> 2x speed mode that isn't billed as extra usage

...at least for my account, the speed mode is 1.5x the speed at 2x the usage

Whoops yes I meant 1.5x speed!

Ah yes, I have a lot of faith that the stacked Supreme Court will return a fair result in this issue.

You should.

Why?

Yes.

On a daily basis, I see several cars that are going forty+ miles per hour over the speed limit, weaving between lanes. They go right past the cop and the cop doesn't care. Then someone going five over goes past the cop and the cop gives them a ticket. They go after the easy ones that fill their quotas, not the ones that actually make anyone safer.

Yes.

There are some benefits that definitely used to exist, and maybe still exist, like early access to new features and additional Google Drive storage. But in practice today, the only real benefit is the badge.

It's possible that the government thought that if they did try to challenge the Commerce Clause analysis, then the Supreme Court could have struck down Filburn. They'd much rather lose narrowly on this specific case than have Filburn reversed entirely.

SCOTUS did a pretty hilarious soft "strike down" of Wickard where they basically determined the gun free school zone act (GFSZA) violated interstate commerce clause. So congress just added "in interstate commerce" to the GFSZA and now it does the exact same thing even if there was no interstate commerce involved, and nothing involved ever crossed state lines or actually entered interstate commerce.

So SCOTUS basically solved this by saying the law had to say "in interstate commerce" but it is basically just there as a talisman to ward away challenges, a distinction without any difference as it becomes a tautology.

I don't agree that requiring a talisman is irrelevant-- ineptly drafted laws will lack them and fail more easily. The legislative effort to add it may not happen later, especially once judicial review has spoken negatively of the underlying constitutionality of the law.

It also is not of no effect-- it's an element of defense and people have escaped GFSZ act because the government failed to satisfy interstate commerce (and internet search suggests the some courts have taken it to mean that the presence of the gun in the school zone itself must have impacted interstate commerce, rather than just the gun's past purchase did). Every element the prosecution must prove at any level increases the marginal cost of prosecution and makes it less likely to be imposed on more marginal cases.

Phones can be had for a lot less than that - you can find decent enough used phones that will last a year or two for under $100, which is cheap enough that almost everyone can scrounge together the money for it.

I’m guessing you’ve never been poor. For people living in poverty, finding $100 for a one time purchase is extremely difficult - much more than say finding $10 per month. Finance options are notoriously predatory and expensive. Plus if it only lasts a year then the amortized cost is about the same as the hypothetical cheap service.

Thanks! Exactly, this is what I was trying to tell: Its the barrier of accumulating the "once a time payment" in that volume, because methods for savings are not applied (for several reasons, unregular income, too low income, debt, drugs etc.)

By “under $100”, I meant that there are options at $20. Yes, you can get a smartphone for twenty bucks.

I agree that there are some people who can’t even find $20 to get a smartphone, but they’re going to be a small minority of even the very poor.

They already have the way that you're supposed to bill for usages like this, the API usage. The purpose of the subscription plan is strictly for the cases where you are using few enough tokens on average that it's not a money pit for them.