I think one must be very credulous of the motives of politicians to accept that self-imposed state paralysis was an attempt to fight corruption and not an attempt to make the case for privatization more compelling. Neoliberal dismantling of state capacity has been a bipartisan goal for the last 50 years.
Not to diminish your point because all fields should be unionized, but nurses and teachers are drastically underpaid and overworked, despite many of them having unions.
Well the moral argument is obviously false on its face.
But the microchips argument is also bizarre. Taiwan isn't the only country that makes microchips. In fact the US has been spending large amounts of money to stand up domestic chip manufacturing. And China is also the leading global supplier of plenty of other commodities. Why is it that only matters for microchips?
It's also common knowledge that the more often you build something, the lower its price tends to go as that knowledge spreads. It's part of the reason it's so expensive to build trains in the US and so cheap in South Korea and Spain.
I don't think smell is even in the top 50 reasons that people end up with their partners, consciously or subconsciously.
If anyone's done a test of whether long-term partners generally adhere to those pheromone rules I'd consider that interesting, but initial attraction, scent-based or otherwise, isn't what determines long-term compatibility with a person.
Designing a street so that people naturally drive a given speed is a pretty well-solved problem and you don't have to expand the surveillance state to do it. Also it usually makes the road more pleasant for everyone!
The Missouri state government is a crucial piece of the puzzle there.