On the upside, he had a starring role in a good show.

The 'rule' (at least as it came to the project management world from the back of an automobile workshop in Virginia) is generally 'two out of three' - which you achieve (cheap and good). Those who want the third as well are doomed to disappointment throughout life, and it's their own fault.

Even more the popularity/prevalence of the bayonet charge by the later 18th century.

Except that won't work. The problem isn't 'the foreigners', it's that regulation is happening at the wrong scale - national instead of international. The scope of government needs to shift again for it all to work - fighting against technology is a losing proposition.

Yes, the nation state is no longer a fully functional form of government because communication and weaponry technologies have once more made the scope of government too small. This has happened repeatedly throughout history. Until we accept it and figure out what to do about it, we're stuck.

It's just a statistical quirk. In any group of people of sufficient size, there will be people being arseholes. As the size of the group increases, the probability of arseholism at any point in time approaches unity. 🤓

I think all it would require is to give VPs for siphoning money into a specific set of pockets. Have owners of property and businesses try to maximise their profits, and reward shaping policies to facilitate this via cost minimisation and monopoly leveraging.