iran is empire suicide. You can't win, you can't go home and you are left with just pouring an infinite amount of resources and lives into the most asymmetric and geographically hostile theatre of all time.

The land of Iran has changed hands many times throughout history. I think we need to avoid some level of historical / geographical determinism. The terrain is a problem but a solvable one for a sufficiently committed power / alliance. We can look back in history at e.g. the Anglo-Soviet invasion.

But the commitment does not exist at present. No one wanted this apart from a few hawks and the Israeli security establishment.

If the US were ruled by a dictator and had no market forces, the US could obviously conquer any of the above. It would just come at such immense cost and require such horrors that a voting public and a responsive market make it politically untenable to actually pursue. Which is good!

We do basically have this, kinda, with not being able to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions.

The law however is only as good as it is being enforced. And if recent events is anything to go by, not having this data is generally the strongest protection.

I think you're right and I think it's because Microsoft behaves a bit like PE.

Yeah the two provinces people actually want to live in.

Which is why their housing prices are higher. Strange that, isn't it?

Kind of a stupid system if it forces people not to live in the places they want, eh?

Main thing is the US is a significantly better deal than Canada is, for an educated Canadian. And migrating to the US as an educated Canadian is very easy.

Literally one of the most productive states of the entire world btw

It's not even close too.

Honestly if you can’t protest at a public meeting then you dont have free speech.

The fact that someone can actually ask you to leave a public meeting like this implies some sort of weird authority that genuinely should not exist.

Those are more like aristocracies or oligarchies than dictatorships though. Though maybe those are not the best descriptions of Iran either

There is a long tradition of calling rule without care for the ruled 'tyranny'. Aristotle considered this the worst perversion of the best form of government, i.e. monarchy.

Iran has Internet access friend.