Brilliant conversation.

"Would you let kids gamble?" - "It sounds very fun and obvious." "To be clear, we think it's a horrible idea!"

Surely you mean the laws of shareholder capitalism. There are many things you can do with money, and only some of them are legally backed by rules that ensure absolute shareholder power.

Really depends on the domain. I've been in jobs where the domain was much harder than my job as a software engineer, but I've also been in jobs where I quickly got to understand the domain better than the domain experts, or at least parts of it. I believe this is not because I'm smart (I'm not), but because software engineering requires precise requirements, which requires unrelenting questioning and attention to details.

The ability to acquire domain knowledge quickly however, isn't exactly the same as the ability to develop complex software.

The source of truth in fascism is not popular support or inquiry, thus they always need to channel some privileged connection to reality, or claim to voice the true will of the people and authentically represents the pure will of the nation.

Its a farce, of course, but one that can sometimes muster enough support to keep the signs in the shop with just a bit of intimidation and violence to back it up.

Neither is 'real'. The power of might depends on belief just as much as the power of rules. You need a whole lot of compliance, even when forced by fear and terror, to just keep up a police state. The belief consists of where people think other people assign authority to, at large. But that can be just as brittle as a meme stock if the time is right.

Social reality is always constructed. No single construction is more real than any other.