that the companies are _former_ employers as that the companies are _future_ employers.

This is problematic. When you sign up for a regulatory agency to participate in the agency legislating the regulations, there should be a mandatory period of at least 10 years after you leave during which you cannot be employed by anyone in the industry you regulated, and especially, accepting any reward or promise of potential future employment should be illegal.

The problem is that the FCC has limited regulatory power unless it reclassifies Internet access as a telecommunications service, which is considered the "nuclear option."

How about instead, they reclassify the Cable line or Wireless Data as the telecommunications service and say Provide competing IP providers equal access to the Cable or Wireless Data link to customer facilities, Or Else: All services over that link are telco services for you, including internet, by stating that A telecommunications service always exists for every end-user connection..

So an ISP is not a telecommunication service, BUT the Internet service itself carried over an exclusively owned link to the customer facility IS a telecommunications service UP to the protocol layer where the customer first has choice of who to direct packets to.

In other words: conditional classification. Not all internet services necessarily have to be classified the same. Let's start organizing and classifying IP service for regulation based on the characteristics of the service.

I say, we let them go!

When they get photocopied for distribution

You just said photocopied for distribution. The digital photocopier takes an image of the document and then reproduces it ---- the photocopier is a perfect place to save a copy of the image to a hard drive or USB stick for later dissemination/leakage.

However, small mom & pop shops stayed open, using a hand ledger and accepting cash. I was actually in one store buying supplies that was operating by candlelight.

Not surprising.... big box stores can afford to close, and it's likely cheaper for them to plan to do so.

Which is also one of the reasons local governments should make sure that big box stores can't get 100% of the business for essential goods.

There is much to be said about having $20,000 or so in emergency cash tucked away in your safety deposit vault at a bank with 24x7 access to your locker, just in case the SHTF.

An attacker would need my LastPass password (which is not, itself, stored in my LastPass vault); my physical YubiKey; and the knowledge to use both in tandem, in order to gain access to my LastPass account.

Yes, because the Lastpass website enforces this two factor scheme.

On the other hand, once it's open on your computer: the entire database is available for RAM-scraping malware to take a peek.

Or to decrypt using only the master password, since, as I understand: it's just the Lastpass website that requires the 2-factor, before allowing your software to download the DB.

How do you get that foul chloride dioxide back out of your water?

You leave it in there all the way to the end user, so that the treated water can help disinfect the entire system.

If the user so desires, they can remove it through simple aeration. What the end user won't be able to easily remove (without filtering) is the actual chlorine you need to treat the water with or the fluoride that you add.

The electrical grid is anything but reliable.

It's simply unacceptable to say, that if the power goes out, then we're screwed and can no longer trade.

We need the ability to trade regardless of operating on or off the grid, and plastic or cashless methods can't do that.

Actually I'd argue it is the government's job to protect cultural value; that's precisely why they fund libraries and museums.

No..... libraries and museums are common goods which the public wants and everyone benefits equally from, and preservation of cultural history is one of the benefits. It is the job of the government to support such common goods, as long as there is majority support for the good.

Without government support, then there would be the problem of freeriders --- people who paid nothing in the long run, would get just as much benefit from the existence of the good as those who did pay for the construction of the library or museum.

It's the central purpose of government to provide a structure to help fund such goods, by requiring a majority to agree --- then everyone has to pay their equal share (relative to the benefit they and their descendants will derive from that good over their lifetimes), no freeriders, no tragedy of the commons.

And when they don't have it they order it directly from the publisher. Hence they definitely have a useful cultural role.

So you're saying that since there's a portion of the population interested in buying 5-6 year old books, the folks offering those need to be protected against competition on sales for the newest bestsellers?

That's ridiculously anti-consumer.

If the population of aficionados for older books is so small that they cannot support these businesses, or if after visiting the local library, their needs were met and they don't need to buy old books, then these businesses by definition don't have sufficient value for society anymore.

Public policy should not be based on nostalgia. It's not the government's job to try to protect "cultural value" either.

that supermarkets would only stock bestsellers and that smaller shops were necessary to ensure the availability of more specialized, less popular books.

Well... if they only stock bestsellers, then they've created a market opportunity for smaller shops to carry the non-bestsellers at higher prices. How do you know if a book will be a bestseller, before it sells, anyways? :)

Maybe not. The law says they need to charge shipping costs

I'm sure they are charging the shipping costs, at least on average. Amazon is a business, therefore, they need to make money off the transactions.

The costs are likely just buried in the item price, to make it easier for consumers to see what the total cost of buying that item will be ---- you think shipping is free, but it really means the item isn't discounted as much as it would otherwise be, if the shipping were charged separately.

If France pushes it.... I see Amazon changing the logic for the display of the final bill in France to display a "discount" for each item, and then offset the total discount by a Shipping line item.

I'm sure Amazon has the computer science know-how to figure out what portion of the shipping belongs to each item, after considering all the shipping costs savings that are possible by combining items in the order together in the same shipment in the most optimal manner.

The first laws passed by the First United States Congress after the ratification of the constitution were tariffs.

There were extreme situations extant at the time necessitating a tariff. And by extreme situations; I don't mean fiscal irresponsibility. I mean: there was no such thing as an income tax; the new government needed a bit of money to get on its feet, and the tarrifs were low and not a significant barrier.

Tariffs on international trade in order to fund the new government, largely the tariff was a penalty against Great Britain, and provided to help pay down the government debt. And then to help protect certain manufacturing industries just getting started in the young nation against foreign imports, so the country could begin to become self-sufficient, after surviving almost a decade of british blockades.

If the law has been broken, then it is always chargeable as a offence, even if it's as a result of stupidity not criminal intent.

This is incorrect; unless the particular act or omission rises to the level of criminal negligence, meeting the specific requirements of criminal negligence, then ignorance of the potential consequences of the act or omission is an absolute defense; if it is the case, then the act or omission cannot be a crime.

The waitress who delivers the poisoned drink to the patron is not liable for the murder, in case she was ignorant that the glass contained a poison.

It doesn't matter that she was leveraged in a murder. If she didn't know about the poison or the murder plan, then she doesn't have the criminal mind required for a charge of murder.

That is what should happen surely?

Only if someone is criminally culpable. It's more likely to just be plain stupidity, which unfortunately cannot be prosecuted, even when it's a government official.