> A (slim) majority of people wanting a stupid thing doesn't make it any less stupid.
A sentence attributed to Italian singer-songwriter-intellectual Roberto "Freak" Antoni, or to author Marcello Marchesi, describes this concept in a great way:
"LET'S EAT SHIT! BILLIONS OF FLIES CANNOT BE WRONG!"
When did anyone vote for leaving the single market? I thought that it was baseless FUD from project fear before the referendum, when you had Farage and Johnson on the record saying that it would be stupid.
That could reasonably (arguments about FPTP notwithstanding) be claimed be the most recent general election, when the Tory manifesto was the current mess and the Labour manifesto was to “rip up the deeply flawed deal negotiated by Boris Johnson”, to renegotiate with the aim of “Close alignment with the Single Market”, and then to give the U.K. electorate a confirmatory referendum about whatever deal they end up negotiating.
The fact that the Tories are currently whining about the deal they (1) negotiated, (2) signed, (3) won a general election in order to implement, and (4) explicitly denied further parliamentary time to study and debate the consequences of, certainly implies the politicians are dumb, regard of what it says about the voters.
The government is now basically the Vote Leave team. Your argument would hold water if they had implemented what they promised - they have not done so. Voters were mugged.
Brexit had popular support for a brief period. The rest of the time there's been solid electoral opposition to it.
A confirmatory referendum - defined as "undemocratic", because of course a clarifying vote on a complex issue can't possibly be democratic, according to the Brexiters - would have killed it.
The most fervent supporters don't really want "Brexit" anyway. What they want is to put the clever people - the professionals who keep the lights on and the engines running - in their place.
Which is why there was so much cut-and-paste rhetoric about "metropolitan elites" and "We've all had enough of experts."
It was a very calculated campaign of disinformation and populist framing aimed at low-information authoritarians - the kinds of people who will reliably destroy their own country from the inside while convincing themselves they're "patriots."
> The rest of the time there's been solid electoral opposition to it.
Not really. After an initial wobble, the most hardcore brexiteer fringe swept to power with very large majorities. Yes, it's FPTP so you can say "not really", but in practice they did - the only strongly anti-brexit party, meanwhile, was soundly battered.
The English masses, for a period, really really wanted it. The only first hint of regret has been this month's byelection, a very small test.
F-Droid architecture is terrible (it could take them weeks to build an app, and since they build all apps updates are severely delayed) and their app is a buggy mess. In other words, F-Droid not being widely used is not an indication of people not wanting to use a third party store per se even if it only carries open source apps.
People want a plug and play solution, not to have to research F-Droid client alternatives and then install third party repos which they don't know if they can trust.
I said if I Google "F-Droid" I should get to a webpage that contains an app that works properly and that comes with good repos preloaded. Similar to how Steam is installed on PCs.
Instead I get a crappy app with very outdated repos. That's not good enough.
I feel the same way. I feel like I'm expected to be a business during opening hours. Also sucks that many people don't leave a text message after they call unanswered. Did someone die, did something good happen, was it a pocket dial? Call back and find out!
I don‘t seem to get the point of this comment, but the reason for this is that the EU Commission has assigned this project to Deutsche Telekom and SAP, two German companies (as is explained in the README).
Corona Warn App is the most successful implementation of a Covid tracing app in Europe.
Italy's Immuni was good as well, but unfortunately politics and demented policies basically mangled one of the best pieces of Public Administration software my country had ever produced.
In this regard, I can't be anything but satisfied that the Germans are taking the lead on a EU-wide policy.
Also, I got vaccinated here in Berlin and since a week I already have a perfectly usable digital pass that I validated at the chemist's counter.
For one, to be honest, let's give all the kudos to those who deserve them.
Side note: we're so generous that I hear of Americans here in Berlin who are getting the pass too by showing their American vaccination documents and a proof of residence in Germany.
Meaning: the system is solid, but surprisingly flexible.
> So you want to translate this into how much infections it _prevented_ and then compare it against the cost of a COVID-19 infection for society.
By that logic, we should start selling hand sanitizer for 100 euros, and soap for 50 euros, right?
Obviously the idea that something should not be evaluated by how efficiently was produced but solely by how much it was needed is a recipe for absolute disaster and cost bloat. Seat belts will go for 10,000 euros in that world.
How do decide what is cheap bs expensive for early detection? Sure it “sounds” expensive but it would be cheaper if there were more detections, which you don’t really want.
We all are aware of that. It has been widely publicised for decades by those who expected that, by making people aware, they would change their spending habits.
They didn't. Nobody cares. And that has to be the end of that argument.
Nobody cares? It’s not like “we” are presented with a clear choice.
It’s totally unclear whether some product is produced ethically or not. Some ultra cheap products are likely to be unethically produced but a bit more expensive and there’s no way to know except for doing extensive research.
Nobody has time for that shit. Many don’t have the money to buy ethically because they themselves are working on the low end.
Sure you might buy the slavery free coffee bones and the fair phone 2. Good for you, but what about all the other stuff everyone buys day after day?
Exen extensive research doesn't help, the manufacturers will lie and cheat to present their practices as 'proper' and many bulk commodities are untraceable - you wont know where the materials came from
Sure, 'nobody' is an exaggeration, but people still smoke, people still drive unnecessarily wasteful cars, people still fly when there are alternatives. People in general just don't care. Only if political leaders care enough and can fix things without a big impact to their constituent, this stuff gets solved. If the impact on daily life is too big, nobody wants to make these hard decisions. Just look at how little is actually happening to combat climate change or plastic waste in the grand scheme of things.
Well, yes. But parent is equating people not putting their money where their mouth is with "nobody cares so we shouldn't try and change anything", which is wrong IMO.
Of course this goes through regulation. Nobody complains about seat belts anymore (and those who do are being Darwined away so that takes care of itself), yet everyone only started wearing a seatbelt once regulations were introduced.
This reads like something straight from The Onion.
What's even worse is that I guess those government services must pay royalties, so this means Canadians will be subsidising music they clearly don't like (otherwise it would be popular and this kind of law wouldn't be necessary)
>otherwise it would be popular and this kind of law wouldn't be necessary
I think you are missing the full picture.
What I mean there is no fair free market of art, for example can my country with 20 million population create cartoons to compete with Disney? Of course not, Disney creates the generic american culture stuff, and then they can dump it on small countries and make a bit of extra profit from ads and toys.
Anyway I am not debating what laws are fair or not, just mentioning there is no fair competition and the best music, TV show or movie wins. I would personally tax foreign stuff a bit and use the money to support local production.
So what you are saying is that Disney can do it better than your small country can. Thereby we need to suppress “better” and allow for “worse” to surface.
Let me ask you this then. Who actually wins in this scenario?
For my own country market Disney can do it cheaper, free .
If I want to make a cartoon to promote say a traditional story I need to do a lot of work and then sell my work.
Disney already made a local TV channel where they just translate their existing american stuff, slap ads and profit.
So what are the upsides and downsides
- Disney makes money
- US pushes their culture(including the wird shit where is super funny to have characters tortured by explosions, dropping big objects on them or those children/teen movies where is fun to bully the dorks)
- only win is our children have more options then we had in the past
I do not want to suppress Disney, I would put a tax , use that to sponsor some local animation schools to create more content with local themes.
There are a few local cartoons, there are small budget and the reason they exist is because parents demand/appreciate such products.
I did not watched cable TV in years but last time I did there were only american translated channels for children but with youtube I could watch with my son cartoons from different countries but this cartoons don't have a giant behind them to create their own TV channels.
Now let me respond to you in a similar way you did, maybe you understand it better.
You create a cool app but when you try to sell it MS, Google and Apple release a similar app for free, you try then to make a different app but again the giant has a free offer, you do that again and again but all the time a similar but not identical free product was launched by the giants for free. Your products were better but the giants had a free shittier version so you only gained a small market. You might say that is OK you get screwed because customers got free stuff, but is it free though? The giants made the money in different way(sometimes in ilegal ways, sometimes in a l4gal but unethical way).
My point is there is no actual fair competition when you compete with a giant, so if Windows or Notepad is the most installed OS/program you would be wrong to conclude that means this is because of the quality of the product.
It's a fallacy to suggest that Canadians 'clearly don't like' something because it is not popular. A lack of exposure is one possible reason why a population may like something but it isn't (yet) popular.
I think it’s good that a government and a society resist homogenization by globalization. Cultures need protected niches to develop unique ideas.
While there are many good things coming from so many cultures around the world slowly converging further thanks to social media technology, many things are lost too
I live in Ontario, the neighboring predominantly-English province.
My gut instinct is with you. It's weird and nationalistic and what even..
But... I was born in a tiny country with tiny language. The notion of playing, I don't know, Russian or Chinese or Polish music in the government elevator or on government phone, makes me immediately have more sympathy and understanding. Like, it wouldn't even be a consideration - of course government waiting music will be in your own language.
I think that kind of disregard for their first language is exactly what is making Quebecois protective of their language and culture. Just because they are on North American continent, doesn't make their language
> this means Canadians will be subsidising music they clearly don't like (otherwise it would be popular and this kind of law wouldn't be necessary)
Are you suggesting that the popularity of music is based solely on its merits and not multi-million dollar marketing budgets of the (mostly English speaking) pop-culture industrial complex? Now that is something for The Onion.
Side note: This rule is provincial, and applies only to Quebec. Many Quebecers love their local artists. Indeed this initiative wouldn't be possible without some measure of support.
Well what is to be expected of an old school nationalist government, with a mindset from another generation? Its an easy win which makes them look good. I do not have any problem with the extra money going back to Quebec artists through royalties. However I would rather have an overhaul of the royalties system, which is based on a pre-digital world. Oh well.
I would worry that the government will waste extra money paying higher royalties than private parties would for the same song since they have to license some Quebec artists song. Makes more sense to me to fund new artists with the condition that the government gets to play those songs royalty free for whatever. Celine Dion has enough money.
> Makes more sense to me to fund new artists with the condition that the government gets to play those songs royalty free for whatever.
I wonder if it would make sense to do both. Fund artists with the condition that their work is free for governmental use—then make sure the government actually takes advantage.
I suspect part of Quebec's goal is to give home-grown music more cultural attention, so that eventually it may become more popular in its own right. But the government won't necessarily decide to use a song just because it's free—after all, there's plenty of free creative commons music available already.
I worry most that policies like this will further the populist nationalist thinking, dividing people in us (white francophones of French colonial descent) and them (everybody else).
All the top music here in the US traces its roots around the world several times. You don't get today's top charts without someone messing around with a sampler from Japan in Europe in the '80s.
Remember the UK citizens voted on this TWICE in practical effects. They want it. They may not be as stupid as you think they are.