"OK, here's your purpose: find a purpose. Make a full-time job out of it."
Exactly my thoughts. Of course you wouldn't quit working if you get rich... if only you redefine "working" as "whatever you are doing from dawn to dusk".
If that would be my case, I know I'd have to expend quite a long time just to learn how to get the best profit from my money and make sure I don't lose it stupidly -work. Then, I might socialize to meet my new pairs -work. With social ties and secured profits, I might travel or find a hobby and write a blog or magazine articles, about them -work. Maybe if along the way I find something not only interesting but capitalizable, I might set apart some money for a startup -work, or write my generations' novel -work or... work, work and more work.
But then, all of this may be "work" but certainly I wouldn't consider a "job": not having to forcibly take the disgusting parts of it because I'm under financial stress. C'mon, that's no work!
As others have said, if winning a loto is such a stressful proposition, I certainly volonteer to take the burden out of him so he can go back to his comfortable previous life.
"You said 90km from one side of Madrid to the other."
No, I didn't. While there are 150Km from, say, San Martin de Valdeiglesias to Buitrago de Lozoya, my bet is that a vast majority of commutes fall within the 50 Km limit being modal somewhere between 20~30Km.
"You said you have a 30km commute from the border of the inner city to your place of work. That's like Alcobendas to Buenavista -- a massive journey"
In what world is Alcobendas or Buenavista "the inner city"? The inner city is what falls within the M30 limits. In my case my daily commute is between Vicente Calderon Stadium sorroundings to Tres Cantos. And no: it isn't a "massive journey" but quite a standard one -be my guest the hideous traffic jams at rush hour I stand every-single-damn-day, both at M30 and M40: be it a rarity and, by the very definition, there wouldn't be such jams.
"I really strongly doubt that is a typical commuter journey for 90%+ of Madrilenos."
Where do the traffic jams come from but from those very lots of "Madrilenos" making more or less the same journey I'm doing? Going from the cheaper residential South of Madrid (say, Getafe, Parla, Pinto...) to the business centers on the North (say, Boadilla, Tres Cantos, Las Rozas, SS de los Reyes...) is nothing but standard.
And then, more on the anecdotal side, I must be quite unlucky on your account because it's been more or less the same in all the other jobs I've had before: from Vicente Calderon to Parla (the shortest), to Las Rozas, to Las Tablas... Even the one where it certainly made more sense going by tube, a time I was working at Cuatro Caminos, well within the inner city, it still took me 45~50 min door to door.
"I think the credit bubble was caused by deregulation leading to no transparency in the markets;"
Yes, but that's not the point: the point is that when you increase the money supply, (be it by UBI or easy credit to people that couldn't return it back because of deregulation) the end result is the same: inflation. The same people that ended up defaulting on their mortages (because they shouldn't have had one in the begining) is the same people that won't attain "basic survivancy" (because inflation will eat their UBI).
"But, hey, I could be wrong."
I think that, yes, you are -in the sense that you didn't read the wealth of nations cover to cover (specially on its last chapters makes obvious that laws, taxes and wealth redistribution should always focus on the advancement of the whole society *and*, because of that, somehow against the few richest ones within them). Smith stated that simply putting money in the hands of people doesn't make them rich: it doesn't matter if the money comes from easy silver from South American mines or crooks massaging the system so people get mortages that won't be able to pay back. Oh, and Smith was also very confrontational against speculatory crooks
"Please tell us the names of the cities you complain about."
I'll do: Madrid. I live just in the border of "inner city", 32Km away from my job place. Going by car takes me slightly above an hour in rush hour, about 25 min without traffic. Using public transportation takes one hour and a half with two switches and it is almost inhuman in rush hour. But then, go to the supermarket. I did for a while, less than ten minutes by car, less than half an hour in public transportation -except for the little fact that they won't allow your bags in the public bus and just going with your shopping car through the subway entry is an odissey. Now, try to go to a suburban mall -i.e. when I was furnishing my new apartment, and cry.
I used to live in a different -much shorter, town and I didn't even have a driving license (very uncommon, but still doable). Then I came to Madrid and while I don't use my car when I go to downtown, mainly for leisure, it became obvious to me that you just can't live in these kinds of big cities without a car (and, remember, I'm a rarity on this regard, wanting to live without a car if at all possible) since they are developed on the assumption that you have one, and I ended up taking my driving license at the age of 44, less than three years ago and buying a car. Not only I don't regret, but my overall transportation costs have cut in half (even while I'm still paying a loan for the car) not to mention the increase in my quality of life.
"if you can afford to drive you can afford the far cheaper option of public transportation and taxi's."
Have you done the numbers? Really? Because I've done and no: taxis are not cheaper than cars, not by a far margin like somewhere from 300% to 1000% more expensive. Other means, yes, can be cheaper... usually if you don't value your time. And while car pollution can shorten your life, so also do sleep deprivation from having to wake up one to one hour and a half earlier to go to workplace on public transport.
" An AI levy taxes taxes these profits disproportionately to do two things: A) Slow the pace of adoption and B) Reclaim value lost to society and the economy caused by moving jobs away from human hands."
I see your point, specially the one about "time to transition" (I hate liberals when come with the argument that the industrial revolution ended up being better for everybody -which is true, but forget that it took three hideous generations to show those profits). But then, you still have to define what exactly is AI (heck, we still have problems just with the I part), or find the extent a given technology takes jobs away so you can tax accordingly. Good luck with that.
And still, the root of the problem, wealth moving away from labour and going into capital will remain untouched. I'm not a big fan of "disproportionately" anything, but if anything, what should probably be disproportionately taxed should be money retention itself (on top of capital gains) so some entity that just amasses money tends to lose it (that was a side effect of inflation, but inflation is worldwide very low) and, at the same time, progressively move away taxes from indirect/income to capital/profits, which also would achieve your stated goal as it effectively makes cheaper human labour than machinery (at least for a while)
"I am no economist but an AI levy seems to be a logical servant of the public good."
This already exists: is the tax on profits.
Now: you just can't get wealth from where there isn't. If there's not enough money to, say, buy everybody a Ferrari, no tax scheme is going to make that money appear. The "problem" with UBI (which I don't agree with, but it would be the same for UBS -Universal Basic Services) is that current taxing puts the heavy lifting on indirect taxes first, then on personal income and finally on capital/profits when it should be right the other way around.
The problem is not that AI takes jobs away, but that by taking jobs away, it takes wealth out of John Doe's pocket (his wages, so now not only he becomes destitute, but also can't pay neither taxes on personal income nor buy the products in the market nor, of course, pay indirect taxes on them in the process) and concentrates in very little hands (the owners of the means of production) or even no hands at all (when the owner of the means of production is not people but a legal entity -a corporation: that's the case, i.e. when your favorite corporation retains its benefits on a fiscal paradise). So you have to go to the source (the corporations' profit, no matter if it comes from AI, or from cheap labour from a third world country, or wherever) and tax it in order to redistribute that wealth.
"I suppose the UBI could be tied to inflation directly. But I suspect you mean something more profound."
Not very profound. Just that when you increase the monetary mass, prices tend to rise accordingly. This was already observed by Adam Smith and you could observe as recently as the last credit bubble: you give people (by means of easy credit) more money to buy houses? Houses prices skyrocket. It is the way price get adjusted: the vendor just rises his products' prices till people stops buying them -that's the market price of something.
"I for one dread the future. Without a job, what right of existence do I have?"
I don't know. Maybe as much right of existence as Archimedes, who never had to work for a life, or Newton, which was more of the same? Or even the Kardashians?
It's not welfare, per se; it's paying people to pursue their own "goals."
Obviously no, it isn't. Or else, UBI would be tied to the success on their pursuing. No: UBI is paying people for them (ideally) not to worry about making ends meet, economically-wise, within a capitalistic society, that's all. What people do with its time is not under consideration.
"the American capitalist economy is a burden, not a release."
And then, if you really think so, why do you push for a "solution" within the American capitalist economy (our society runs on money, but people won't have enough money in their pockets, so let's give them some money for free so our society can still run on money changing hands) instead of looking to get rid of that burden (i.e.: we can consider our world is already in a post-scarcity situation with regards to basic services, so let's provide those services without money involved in the transaction)?
"If we release them from the machine, they'll be working for their own joy and not for the bottom line of some giant corporation."
Are you aware how wishful thinking that is? The truth is that "if we release them from the machine" they might "be working for their own joy" as much as they might "be masturbating all day long like chimps at the zoo" and you did absolutely nothing for one outcome to be more likely than the other.
"This is why the principle of automation and machine intelligence goes hand in hand with the concept of the Universal Basic Income and free education. So we can create an educated workforce, and those who cannot work have a strong societal safety net that's easy to administrate."
No, it isn't. Under a capitalist society, UBI can only lead to inflation and, because of that, being well below basic coverage (despite of its name).
What we need is Universal Basic *Services*: nothing is easier to administrate: food? free; healthcare? free; shelter? free; education? free.
On one hand, this has already been tested as workable as most countries but USA already successfully provide socialized healthcare and education, and even USA provides socialized government, army or police so it's just a matter of extending already provided services. It is inflation-free, at least on a monetary sense, while not from an expectations point of view: even today, on a country like mine were socialized healthcare works quite well (or it worked quite well, before last decade's explotion of ultraliberalism) there's always the expectation of making it covering more services (i.e.: dental health is not covered) or more areas -i.e.: isn't internet connectivity a necessity right now? maybe we should cover it too...
And, for those lacking either the knowledge or the imagination about how a basically ocious society might end up looking like, just take a History book, as it is not as if it hadn't been tried before: ancient Athens might be a perfect example, and we still remember some of its people and their achievements 2500 years later.
"The only people who expect to outlive their car are those with terminal illnesses."
Well, I own a 2001 car with basically that same engine design (only it is the 320 gasoline instead of diesel), and I also expect my car to still get a lot of service years in front of it.
"Once you get outside the rabbit warrens of the upper Atlantic coast, the cities are large enough physically that conventional mass transit as Europeans think of it does not work as well."
Isn't this a self-inflicted problem? People density on those "large enough" cities is quite low, isn't it? You build wide, not high, just because you count on personal transportation (cars) to the point of making it basically mandatory. No wonder public transportation doesn't fill the bill if you make your urban design explicitly against it.
"Typical compression ratio in a Diesel engine is somewhere around 20:1, vs a gasoline engine that's running 10:1 or there about."
And then, typical engine regime from a diesel is about half that of its gasoline counterpart (i.e. 1500 vs 3000 RPM) which exactly compensates for the higher compression ratio.
"Not only that, these are cities which are political subdivisions of larger governmental entities who hold power and control over them."
I don't know other cities, but Madrid's council certainly holds enough authority to introduce such a ban. In fact, both Rome and Madrid already have similar bans in place (albeit not as tough, yet): Madrid has some streets on its downtown you can't enter your car into unless you hold a special permit, and Rome a policy for odd/even license plates to control air pollution.
What still they don't have, is power to introduce legislation to come into effect in eigth/nine years in the future, since current council has no guarantees to hold power then. And, in any case, Madrid's major already said she has no such plans.
"I haven't visited the other 3 but it certainly is possible to live without a car in Madrid."
Maybe that's your point of view. On the other hand, I never had a car -not even a driver's license, and I lived in a 650.000 people town, till I came to Madrid and I understood I couldn't live without one.
But this forgets the most important point: policy-makers are chosen every four years, so there's no way you can seriously say anything about what will or will not be allowed in Madrid (I bet it's the same for the other cities) by 2025.
"If I am a business and I want to put a non-disparagement clause or review gag order into my contracts, I don't see why I can't."
Because: a) you are allowed to be impersonated as a business under the understandment that you'll abide to the laws of the land. b) business are ultimately allow to do their stuff for as long as it fits the common benefit. c) the legislator understands there's a strong assymetry of power between the business and the individual and so chooses to protect the individual under the light of a) and b) above.
"Nobody is forced to do business with me, and they entered knowingly (presumably) into the agreement."
By making your contract a single non-negotiable entity, you are open to a) the contract to be understood in the most favourable way for the party that didn't have a saying on its redaction and b) for parts of it to be nevertheless considered void and null without this meaning, on its sole support, for the rest of the contract the rest of the contract not being enforceable.
"In a country that does not truly have rule of law, there is very little you can do to help the people and nothing at all remotely."
And your plan is... corrupt the rule of law at that place?
Please note the allegations are "the nursery and primary schools were not licensed, the teachers weren't qualified and that there was no record of its curriculum being approved"
That's quite easy to fact check: they either are licensed, and then there will be a paper track showing it, or they aren't, and then they have no place running an illegal school.
Provided they are not licensed, *then* you can start on why they are not (maybe they are not bribing the right people) but you still can't run a service requiring licenses without them. That *is* the rule of law.
"Tesla cars are the most advanced and fun to drive. Go to a tesla store and see for yourself, test drives are free"
Probably you didn't figure it but you just made the parent's point: "most advanced and fun to drive" coupled to being expensive has proven time and again to be good enough for the luxury market, it's far from sufficient for the consumer one.
The same can be said about your "test drives" point: millionaires are served if their toy cars can manage the equivalent to a test drive once a month (go see how many miles have a second hand luxury car on its odometer) but consumer cars start to make sense only once you can reliably put 100K miles on them.
In the end, Mr Anonymous Coward, you don't own a Tesla and you are the kind of fanboy that most probably will queue for hours to own the next iShit that comes properly marketed to you. For Tesla to reach the masses, Musk will need to understand not all the people are like his west-coast millionaire early adopters.
Slashdot Mirror
"On the other hand, the kind of people who would quit after $10M may n2ot have the ruthless drive to get there no matter what it takes."
I think it's from The Great Gatsby (not the literal words): getting rich is easy; you just need not to desire anything else.
"OK, here's your purpose: find a purpose. Make a full-time job out of it."
Exactly my thoughts. Of course you wouldn't quit working if you get rich... if only you redefine "working" as "whatever you are doing from dawn to dusk".
If that would be my case, I know I'd have to expend quite a long time just to learn how to get the best profit from my money and make sure I don't lose it stupidly -work. Then, I might socialize to meet my new pairs -work. With social ties and secured profits, I might travel or find a hobby and write a blog or magazine articles, about them -work. Maybe if along the way I find something not only interesting but capitalizable, I might set apart some money for a startup -work, or write my generations' novel -work or... work, work and more work.
But then, all of this may be "work" but certainly I wouldn't consider a "job": not having to forcibly take the disgusting parts of it because I'm under financial stress. C'mon, that's no work!
As others have said, if winning a loto is such a stressful proposition, I certainly volonteer to take the burden out of him so he can go back to his comfortable previous life.
"You said 90km from one side of Madrid to the other."
No, I didn't. While there are 150Km from, say, San Martin de Valdeiglesias to Buitrago de Lozoya, my bet is that a vast majority of commutes fall within the 50 Km limit being modal somewhere between 20~30Km.
"You said you have a 30km commute from the border of the inner city to your place of work. That's like Alcobendas to Buenavista -- a massive journey"
In what world is Alcobendas or Buenavista "the inner city"? The inner city is what falls within the M30 limits. In my case my daily commute is between Vicente Calderon Stadium sorroundings to Tres Cantos. And no: it isn't a "massive journey" but quite a standard one -be my guest the hideous traffic jams at rush hour I stand every-single-damn-day, both at M30 and M40: be it a rarity and, by the very definition, there wouldn't be such jams.
"I really strongly doubt that is a typical commuter journey for 90%+ of Madrilenos."
Where do the traffic jams come from but from those very lots of "Madrilenos" making more or less the same journey I'm doing? Going from the cheaper residential South of Madrid (say, Getafe, Parla, Pinto...) to the business centers on the North (say, Boadilla, Tres Cantos, Las Rozas, SS de los Reyes...) is nothing but standard.
And then, more on the anecdotal side, I must be quite unlucky on your account because it's been more or less the same in all the other jobs I've had before: from Vicente Calderon to Parla (the shortest), to Las Rozas, to Las Tablas... Even the one where it certainly made more sense going by tube, a time I was working at Cuatro Caminos, well within the inner city, it still took me 45~50 min door to door.
"I think the credit bubble was caused by deregulation leading to no transparency in the markets;"
Yes, but that's not the point: the point is that when you increase the money supply, (be it by UBI or easy credit to people that couldn't return it back because of deregulation) the end result is the same: inflation. The same people that ended up defaulting on their mortages (because they shouldn't have had one in the begining) is the same people that won't attain "basic survivancy" (because inflation will eat their UBI).
"But, hey, I could be wrong."
I think that, yes, you are -in the sense that you didn't read the wealth of nations cover to cover (specially on its last chapters makes obvious that laws, taxes and wealth redistribution should always focus on the advancement of the whole society *and*, because of that, somehow against the few richest ones within them). Smith stated that simply putting money in the hands of people doesn't make them rich: it doesn't matter if the money comes from easy silver from South American mines or crooks massaging the system so people get mortages that won't be able to pay back. Oh, and Smith was also very confrontational against speculatory crooks
"Please tell us the names of the cities you complain about."
I'll do: Madrid. I live just in the border of "inner city", 32Km away from my job place. Going by car takes me slightly above an hour in rush hour, about 25 min without traffic. Using public transportation takes one hour and a half with two switches and it is almost inhuman in rush hour. But then, go to the supermarket. I did for a while, less than ten minutes by car, less than half an hour in public transportation -except for the little fact that they won't allow your bags in the public bus and just going with your shopping car through the subway entry is an odissey. Now, try to go to a suburban mall -i.e. when I was furnishing my new apartment, and cry.
I used to live in a different -much shorter, town and I didn't even have a driving license (very uncommon, but still doable). Then I came to Madrid and while I don't use my car when I go to downtown, mainly for leisure, it became obvious to me that you just can't live in these kinds of big cities without a car (and, remember, I'm a rarity on this regard, wanting to live without a car if at all possible) since they are developed on the assumption that you have one, and I ended up taking my driving license at the age of 44, less than three years ago and buying a car. Not only I don't regret, but my overall transportation costs have cut in half (even while I'm still paying a loan for the car) not to mention the increase in my quality of life.
"if you can afford to drive you can afford the far cheaper option of public transportation and taxi's."
Have you done the numbers? Really? Because I've done and no: taxis are not cheaper than cars, not by a far margin like somewhere from 300% to 1000% more expensive. Other means, yes, can be cheaper... usually if you don't value your time. And while car pollution can shorten your life, so also do sleep deprivation from having to wake up one to one hour and a half earlier to go to workplace on public transport.
" An AI levy taxes taxes these profits disproportionately to do two things: A) Slow the pace of adoption and B) Reclaim value lost to society and the economy caused by moving jobs away from human hands."
I see your point, specially the one about "time to transition" (I hate liberals when come with the argument that the industrial revolution ended up being better for everybody -which is true, but forget that it took three hideous generations to show those profits). But then, you still have to define what exactly is AI (heck, we still have problems just with the I part), or find the extent a given technology takes jobs away so you can tax accordingly. Good luck with that.
And still, the root of the problem, wealth moving away from labour and going into capital will remain untouched. I'm not a big fan of "disproportionately" anything, but if anything, what should probably be disproportionately taxed should be money retention itself (on top of capital gains) so some entity that just amasses money tends to lose it (that was a side effect of inflation, but inflation is worldwide very low) and, at the same time, progressively move away taxes from indirect/income to capital/profits, which also would achieve your stated goal as it effectively makes cheaper human labour than machinery (at least for a while)
"I am no economist but an AI levy seems to be a logical servant of the public good."
This already exists: is the tax on profits.
Now: you just can't get wealth from where there isn't. If there's not enough money to, say, buy everybody a Ferrari, no tax scheme is going to make that money appear. The "problem" with UBI (which I don't agree with, but it would be the same for UBS -Universal Basic Services) is that current taxing puts the heavy lifting on indirect taxes first, then on personal income and finally on capital/profits when it should be right the other way around.
The problem is not that AI takes jobs away, but that by taking jobs away, it takes wealth out of John Doe's pocket (his wages, so now not only he becomes destitute, but also can't pay neither taxes on personal income nor buy the products in the market nor, of course, pay indirect taxes on them in the process) and concentrates in very little hands (the owners of the means of production) or even no hands at all (when the owner of the means of production is not people but a legal entity -a corporation: that's the case, i.e. when your favorite corporation retains its benefits on a fiscal paradise). So you have to go to the source (the corporations' profit, no matter if it comes from AI, or from cheap labour from a third world country, or wherever) and tax it in order to redistribute that wealth.
"I suppose the UBI could be tied to inflation directly. But I suspect you mean something more profound."
Not very profound. Just that when you increase the monetary mass, prices tend to rise accordingly. This was already observed by Adam Smith and you could observe as recently as the last credit bubble: you give people (by means of easy credit) more money to buy houses? Houses prices skyrocket. It is the way price get adjusted: the vendor just rises his products' prices till people stops buying them -that's the market price of something.
"I for one dread the future. Without a job, what right of existence do I have?"
I don't know. Maybe as much right of existence as Archimedes, who never had to work for a life, or Newton, which was more of the same? Or even the Kardashians?
It's not welfare, per se; it's paying people to pursue their own "goals."
Obviously no, it isn't. Or else, UBI would be tied to the success on their pursuing. No: UBI is paying people for them (ideally) not to worry about making ends meet, economically-wise, within a capitalistic society, that's all. What people do with its time is not under consideration.
"the American capitalist economy is a burden, not a release."
And then, if you really think so, why do you push for a "solution" within the American capitalist economy (our society runs on money, but people won't have enough money in their pockets, so let's give them some money for free so our society can still run on money changing hands) instead of looking to get rid of that burden (i.e.: we can consider our world is already in a post-scarcity situation with regards to basic services, so let's provide those services without money involved in the transaction)?
"If we release them from the machine, they'll be working for their own joy and not for the bottom line of some giant corporation."
Are you aware how wishful thinking that is? The truth is that "if we release them from the machine" they might "be working for their own joy" as much as they might "be masturbating all day long like chimps at the zoo" and you did absolutely nothing for one outcome to be more likely than the other.
"This is why the principle of automation and machine intelligence goes hand in hand with the concept of the Universal Basic Income and free education. So we can create an educated workforce, and those who cannot work have a strong societal safety net that's easy to administrate."
No, it isn't. Under a capitalist society, UBI can only lead to inflation and, because of that, being well below basic coverage (despite of its name).
What we need is Universal Basic *Services*: nothing is easier to administrate: food? free; healthcare? free; shelter? free; education? free.
On one hand, this has already been tested as workable as most countries but USA already successfully provide socialized healthcare and education, and even USA provides socialized government, army or police so it's just a matter of extending already provided services. It is inflation-free, at least on a monetary sense, while not from an expectations point of view: even today, on a country like mine were socialized healthcare works quite well (or it worked quite well, before last decade's explotion of ultraliberalism) there's always the expectation of making it covering more services (i.e.: dental health is not covered) or more areas -i.e.: isn't internet connectivity a necessity right now? maybe we should cover it too...
And, for those lacking either the knowledge or the imagination about how a basically ocious society might end up looking like, just take a History book, as it is not as if it hadn't been tried before: ancient Athens might be a perfect example, and we still remember some of its people and their achievements 2500 years later.
" Gimme that Universal Basic Income, and many CEOs will be largely irrelevant."
Within current context, UBI would only bring you inflation and would be well below Basic.
"So you're not going to live for a lot of years?"
You must be American: the people who think that a century is a lot of years :)
"The only people who expect to outlive their car are those with terminal illnesses."
Well, I own a 2001 car with basically that same engine design (only it is the 320 gasoline instead of diesel), and I also expect my car to still get a lot of service years in front of it.
"Once you get outside the rabbit warrens of the upper Atlantic coast, the cities are large enough physically that conventional mass transit as Europeans think of it does not work as well."
Isn't this a self-inflicted problem? People density on those "large enough" cities is quite low, isn't it? You build wide, not high, just because you count on personal transportation (cars) to the point of making it basically mandatory. No wonder public transportation doesn't fill the bill if you make your urban design explicitly against it.
"Typical compression ratio in a Diesel engine is somewhere around 20:1, vs a gasoline engine that's running 10:1 or there about."
And then, typical engine regime from a diesel is about half that of its gasoline counterpart (i.e. 1500 vs 3000 RPM) which exactly compensates for the higher compression ratio.
"Not only that, these are cities which are political subdivisions of larger governmental entities who hold power and control over them."
I don't know other cities, but Madrid's council certainly holds enough authority to introduce such a ban. In fact, both Rome and Madrid already have similar bans in place (albeit not as tough, yet): Madrid has some streets on its downtown you can't enter your car into unless you hold a special permit, and Rome a policy for odd/even license plates to control air pollution.
What still they don't have, is power to introduce legislation to come into effect in eigth/nine years in the future, since current council has no guarantees to hold power then. And, in any case, Madrid's major already said she has no such plans.
"I haven't visited the other 3 but it certainly is possible to live without a car in Madrid."
Maybe that's your point of view. On the other hand, I never had a car -not even a driver's license, and I lived in a 650.000 people town, till I came to Madrid and I understood I couldn't live without one.
But this forgets the most important point: policy-makers are chosen every four years, so there's no way you can seriously say anything about what will or will not be allowed in Madrid (I bet it's the same for the other cities) by 2025.
"If I am a business and I want to put a non-disparagement clause or review gag order into my contracts, I don't see why I can't."
Because:
a) you are allowed to be impersonated as a business under the understandment that you'll abide to the laws of the land.
b) business are ultimately allow to do their stuff for as long as it fits the common benefit.
c) the legislator understands there's a strong assymetry of power between the business and the individual and so chooses to protect the individual under the light of a) and b) above.
"Nobody is forced to do business with me, and they entered knowingly (presumably) into the agreement."
By making your contract a single non-negotiable entity, you are open to a) the contract to be understood in the most favourable way for the party that didn't have a saying on its redaction and b) for parts of it to be nevertheless considered void and null without this meaning, on its sole support, for the rest of the contract the rest of the contract not being enforceable.
Isn't capitalism a wonderful thing?
"Will you pay this bribe or not" isn't exactly rule of law."
So, damn the law be, I'll open my mill with or without legal permit isn't exactly rule of law either.
"In a country that does not truly have rule of law, there is very little you can do to help the people and nothing at all remotely."
And your plan is... corrupt the rule of law at that place?
Please note the allegations are "the nursery and primary schools were not licensed, the teachers weren't qualified and that there was no record of its curriculum being approved"
That's quite easy to fact check: they either are licensed, and then there will be a paper track showing it, or they aren't, and then they have no place running an illegal school.
Provided they are not licensed, *then* you can start on why they are not (maybe they are not bribing the right people) but you still can't run a service requiring licenses without them. That *is* the rule of law.
"Tesla cars are the most advanced and fun to drive. Go to a tesla store and see for yourself, test drives are free"
Probably you didn't figure it but you just made the parent's point: "most advanced and fun to drive" coupled to being expensive has proven time and again to be good enough for the luxury market, it's far from sufficient for the consumer one.
The same can be said about your "test drives" point: millionaires are served if their toy cars can manage the equivalent to a test drive once a month (go see how many miles have a second hand luxury car on its odometer) but consumer cars start to make sense only once you can reliably put 100K miles on them.
In the end, Mr Anonymous Coward, you don't own a Tesla and you are the kind of fanboy that most probably will queue for hours to own the next iShit that comes properly marketed to you. For Tesla to reach the masses, Musk will need to understand not all the people are like his west-coast millionaire early adopters.
And then, what? Should it take an "instantenous" decision about what to do next?