He had a miniature Babbage engine powered by an alcohol fueled Stirling engine installed in his abdomen to help him analyze economic data. The cover story was that he was a fat alcoholic.

"We've mostly explored one"

Not even close to 'mostly'. The land areas often have areas very little understood, we can't find a crashed airliner in the ocean, we know very little of the crust though some discoveries of extremophiles underground hint at some weird biology and chemistry, and can't even get sol microbes into the lab without killling them. Before we try to understand other planets it might be a good idea to understand Earth first.

You have to start somewhere.

There is no guarantee of that. Deregulation created the nightmare of air travel we have today. Deregulation caused the market crash of 2007 and the ensuing depression. In fact lack of regulation caused every crash and depression in the 1800s.

"The Market" did not work even before laws were passed. Monopolies are a natural state of of "Market" Capitalism. See the monopolies that sprang up even before maasive government intervention, e.g. in the 1800s. There is a market capture attractor which develops when a business becomes a certain size and develops a certain market share. See also MS as an example, it was a monopoly even without gov't intervention.

And I use quotes around "The Market" as the definition is nebulous to begin with.

Yes there was a market for utilities and in some places there there still are some. See the history of phone companies for what happens when utilities are left to a market. Dozens of providers with incompatible systems followed by a monopoly.

I have had arguments over this. People in various fora have asked what programming languages they should learn. I always put assembly in my list. But is it really important enough to learn these days? Is hardware still relevant?

Easy problem to solve, just export them to SimAuschwitz.

A nice GUI for Postgresql. Check out what tools they are using. Do a few walk throughs with a debugger to see how it works.

you can dance with fish

But nodejs s bad rock star tech!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

When in danger or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.

p. 101. Herman Wouk: THE CAINE MUTINY. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc. 1951. (p. 120 of the 1954 Doubleday pb ed.)

Heinlein lifted a lot of things. And it seems to be even older than that if google can be trusted

Seriously, this is IT 101. I am used to having drills every 6 months.

Would this amount to a poll tax?

Well, Economics already is doing it. But without ethical guidelines.