The first part is really my reply to you, the rest is a disclaimer

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.

So it's a plan with no drawbacks?

I do recognize that this is an issue for the disabled, but it's unsustainable for them as well, and I reject temporary solutions that aren't backed up by permanent ones. If the plan is only to kick the can and wish for a miracle, it's a bad plan.

That's not even wrong, it's just not how anything works. You're comparing a motor to an energy storage mechanism and also ignoring efficiency at the same time.

Monthly payments matter. Also when people are poor and can't afford big payments and the vehicles are very expensive then they wind up spending a lot in interest. TCO matters but so does monthly cost.

They have existed for decades. What did you actually mean to say?

No military of consequence is going to shift to purely electric vehicles any time soon because of refueling times alone, but in number of roles an EV has an advantage because it's quiet and reliable. If you can deliver a tanker truck, then you can deliver a generator.

Most of my coworkers have to go out of county for even fairly basic medical care because there isn't anything available here and wait times can be into the months. I had referrals for over a year that I never even got a call back on. It's not clear why you think that the USA has functional medical care, but in many cases and places it very much does not.

It depends on how you define it. If you think of it from a purely mineral basis then sure, the arctic is not looking at many changes. If you're thinking about the animal life that is there, it's in trouble. We are not the only animals on this mudball.

I want gig workers to receive a living wage whether I am doing business with them or not, but this is the wrong way to try to accomplish that.

The right way is to change the employment laws such that they have to be paid decently, and to raise the minimum wage if necessary, etc.

Trying to solve the problem with tips is completely wrong. They're supposed to be an expression of appreciation above and beyond what you need to survive, not the basis of survival. Trying to trick the customer into paying that indirectly is some bootlicking bullshit which also disguises the true cost of survival.

That's not the argument. The argument is (actually, arguments are):

1) It wasn't worth $20M, they could have done the same thing in house for less
2) It shouldn't have been built in, it should have been an add-on, they could have shipped it with the browser.

1 is the most pertinent given the story we're discussing, but 2 is also important. By putting it into the browser instead of making it an extension when there's absolutely no need for it to be built in, they forced it on users. They also have a Microsoftesque habit of turning on things you've turned off when you do an update, which is sometimes achieved by simply not doing anything rational with users' config settings when the code has changed and their meaning now differs, so that you have to refresh your profile to make the browser work correctly.

Firefox should have less stuff built into it, not more.