That's desperately ignorant. The US government already does regulate essentially everything, and whatever it doesn't, the states or municipalities or your local fucking HOA does. The USA is massively authoritarian and has been for over a century.

It's less. Pay attention. Also, that is not a win. It means the poor are kept poor.

You want to make it illegal to give money to people? Congratulations, you just figured out how to make capitalism worse.

The $20M number was from an article circulated here. No clue how to find it today given how shit all the search engines are now.

Before Pocket existed I was using Scrapbook+ to store web pages as displayed. I am now using Singlefile because they destroyed the functionality Scrapbook+ used to access the filesystem. (It also gave a browser and a search for the stored pages.)

I got a perfectly serviceable ICEV used for $5k. It will do 80 mph all day and it gets 30 mpg. If you buy a used EV for $5k it won't work, and if it does, it will still need a new battery. I could spend $15k and get a really nice used ICEV and still have another $25k to spend on fuel before I got to the price of the EV. Someday when there are more used EVs around then maybe they will actually be cheaper for people for whom it matters.

You're literally wrong about everything.

Energy transport of liquid fuels is very expensive. It costs more than 5% while in the USA we lose less than 5% in transmission. Getting the potential energy to the wheels through an ICE means shit efficiency, under 25% and usually under 20% because peak efficiency is reached only in a very narrow range of speeds and loads. There is generally plenty of grid capacity available at night, and when you add a lot of vehicles you can do V2G for grid stabilization and it actually IMPROVES effective capacity. Batteries are highly recyclable and batteries are being recycled RIGHT NOW AS WE SPEAK.

You're a bat shit dipshit. If you actually have a Phd then I fucking weep for whatever school gave it to you.

Touché.

That's kind of my point. If you've got British monarchs on your currency, you obviously still consider yourself British. The Commonwealth is awesome, by the way, it is one big happy family of 56 former colonies!

You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

Obama wore a TAN SUIT!!! Oh, the humanity!

So "independent" agency really does mean the president can't use the agency to extort companies into punishing his "enemies"? Good to know... now how do we enforce that distinction?

You want to sign an NDA to stop your business secrets from getting out? Fine.

But that should not let you refuse to talk to the law.

Imagine a crook that says, "I am sorry, but my NDA with the Cartel prevents me from revealing how we get the Cocaine here."

That is NOT any different from a car repair business saying "I am sorry, but my NDA with TESLA prevents me from talking about the safety issues with their breaks.

Or a cop saying his NDA prevents him from revealing how he suspected the criminal.

No I am saying that no single database should exist for all of their customers.

Amazon does not need to store passwords in the same database they store the sales information in. One database could contain just their encrypted passwords and the emails.

Another could store customers names and addresses.

And each database could be under the control of a different director who gets to maintain their security in a different manner.

Also, Amazon has different businesses. No need for the kindle unlimited accounts to be in the same database as the music accounts. No need for the Whole Foods to be in the same database as the Amazon Fresh. No need for Amazon Medical to be in the same etc. etc. etc.

What is going on is that the businesses are doing things for their own convenience that endanger their customers. NO!

You want to run a business with a million customers? Fine - more power for you. But you do NOT get to run this massive industry in a way that saves you a ton of money but also puts all your customer's privacy in danger.

Just as a small business is required to take minimal steps to ensure the safety of their customer data, you - being a huge business - is required to take HUGE steps to ensure the safety of customer data.

You do not get to use your economies of scale to endanger your customers data.