Originally I wasn't making a serious argument and more of just a funny quip. But I'll bite:

Per machine licensing, service contracts, certification programs, a large suite of costly add-on applications, different licensing for VMs, licensing limits on number of CPU sockets, etc.

I'm going to guess that a Microsoft-based deployment is going to be quite a bit more costly than OpenBSD. Especially in data center and SOHO server where a relatively barebones OS is going to be able to meet the mission requirements. Like why put your authoritative DNS server on Windows, that's just asking for trouble with added expense.

A very long time ago, I setup a Windows network for a company; it used NFS and RADIUS and a little bit of Samba for the initial login scripts. Doubtful it's the way someone would approach the problem of providing a non-Microsoft way to bring Windows clients into their network, but the tools we had were different back then. (and NFS support was a bit more wide spread)

So why pay more to get less with Microsoft?

I could do with fewer parallels to 1930's Germany

Feudalism seems cool, let's do that but with technology.

I'll rent my apartment from my boss and he can evict me if I work for a competitor. Seems fair, just people making contracts. No government needed, not even when security escorts me off the premises.

Adjusted for inflation, the federal government simply spend less on education than we used to (ref1). And that doesn't even account for the fact that the population has grown.

Not that per student spending is the only or best metric to measure education. You could look at college graduation rates, in 1980 it's 16.2% and by 2020 it's 37.5%, so by that metric we're doing very well. (sorry, Statisa won't provide me the source unless I pay the money. I had a hard time finding the 1980 graduation rates)

Looking at the statistic of "Attained Tertiary Education" on wikipedia, which convenient has linked reference.
    USA 43.1% (ref2)
    China 16.1% (ref3)

From that point of view, the USA is winning. Right?
Not really, it's also a bad metric (I chose it intentionally). Take into account China's long-term strategy, which is no open secret. We saw a dramatic increase in the influx of Chinese students into American Universities, becoming the dominate source of international students for US schools. And now we see their numbers going back down, after Chinese Universities were built and expanded over the years. We would of course expect a shift, with cheaper and improved schools in China reducing the number of foreign students applying to US schools.

Long-term what does this even mean?
It means China has a plan and they have been executing on that plan for decades.

What's the US's plan?

*ref1: Education Spending Declined During 80’s, Report Says
*ref2: S1501 - Educational Attainment
*ref3: 4-4 Population aged 25 and over by region, sex, and educational attainment

New and improved! Now with 21st century anarcho-capitalism in every bite.

Then why should anyone put the effort in to watching it?
That's the problem with AI slop. You cut humans out of one end of the equation but don't realize that also is going to remove humans for the other end.

The media executives of the world must think we're all pretty stupid if they think that your average consumer is OK with ever decreasing quality of content. It gets to a point where watching grass grow is more entertaining than confusing moronic slop, and nobody is getting paid then.

You might wake up to the smell of bacon only to find a cop installing a key logger dongle on your DragonflyBSD machine.

Weird! How could this happen. All we did was freeze or remove federal spending for education in every decade since 1980. And suddenly we're behind after 45 years. I wonder why feeding colleges and universities thousands of unprepared students should have such a negative impact on our higher education and research programs. Well, we better tighten up our borders and stop accepting immigrants into our universities just to be sure...

The trouble with black and white is sometimes you miss the magnitude of difference.

Little outfit called Piepeople Consulting.

Normally the agency that is most appropriate for carrying out regulation of AI commerce, the FTC, would not be under any obligation to follow an executive order. But Andrew Ferguson will almost certainly go along with whatever Trump wants.

The federal government is nearing the point of being a failed state.

I was offered FTE from Cisco and when I refused they terminated my contract. The full-time offer was a paycut with worse healthcare than I got through the contracting agency.

Put it up on Steam, just break it up into 72 500GB DLCs.