Thank you! I find it generally distasteful how often the media seems to memory hole the Yugoslav Wars. We've already seen this in 2022 with many pundits claiming that the war in Ukraine is the 'first armed military conflict in Europe since WW2' - which is just blatantly false in this context.
A 7-day-card at the Semmering costs € ~280, the sports hotel there is another € ~800 and then let's price in €~600 for food. So an entire week-long ski holiday in the alps costs you around € 1.700.
I will not try to argue if this is much or little, just trying to add some context for those not familiar with popular skiing tourism destinations.
I really have to wonder where in the EU you live. In Vienna, I got to buy an apartment in my mid-twenties by just saving up, which was easy, as many apartments are rent-capped and there's lots of cheap social housing. I got to enjoy free university, allowing me to get a high paying job. I get to use very cheap all electric state-subsidized rental car offerings if I need them, which is rare since we have federally good rail and bus coverage. And I enjoy affordable meat, dairy and vegetables all sourced from inside my country.
Austria's courts also ruled ages ago that rooting your own device cannot be a legal reason for OEMs like Samsung to refuse warranty coverage, since you can run whatever software you want on hardware you bought.
Maybe your country sucks? Don't blame it on the EU.
> apartments are rent-capped
> cheap social housing
> free university
> high paying job
> very cheap all electric state-subsidized rental car offerings
> affordable meat, dairy and vegetables
And here we can simply examine the tax structure and conclude that the problem isn't whether the country sucks, but whether the side you're on sucks.
After all, how can housing be affordable for ordinary workers if they have to subsidize from their own pocket free university, cheap housing, electric cars, high wages, and everything else for the privileged class?
> Maybe your country sucks?
And maybe your country sucks too. It is just North Korea is also the best country to live in (if you're Kim Jong Un).
I earn good money, but I pay 50% taxes on my income and another 20% VAT on almost anything I buy.
I'm okay with this, but don't try to tell me that I'm not paying for the privileges we all get to enjoy here.
High income earners are the net payers here who disproportionally pour taxes into the system, so everyone can take part in these subsidized schemes. How this basic concept eludes you is beyond me.
Yes congratulation, you get to benefit from a lot of regulated and subsidized things: housing, education and transportation.
While enjoying a high paying job in probably a still very unregulated domain (computers/internet related).
This is not about one country vs another.
The problem is you cannot have a society with everybody winning on both fronts unfortunately. You also need people making, cleaning stuff, growing food, cooking, etc. Not everybody can live in the capital with "very cheap all electric state-subsidized rental car" and Vienna is probably not food self sufficient...
No, but Austria is. And our farmers enjoy much support through subsidies - from the EU and our own budget - and social protections, often having better and cheaper health care than most other Austrians, since they are insured under their very own social insurance law (BSVG), contrary to other employees (ASVG) and self-employed (GSVG).
Farmers also enjoy very high levels of respect and appreciation here, even in Vienna.
> While enjoying a high paying job in probably a still very unregulated domain (computers/internet related).
Calling Information Technology an 'unregulated domain' in the EU when we're all busy implementing NIS2 regulation and preparing for the Cyber Resilience Act entering into force soon seems disingenuous.
> And our farmers enjoy very high levels of subsidies
Yes, thanks. This was my original point "the agriculture sector hold by a string". It is by design unsustainable and if you cut those "high levels of subsidies" it collapses.
> Calling Information Technology an 'unregulated domain' in the EU when we're all busy implementing NIS2 regulation and preparing for the Cyber Resilience Act entering into force soon seems disingenuous.
I do not understand what you're trying to communicate with "hold by a string" - we subsidize our farmers because we do not want to completely wreck our local agricultural supply chains just because food from, say Brazil, would be theoretically cheaper today. Another factor is that we actually have the ability to properly enforce quality standards if the food is produced within our jurisdiction.
This is no different to subsidizing public transport, because having this infrastructure local and autonomous is just strategically important enough for the tax payer to finance it. Would you say that public transport in EU capitals is "holding on by a string"?
They cannot make them leave the EU, no. But Hungary can be:
- kicked out of the Schengen Treaty
- kicked out of the NATO
- fined under EU breach of contract proceedings
- withheld financial support as long as they do not pay these fines
- forced through customs policy, which is sole EU competence, to stop compensating lost EU support with Chinese money
Honestly, I'd be in full support of some above listed actions if the elections in April show the current will of the Hungarian people misaligned with shared EU values.
They do regularly withhold financial support for them, but it doesn't seem to be too effective, usually they just get it back in return for not crossing the EU on some other topic.
I do think we should make work of kicking them out somehow if Peter Magyar does not win the next elections indeed.
As long as companies employ morally vacuous techniques to strip us of our fundamental freedoms, I say, copyright should be completely disregarded by the global citizenry as dead law. The AI labs have set the precedent here.
Why should big companies get to have rights and freedoms when such things aren't afforded to us? Long live piracy. May our spirits never falter.
What does this have to do with copyright? This is stealing pure and simple. If you walk out of a museum with one of its art pieces, you're not going to get arrested for copyright infringement.
What did he steal? He was receiving the binary data anyways when he streams it on his devices. How does him just keeping that binary data on his phone/computer instead of deleting it qualify as "theft"?
Being this much of a bootlicker for mega corps under the guise of "law abiding" is dumb. It's also and incredibly disingenuous argument. Stealing a physical thing is one thing, bit perfect copying of a digital item removes it from nobody's possession. And since I don't believe that companies have the right to infinite money for having stolen enough from previous endeavors to buy up the rights to things people like, taking it in any way you can is lawful regardless of if it's legal.
And who exactly do you think elected the 'powers that be'? The issue is that voter turnout for EU parliamentary elections is awful in comparison to national elections, especially among more conservative voters - meaning that the political orientation between the parliament and commission is a little skewed.
Sure, but then you end up with stuff like this happening time and time again. If something doesn't pass the first time, put it through again, and again.
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