They even ambush me every time I go to the grocery store. And they’ve doubled my bill since I signed up. Why bother marketing when you can raise rates whenever you want? They could save so much money by not mailing every day and hiring people to hunt me

Doesn’t that ultimately punish not the company, but anyone who lent money or sold material to the company? Usually assets would be liquidated to pay off creditors but if all the assets go to employees creditors don’t get paid. This really hurts all the small businesses who sold supplies or materials to the company and haven’t been paid for them yet.

And of course, this all ignores the fact that for most companies most of their valuation is in their intellectual property, mainly their brand identity and recognition. And for manufacturing company’s, even most of the tangible assets are going to be things like factory buildings and equipment. Those things are all highly specialized so it’s very difficult to get someone else to come in and use that space to the same level of productivity. That will result in major damage to the local economy when a huge source of tax revenue and jobs suddenly disappears.

I’m not saying all this because I think companies should get away with whatever they want. Not at all. I just want to give some context for why these “obvious solutions” aren’t being used. It’s not that the entire world is in some conspiracy. Many of these problems are legitimately very difficult to solve.

where is the money going to come from if they can’t sell anything?

What do you mean no choice? There’s always a choice.

Realistically many people don’t have a choice to buy, because they don’t have the credit score, reliable income, or down payment, but I don’t see why that blame falls on landlords and not on the banks or the government?

Landlords take on risk. For example, when I rented an apartment, I came home one day to a plumbing disaster. I called emergency maintenance and left. The landlord fixed it and paid for my hotel in the meantime. As a home owner now, that would be entirely on me to figure out. I’m pretty handy, but I have no disrespect for someone who doesn’t want to be responsible for that.

More importantly, selling a house costs about 10% of the value of the house, and the first few years of a mortgage you’re mostly paying interest. If you move every 3 years, it’s actually cheaper to rent than to buy. It’s just that your money is going to a landlord instead of to banks and realtors.

So while I see your argument that landlords don’t “deserve” the money they make, practically they’re an important part of the housing market, and I respect people who make an informed decision to rent.

Some games still do AoE 4 has the HD assets as an optional DLC so you can decide whether it’s worth the drive space/download time.

Blame the great vowel shift.

But also, English spelling can’t standardize because English pronunciation isn’t standard. West Coast vs Midwest vs South vs East Coast have vastly different accents. Any spelling reform that makes English phonetic for one would be wrong for the others.

And it keeps changing! People keep moving and interacting with other languages, adding and dropping words and accents over time.