Perhaps you should rephrase this as "calls for nationalization run counter to my own free-market ideology" rather than a) assuming you know what everybody else thinks, and b) suggesting that conventional wisdom should dictate the bounds of acceptable discourse.
Not to mention, plenty of countries — the US included — have successfully nationalized companies and entire industries.
Its so crazy to me that some Americans label abstract ideas as evil. Communism == evil. Socialism == evil. Many welfare programs == evil. Immigrant labor == evil. High minimum wage == evil. Some languages, religions, cultures == evil. Stop subverting the English language because you're too lazy to check a thesaurus. None of those things are evil.
They are, rather, making a statement about strategy and messaging in American politics; a point which has borne out in countless political contests over the past decade alone. There is a reason why Republicans try to say "socialis(t/ism)" as often as possible. It works.
One example off the top of my head is Florida during the most recent presidential election. The Republicans beat the drums of socialism broadly and especially targeted at Cuban-Americans who immediately think of Castro. Voters who might otherwise skew towards Biden went Trump.
Again, that's one example, but the point is about _messaging_ and how the electorate in America broadly (not 100%, everywhere, etc.) responds to "socialism". (Nationalization being, of course, clearly tied to socialism.)
Whatever bad things you see with ATT and Comcast are actually a direct result of city granted monopolies which will likely be ended by Musk's Starlink sooner or later.
"city-granted monopolies", are you kidding? The monopolies exist because of non-competition arrangements between companies. A city can't have anything but a monopoly when only one company willing to run cable because they've made everybody else agree to keep off their turf.
And starlink won't save anybody. For one thing, satellite internet already exists, you can buy it from providers like Viasat, DirecTV, and Hughesnet: it's expensive and the latency is outrageous because of the speed-of-light distance to satellites.
I get that you're just reciting the propaganda talking points that you've heard from news organizations and media properties (which are all now owned by telecom monopolies thanks to all the cash they have to spare from the extremely profitable telecom business, funny how that works), but a person can hope.
Starlink latency is materially improved from traditional satellite internet providers. 20ms vs 500ms. Conflating them borders on equivocation.
This happens regardless of how extreme or radical the proposal is, so why start from a position of compromise? This is what happens when one party cries "wolf" for 40 years.
Why should it be off the table? Does the average person even give a shit about the public/private status of Intuit? I get conservatives will complain but they will (and do) literally call ANY improvement to the IRS Communism. Is the hope that if you play language games they’ll see the light?
Intuit aren't alone in this scheme. There must be people who think taxes should be complex and scary, so would be against making it easy and convenient. What I wonder though is: aren't there any such people in the rest of the developed world where filing taxes IS simple?
Yes, that solution is obvious, and has been for quite a while. The problem is that Intuit et al, through their lobbying, are blocking it. So the problem that needs solving now is how to block that lobbying.
> There must be people who think taxes should be complex and scary, so would be against making it easy and convenient. What I wonder though is: aren't there any such people in the rest of the developed world where filing taxes IS simple?
Most countries' politics are a lot more sane than the USA's, so such people aren't able to exert quite the same perverse amount of power through "lobbying" -- i.e. bribery, thinly disguised as "campaign contributions" -- as in the USA. (Oh sure, most countries have at least some of that shit, in various forms. But few, on the whole, as bad as the USA.)
Populism changes the equation. Populism blurs the left/right split.
Populists of all political persuasions can get behind nationalizing Intuit.
Political note: calls for nationalisation, in American politics, is a gift to the other side. It lets one paint the opposition as extremists without grounding in U.S. Constitutional law or the economic history of countries that regularly expropriate property.
I get the impulse. But literally any other phrasing—massive fines, criminal prosecution, open-licensing requirements, et cetera—is more productive for any aim other than blowing steam.