Exactly, the first paragraphs read almost like satire.

I found the necessity to have a devastating impact on the planet's ecosystem fascinating. Even trying a "clean run" where you minimize pollution and number of killed aliens, you can't avoid the alien native's natural expansion. It's probably impossible to win without a lot killing.

That said, I don't think the game has bad intentions. It highlights the zero sum nature of resources and negatives of expansion at all costs.

It's shocking that we subsidize farmers at all. If we want people to afford food, we could just give that money to the people.

It's really not shocking. Those people could then possibly buy entirely imported food if it was cheaper and wipe out domestic agricultural. Ensuring domestic food production is geopolitics 101, above domestic energy production. A nation doesn't want its bellies depending on a foreign adversary. You aren't a sovereign nation then.

You're right. That said there are other ways to get around cheeper imported food. Why not raise the tariffs?

I just generally find it surprising that the US subsidizes an industry. It feels against the countries ideals, and I think the subsidies decrease the industry's incentives for innovation.

That's going in the opposite direction with respect to where you would like food prices to be. It's the same final outcome you're concerned with about foreign production. Food is a bare necessity for a country's people and you want those prices as low as possible. Most places make a sales tax exception on groceries for this reason. People will allow dictators to seize power if it means they don't starve. But the same direction applies in less extreme situations. With US inflation already at 7.5%, good luck stopping food subsidies, adding food taxes (tariffs), and seeing food prices lurch another 30%. Current politicians would be voted out in a flash.

Let's add more nodes so we can overfit even better!

Beef prices aren't even keeping up with inflation

Denying requests to avoid fulfilling requests

It’s a tricky topic because load shedding is a last resort that kicks in when there’s already a problem. So until auto scaling catches up or the issue is mitigated some other way, we try to make as many customers happy as possible, rather than making everyone equally unhappy.