I agree. The likes of Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Wagner and Dvorak just can't be beat.

After this, you will have to engage the services of a bespoke tailor to obtain a suit of clothing. Poors that cannot afford to do so will have to purchase theirs from the rag merchants on the street.

... the vodka?

Oh please don't do that. It might force the revisiting of dark matter, dark energy and all the other cruft tacked on to save current theories.

And we're already pretty busy defending phlogiston.

</sarcasm>

We can For $6.25 +$5.00.

Heck, for that, I'd venture a guess that gangs will descent upon stores. Rolling carts out and then having an accomplice collect the return fee.

Why didn't Waymo tack an extra $11.25 fee onto the rider's bill for not closing the fucking door?

Perhaps if LLMs started throwing a few insults and denigrating epithets out with their response, people would stop questioning them.

Are you sure?

And take the most successful line of EVs with him?

Ask the Federal Reserve.

This is just a wild divergence from reality. You have stated nothing to support your position. For example, here in Washington State, Democrat legislators tried to stop the practice of hair stylists from working as independent contractors by renting booths in salons by making that practice illegal. The stylists mounted a protest, backed by a public initiative campaign to basically tell the state to f** off. And the state did (for the time being). The state's arguments were much the same as those made for other gig workers like Uber drivers. And yet, the stylists took the position that they would rather forego the "benefits" of unemployment insurance and be personally responsible to pay their own industrial insurance, business and occupation taxes, etc. Rather than becoming employees.

But then I'm not surprised how easily you have bought everything that you have been told, regardless of easy access to facts that run contrary to your belief system.

0.000000294 Bitcoin has been added to your account (And now I have your wallet address).

How does that measure up against The Little Lord Fauntleroy Academy for Albino Hemophiliacs?

The gig economy is a work-around for wage and benefit taxation. Gig workers are basically sole proprietor businesses. Who (if they are smart) can take advantage of the tax and other regulations which have an admittedly anti-labor, pro-business bias.

I don't want to be an employee. The tax and other economic advantages of being self employed are just too great. But the federal government and my (blue) state conspire to make that difficult. People keep telling me "Oh, but you really WANT those yummy benefits as an employee." Not really. I can buy them cheaper in the open market than having a corporate benefits manager skim off the top. And if being an employee was so great, the big government proponents wouldn't have to keep organizing astroturf battles to sell the idea.

When I started out on a new job, doing FAA certification work for aircraft systems, as soon as I figured out that it was mostly bullshit work to keep the regulators snowed, they moved me aside (same company, different job).

Yes. Adding Chinese code to all the telematics they are adding to our products.