I've increasingly been referring to them as the States of America.

That actually would be an excellent policy for the consumer. "Need to take a shit? Better help me solve this problem ASAP." Companies would never agree to it because it puts the CSR on the customer's side.

Look. The mega-rich aren't without blame. Granted. But it's a counter-productive point.

Why? Because the environmental impact of those individuals is minuscule compared to us normies en mass. There are 45,000 passenger flights per day handled by the FAA. Statistically, mathematically, factually... those 90 flights don't matter.

Thinking about the mega-rich is just yet another way of shifting responsibility. You can't control their behavior and even if you forbade that wedding, the reduction in pollution output is irrelevant. Mandating a one-tenth MPG improvement in mileage for commuter cars would be astronomically more effective. But no, the American populace voted in the guy who's busy cancelling every pollution regulation he can find. Those votes... those mattered. Not Bezos' wedding.

Next time you or a loved-one is looking at an F-150 or an Expedition or a Wrangler remember... that's what you have control over. And that's what matters. Also, when you're thinking "that's not fair; Bezos gets to fly in his friends so why do I have to make sacrifices and buy a less-massive car", remember your life isn't fair. Most people on the planet are worse-off than almost every Western citizen. If things were fair, you'd be struggling in Somalia or most of Africa, or Central-America or South America.

Corollary: the problem with not being on the cusp of something is you aren't nearly there, and you're guaranteed you won't be there soon.

All I'm saying is that while counting your chickens before they hatch isn't wise, recognizing that a clutch of eggs currently being incubated for what they are is.

The OP made a comment about European cars in a reply. I can say that in my (Canadian) Ioniq 5N it's both completely optional (ie. can be permanently disabled in a menu) and trivial to override. I prefer being further left than lane center, especially when there's someone to my right or there are parked cars. A baby finger of pressure is plenty to push me there.

I'm not disputing your experience. And apparently there's more variance in implementation than I was aware. But it's certainly not universally a big deal.

Or... "incorporate them into your driving routine and learn when to use them and when to ignore them".

"Force" overstates the matter significantly.

First, I can't name a car where the function isn't optional-on-demand. Meaning that you can press a button to disable it entirely.
Second, the steering wheel always overrides lane-assist. If you want to stay further left or right than the car encourages, you can totally do that.

Lane assist is really there as a safety-net for attention-lapses. Shut it off when you're in heavy traffic or inclement weather... unless visibility is poor and you've got Highway Driving Assist (HDA) which augments optical lane-assist with GPS.

My latest car has a bunch of these nanny functions and I've learned that they're just like any other tool; if you incorporate them into your driving routine and learn when to use them and when to ignore them, they're actually beneficial.

Interesting point, but I think it really depends on what you're measuring. If you're Netflix and you're measuring growth of your subscriber base, at some point every human has a subscription and you flatline, disregarding population numbers. If you're digging oil wells and pumping barrels of stuff with a finite supply, at some point you run out of supply. If you're growing corn, at some point you run out of land.

But... if you're looking at the big picture and you're including things like pumping out non-physical things like Marvel movies or Murderbot stories or Mario Brothers games or celebrity voicemail greetings, you can churn out an effectively infinite supply of that. As long as inflation is a thing, you'll be able to charge for those things. Economic growth really depends on consumption. As long as we invent money (which includes just trading things), never-ending growth is possible.

I think "the term us used to convince people" is incomplete. If you started a conversation about these with a layperson, at some point the question "what is it about these that makes them different" is going to arise. At some point after that, the layperson is going to latch onto their resistance to breaking down as a key property and THEY are likely to come up with something very like "forever chemical" as a layperson;s shorthand. The term isn't inherently loaded. And yes, there are many, many stable, eternal molecules out there. Which, if you talk to the layperson long enough, the ideas of what is and isn't safe in the body will come up. Personally I'm skeptical about all the microplastic worry but knowing about them, regulating them until we know they're safe... makes sense to me. Point is... the term isn't manipulative; it's useful and intuitive.

You're not wrong but that's not the point. From the article, there's apparently already a scientific chemical definition. The issue is that this new group is trying to apply a different, pro-economy definition pretty much to evade regulations. "Forever chemicals" is just the public-facing name used by media to shorthand what they're about.

"The judges referred the lawyers in both cases to their professional regulators, but did not take more serious action."

It's always fun when the summary - let alone the article - demonstrates the headline to be bullshit.

I'd love for post-scarcity Star Trek to happen. I just don't see how we get there from here. We're firmly in supply & demand territory and nowhere near escaping it. Resources are very finite on Earth and there isn't enough to go around. Minerals for batteries for instance... there isn't enough for everyone to have all the battery things we might want. In the very short term (say 20 to 50 years) the hypothetical grandchildren will be largely unemployable. We're not going to be mining the asteroid belt in that timeframe. So where does the shift to post-scarcity come from? When do the Bezos/Musk types let go of their concentrated wealth and suddenly start acting in ways that generate wealth and prosperity for all?

Your positivity is admirable, but I'm afraid misplaced. Your hypothetical grandchildren will have no marketable assets or skills to justify a slice of the world's resources. Labour, creativity, ability in general are all being obsoleted. The only option in the future for individual prosperity is to be friends/family of the billionaires who own the machines that do everything. How do they justify a nice meal when they have nothing to contribute? The rich won't suddenly stop extracting wealth from everywhere they can, so... what's left for anyone else?

Anonymous Coward (They/Them)

Cars manufactured now are better. Cars manufactured before 1997 aren't better now. Which is why the need for those regulations, banning those thirty-year-old cars from use in certain areas.