The right solution is vehicles on rails, which solve the steering, tire dust, and tire inefficiency problems. All of the attempts to make cars make sense in this age are wasted effort. Cars make sense for some situations, but not the one we're in now where we have way too many of them for our own good.

"You could outlaw those payday loan companies and it would not make any of the people who do business with them less poor."

Yes, that's one way to paraphrase what I wrote.

Some of us want everyone to have what they need more than we want some people to have more than they can use, and see anything else as not only heartless and sociopathic, but literally insane.

"To date, the net effect of "disruptive" businesses has been an overall increase in prosperity and opportunity."

I reject your framing. The effect of modern capitalism is destruction of our life support system for temporary profit and it is predicated upon the murders of millions.

If they only cared about small government, yes, they would. That is, if they were actually conservatives. But what they mostly want is for people they don't like to suffer. What is logical or provides for the most people at the lowest cost is irrelevant to them.

Slavery still works, and it's still going on.

For example in the US the 13th amendment explicitly protects slavery as punishment for a crime. And we do still have prison labor. A few states have outlawed it.

California just voted not to outlaw it, so we are now WILLFULLY a slave state.

Your assessment of companies' real value would be spot on if stock markets didn't exist, or even if they implemented some kind of systems for slowing trade, didn't allow HFT and so on. But we don't live in that world, and things are still worth what someone is willing to pay for them, so I'm reality their actual value is fluid.

I would like to live in the world you described, but we don't.

Are these plantations just for essential oils?

Seems like you could grow them on more marginal land. Eucs grow well practically everywhere warm.

"You can argue that fewer people in another country are employed by this company now, but is that really the concern?"

It's not the company's concern, it's not the CEO's concern, it's not our government's concern. We don't allow economic refugees even when our actions directly destroy their economy, let alone this.

It does make it disingenuous to claim that headcount was not reduced, but everyone expects to be lied to, so...

Statistically nobody is buying guns in specific colors for legally beneficial reasons, or in fact any reason but cosmetic, unless they are black guns which they want to be harder to see at night, or camo guns, similar. I bet there's more people buying them in neon colors in the hopes that they will be confused with toys than anyone buying them in bright colors so that they can be seen. Your best bet in court is that everyone is confused about what happened, and your lawyer can convince the court or jury that you did what you were supposed to.

What I notice about Costco eggs is that the shells are fragile but the membranes are strong, so they are virtually impossible to open one-handed. In fact, they are damned hard to crack properly at all, and even if they seem to have cracked right, they still often crumble into a big mess when you try to open them.

Anyone out there know enough about chickens to know why this is happening? Are the membranes the same as ever but they're just not giving them enough calcium?

Correct except for the dedicated specialty hardware part. You can already stream the games to other platforms. They will add more to get more chances to get subscriptions.

"While the name itself is now public, the features of Ubuntu 26.04 remain under wraps."

Who wants any distribution whose details are secret until the release? If how the sausages are made is that scary, it's TOO scary.

"These findings reveal persistent patterns of financial strain that raise serious concerns about the long-term effects of these loans"

No, these are the long term effects of crony capitalism. The loans are more symptom than problem. The people taking them out to meet basic needs are already facing the real problem. They are broke in a society that is happy to let you die if you are poor.

The relevance of load following is based on the demand. The availability of load following is based on the supply. So no, you have that exactly backwards. I think I shall not waste time on the rest of your comment since you're 100% wrong right up front.