A scooter is great if you are taking transit for all long trips, but your walk from your front door to the transit stop is a little too long (or the walk from the transit stop to where you are going it too long.). A ebike is great if you are not taking transit it all, but I wouldn’t want to get them on transit (I have a very low opinion on those front of bus bike racks - they might be full when you want them). Those are very different trip modes. The scooter is for trips where you could walk but it is bit far, while the ebike is for trips you wouldn’t walk at all. Those are two different things and so we cannot give a correct answer.

Sounds like every other party.

Don’t forget to account for the rent if you don’t finance a house.

The other thing missing is you need to live somewhere now. You also have other considerations - if you are starting a family you typically will need to have a place for the family to live and that forces you to buy now. This is why most deflation arguments fail - people need to live, so they will buy food, and shelter (including clothing). People will replace their broken down car. People will buy toys if they can afford it.

Even if you can buy the house for $200k next year, you don’t know that the price will go down - I’ve seen prices go down and then go back up more than once in my life. Maybe you get unlucky, but maybe you bought the bottom, you have no idea what inflation/deflation will do in 5 years and only educated guesses for next year.

The Apple II sold for $1298 in 1977. You can buy a mac mini for $599 today. Deflation is real in some markets and we are just fine.

People have no options because everyone collectively hasn’t created them. Sure a few people vote for transit, bike lanes and the like, but not many. (and the poor are not better than anyone else at this) . There are options - you can move closer to work, get a different job that is closer to where you live, get a bike, carpool, ride transit… Those all bad options for most people but they exist and so they choose them.

Why are you blaming the minimum wage worker? It is everybody with a car which is the vast majority of the adult population. Poor, middle class, rich - all of them care about gas prices and scream when they go up.

Blame everyone. My brother-in-law works for a refinery. They get beat up in the news and by politicians all the time, but when they need something it always happens - even in California. Which shouldn’t surprise - people say they want things like clean air until they discover it means gas prices go up (or they can’t drive their car at all) and suddenly they don’t care are all.

In short he was proven wrong - we do have the regulations already and they got him.

(AI probably needs more regulation)

Town and counry minivan.

where I like salt gets the body before the engine goes. I have 220k on one and it is starting to rust through.

Red Lobster was already dead, they just hadn’t held the funeral yet.

Right, I’m saying the big one isn’t coming - and even if it comes you won’t survive so what is the point.

They did - but it was a lot more work - (and often mistakes were made) and that means costs were higher. Or more likely they didn’t do the work as often and so it was a lot longer before they discovered problems.

Which is perfectly fine to do.

I can pay my bill online. That means there is a connection between the systems. They need to add up all the water everyone in my neighborhood uses compared to how much they pumped into my neighborhood - if there is a difference there is a leak someplace. While each link only needs to be connected to the next, eventually there is a system that is connected to the internet, and so the whole cannot be air gaped. Not to mention the internet is a really easy place to connect everything to.

Also, it is really nice if you work at the utility to be able to control the pumps and valved scattered all over the city without having to physically go to each one. Or better yet automatic control - which is only possible if all the systems are connected - see above about one of those systems leading to my bill and so must be connected.

Air gap is useful for a few military systems. Everything else (including most military systems) are better off networked. However we do need to protect the network better.

Society will not collapse. If it does odds are you won’t survive what caused the collapse in the first place. (if you are a prepper make sure your neighbors know how to access you stash - both so that it doesn’t go to waste if you can’t get to it and because even if you can get to it you will need whatever neighbors survive to rebuild society)

However there are a lot of disasters that are much more likely that society collapse that are worth being prepared for.

They cannot legally do that in most areas. So long as you pay your actually bills they have to serve you. If you contest the bills and then never pay when the real bill is given they can disconnect you, but so long as you pay up they have to serve you. Where I live even if they disconnect you they have to reconnect you every winter.

Note that if you contest bills that are correct they can sue you. It isn’t worth their time if it is just you (they would spend a million dollars in legal fees to get $1000), but if people start contesting legitimate bills they will start making examples of the loudest people. Pay your legitimate bills without complaint is the best advice here. Contest if they actually are wrong, this can happen, but it isn’t common.

If you cannot pay your utility bills contact your utility - they are programs in place for the poor and they will guide you to them (they want their money, they don’t care where it comes from)

Irrelevant. If you have a business that owns property you should have two divisions for accounting reasons, one that runs the business and one that leases the property to the business. Both sides should be making money. This should just be an accounting trick but you need to watch it, if you can’t make money with either side alone that means you don’t have a good business.

There are good reasons to own your own real estate, and good reasons to lease. However either way you need to make the accounting numbers work.

You are a slave and should opt out of those things.

Your proble is you know what is and cannot imangine what could be.