Oh and one more thing. Walmart could pull a "Winco Foods" and not accept Credit Card payments at all. In my area there's a Winco Foods about 30 miles from where I live. They only take debit cards, not credit cards. They do beat Walmart's prices so whenever I'm nearby, I take advantage of that.

The backstory. Walmart refuses to accept contactless payments because contactless payments are more secure, and your name and credit card info does not show up to be harvested when you use a contactless payment. They want your name an credit card info for their mountain of data they harvest.

If any group tried to lobby congress to phase out contact payments and instead require contactless payments, Walmart's lobbyists would be on members of Congress riding them hard to kill such a bill.

If they eventually did lose access to your name and card number, they'd probably raise prices to cover the savings they saw by harvesting the data.

The Working Time Directive was instituted in the 1980's. Margret Thatcher was very upset that the UK had to follow this directive to remain in the EU.

The Working Time Directive limits weekly working time to an average of 48 hours per week over and 17 week reference period. Companies sometimes get exemptions from key employees, but there can't be no coercion to sign such an agreement. The exemptions are usually for key employees.

Since the UK left the EU, there has been no substantial changes to the regulation. Instead, the original domestic legislation implementing it—the UK's Working Time Regulations—was converted into UK law to maintain legal continuity, and core worker protections regarding maximum working hours and paid holiday remain active

In contrast to the United States, there is no limit on working time, and the only option the employee has is to quit (Employment-at-will). There are also 2 distinct classes of workers. Those which are non-exempt get overtime pay after 40 hours of work in a week, while those which are "exempt" only get their base salary regardless of how many hours they have to work. There is a dividing line which lists certain job requirements as those falling under exempt, and those which are non-exempt. Managers,Engineers, Accountants, and a lot of indirect labor positions are usually exempt.

With so many people in the USA living paycheck to paycheck, quitting due to excessive overtime is very unlikely

as a long term plan for some of the population. This catastrophe won't go away in years, it will take decades even if we drastically curtail C02 emissions

O'neill cylinders should be part of the long term plan.
See the following for an animation of how the O'Neill cyclinders might operate and how they look inside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2d_0l5ycRM

If course we're probably looking at 100 years from now to implement an O'neil cylinder set such as this.

And the bigger issue to solve is who stays and who goes.

Serving prison time "at the pleasure of the king or queen" (historically at Her/His Majesty’s pleasure) is a legal term for an indefinite or life sentence where a prisoner has no fixed release date. Instead, their continued detention depends on the ongoing discretion or review of the Crown (or government parole authorities acting in its name)

In Commonwealth republics, such as Botswana,[7] India,[8] Kenya,[9] Pakistan, Singapore,[10] South Africa,[11] and Sri Lanka, the phrase is "during the president's pleasure". This term is also applied in other republics that are outside of the Commonwealth, such as Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, Montenegro, Portugal and Serbia.

So no 8th, 5th or 14th amendments in these countries.

Makes me wonder how long they will last in the United States given the way things are currently going.

How the Ellison Family Controls the Paramount-Warner MergerIn the context of the newly created media giant, the Ellison family—primarily led by Larry's son, David Ellison (CEO of Paramount Skydance)—exerts absolute voting authority through a multi-tiered corporate structure, rather than a standard single-class share model.

"" The Core Voting Power (National Amusements): The foundation of this media empire relies on a traditional dual-class system originally built by the Redstone family. Through the prior Paramount-Skydance merger, David Ellison acquired National Amusements Inc. (NAI), which holds roughly 77% of Paramount's voting stock. This means the Ellisons control the ultimate voting lever of the acquiring company.Larry Ellison’s Financial Backing: While David Ellison is the executive operational head, Larry Ellison is the financial engine bankrolling the massive expansion. Larry Ellison personally guaranteed $40 billion worth of his Oracle stock to remove closing risk and committed up to $47 billion for new equity shares in the combined Paramount-Warner entity.Stripping Voting Power From Co-Investors: To maintain absolute domestic control, the deal is structured so that outside financial partners are locked out of governance. For example, sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are providing 38.5% of the merger's equity, but the contract explicitly dictates that foreign investors will hold zero voting shares and no board seats."

So Ellison "Musked" Paramount, but didn't use a dual class voting structure

If they're willing to issue threats like this, what will they try next if California capitulates?

This is one of those scenarios where if you give a planck length, they'll take the entire observable universe.

Next it will be: If you don't repeal the California non-compete law 16600, we will pull out of California.

Callifornia's response should be: We don't deal with businesses which operate in this manner: GTFO before we tax you even more.

Yes it would, but might open the city to legal liability.

The city should duffel bag and padlock all the cameras with something similar to what you used to find on parking meters out of service.

Only if the citizenry doesn't have initiative and referendum, and the citizens are mad enough to get an initiative on the ballot.

If they are really mad in a non initiative and referendum state (e.g. Texas, New York) , then the elected officials might be voted out, but that rarely happens as the electorate mostly has to worry about the bottom level of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is by design.

"Just for that, We'll make an example of you, kid" 10 years in Jail/ $250000 fine non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. Oh and we're banning you from ever holding a passport again./s

Up to a point. Its all about how much the politicians can get away with. Granted, that is quite a bit before they're voted out. Peoples memories are also shorter than the time between elections unless it is really a significant fuck-up on the politicians part.

These were used during world war 2 in the united states.

Scrutinize every instruction in assembly language, like the engineers did with the Apollo Guidance Computer.

This doesn't mean every line of source code in a high level language, they'll be analyzing what the compiler emits.

The police department would have to renew it if they wanted to keep it open.