SomeoneSomewhere

Trump is beholden to the public?

Apparently they kept saying things like 'long-term investment is important and private companies are bad at that', 'worker productivity is harmed by poor health and education', 'strong urban planning is necessary'.

In NZ, David Seymour at least axed the old Productivity Commission (which his own ACT party founded) to create his new Ministry for Regulation.

Apparently they didn't like the answers they got out of the previous version.

Regular trains don't run underground. Lots of opencast mines exist .

Basically all mines have an above ground terminal where whatever you mined is unloaded from your underground trains, lifts, haul trucks or whatever else onto storage piles, then loaded onto the actual long distance trains.

If the mine entry is up a mountain, then the trip down from that point will be a net energy producer regardless of anything else.

Two religions is not more statistically significant than one.

Referring to yourself in the third person and acting like this comes off as extremely condescending.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are electrified railway lines doing the same. Regenerate large amounts of energy into the grid while descending loaded; consume a relatively small amount of energy to haul the empty train back uphill.

If you're thinking of that CGI crane lifting concrete blocks, it's unfortunately a really bad idea.

Pumped hydro stores energy by lifting weight uphill, instead. Water is basically the cheapest thing you can get per tonne, and is easy to contain and move.

To store useful amounts of energy using gravity, you need pretty large elevation differences and millions of tonnes of mass to move.

Oh, I mixed up your post. Sorry.

If you're considering the US federal government (excluding the newly elected carrot...) 'tyrannical', what civilisations are you considering not tyrannical? The list has to be very, very small.

None of the definitions of tyranny I see have a restriction on scale. You can be a tyrant ruling a hundred people or a billion. It's technology (transport, food storage, writing/communication) and geography that limit the size of a tyranny. I'd argue lots of small tribal societies wander into tyranny; it's just hard to rule over multiple islands when you don't have writing or metals.

There's religions in Asia other than Buddhism.

There was rampant cannibalism in Polynesia along with all kinds of infighting. Maori gods have plenty of murder and war in the mythology.

War in Asia goes far wider than just one empire. Imperial Japan were thoroughly tyrannical during WW2, as well as many other conflicts.

Any civilisation that could spare, mobilise, and feed enough people to form an army basically did so, sooner or later. It's a supply lines and population problem. Small populations can't raise large armies and send them long distances.

No, but apparently there's an electoral mandate for it.