I keep getting this feeling that we're in late-stage capitalism because of how all the oligarchs are maximizing extraction:

* Facebook with this and its new scraping rules for business accounts

* Turning Venezuela into a fiefdom

* Skydance merger

and on and on. But it's not late stage. It's just capitalism and we'll be reading about the same behavior 10 years from now.

Venezuela wasn’t working (for its own people) in its previous state either, so it’s pretty hilarious to talk like America is ruining it.

Ask the average citizen there in a couple years, and if they’re not better off than they were under their dictator, I’ll eat crow.

(No real dispute on the other two examples).

I hope you're right. I do wish there was another way to get to what you are describing besides the same strong-arm tactics that the U.S. used to subjugate many other countries in Latin America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...