"Problem is ICE users are forcing their fumes and brake dust on everyone".

Electric vehicles don't have brakes? That's exciting news.

Easily explained. Americans are among the world's most gullible people, many of them love virtue-signalling, and quite a few of them still have more money than sense.

I think it has more to do with George Carlin's observation:

"Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!"

Not really. But "the mean" is an abstraction - it is very useful for some purposes, but only if it is clearly understood.

I remember that the psychologist and statistician Kahneman had a story about how the Israeli air force decided to design a new "one size fits all" seat for its jet fighters. After many complaints and some injuries, a survey was done and it was discovered that this seat - painstakingly designed to fit the average pilot - did not in fact fit perfectly any one pilot in the whole air force. It was a perfect fit for the average pilot, but not for any real pilot.

I couldn't locate a reference, as the Web is chock full of the Kahneman and Tversky lesson about regression to the mean.

"Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy".

Ironic, yes. Surprising, no. Yet again, government accomplishes exactly the opposite of what it aims to do.

An intelligent, educated, engaged population is the key to civilisation and democracy.

At present the USA and most of the West are on 0/3, which, I believe, is called striking out.

"Astrophysicist Professor Valentina Zharkova explains that instead of CO2, it is the Sun that drives the climate change and because of its decreasing activity we should be ready for a colder period".
https://www.freedom-research.o...

"Project To Suck Carbon Out of Sea Begins in UK (bbc.com)"

Where else would such an imbecilic and wasteful idea even be proposed?

And who else but the BBC would talk it up?

"In a recent interview with Wired, Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan discusses his book Why We Die, in which he argues that death is not genetically programmed but rather a consequence of evolution favoring reproduction over longevity".

Yes - through genes that program death.

Did you remember the Roman and Aztec Empires? The "Soviet bloc" came to a decisive end a third of a century ago. (If you ignore small parts of the UK).

It's a moral trend. Many people are eager to find clever shortcuts to wealth and fame.

"This one simple trick..."

History also suggests that war does little or nothing to improve air quality. Vast clouds of smoke from burning fuel and ammunition dumps all the way down the diesel smoke belched by almost all military vehicles...

I bought one about six years ago. An HP model, which still works perfectly. I recommend Exact Audio Copy and ImgBurn, both free and craftsmanlike.

Yes - I took Economics 101 long ago, too. For some reason it didn't explain that the process works equally well in reverse - where the companies simply agree to stick to a given standard of high price, poor quality, and rotten service.

But, I hear you cry, what about anti-trust laws and suchlike that forbid "cartels" and conspiracies against the customer?

They are, if possible, even less enforceable than the laws against ripping DVDs. And breaking them is much, much more lucrative.

"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [dealers], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it".
- Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary".
  - Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"