The problem with physical game copies is they don't really sell physical game copies anymore. What's on the plastic disc you buy is an unplayable mess, or even just a key, and the game you're actually going to play gets downloaded the first time you put the media in.
And the newer games require always-online play so they can phone home when you launch them.
I wouldn't get too complacent about peace in Europe. The peace in the last 80 years or so was the result of very specific conditions that no longer apply.
Lately, sure. But for most of that time the threat from the Soviet Union was the heart of the European peace project. Without the USSR the fractures in the EU look to be getting more serious, at least from the outside. Russia's invasion of Ukraine will probably save either the EU or NATO, but probably not both.
Odd take, as the EU was founded as a peace project (1) and external threats of invasion obviously are not. But please, no more of these idiosyncratic opinions.
Not every opinion you disagree with can be reasonably labeled idiosyncratic. You say the EU was founded as a peace project, but a less idealistic view would be the EU was founded as a Franco-German alliance to control the rest of Europe.
Europe is a lot more diversified than the US (subtract the whole AI / internet tech sector and US treasure bonds and you get a lot less volume than Europe) and spends more in social security which is good for the economy as a whole.
The US has inflated numbers through soft power influence throughout the whole world but that makes its current course only more self-destructive including bond yields when they come crashing down.
A proper digital ID would certainly make things more difficult for thieves, but if someone actually did manage to clone your ID you'd be in a world of hurt, since businesses would start to trust that ID to a greater extent than they trust anything online now.
But governments would be obliged to ensure that wouldn't happen and fix it if it did. We trust them to do the same for passports etc and it works fairly well.
In both Canada and the US we had people who were "de-banked" in recent years because the government was irritated with them. No trial. No hearing. Just a letter from the bank saying "We don't want your business anymore. Here's a cashier's check with your balance." In Canada at least some of the accounts were actually frozen. "Yes, we have your money, but no you can't have any of it."
In the US there's a requirement for banks to refuse to do business with anyone who would be a "reputational risk". I think it was intended to suppress money laundering. Anyway, when the government calls and says such and such a client represents a reputational risk, the bank doesn't have any choice.
I don't know how it works in other countries, but here in the US you'd be hard pressed to function normally in society without a credit card and bank account.
I've been through a few rounds of voluntary buy-outs at a big tech company. By far and away the people most likely to take the package are the people who aren't bothered by the prospect of finding another job. Some of them are delusional, but in most cases these are the younger, more dynamic employees with marketable skills who will be difficult to replace.
The people you'd want to see go, people who have been there forever and have gotten overly comfortable, people who may even hate their job, tend to stay because of 1) skill atrophy and 2) a (valid) concern about age discrimination.
Based on my own experience I don't think I'd ever do a voluntary buy-out were I running a company. The company comes out ahead when managers do their job and make the hard choices.
With high end tractors you can have them drive themselves on the rows based on a GPS map that was created when you planted. That's going to be difficult to retrofit.
It sounds like ICE buyers are subsidizing EV buyers. The math starts to get ugly as EVs become a larger percentage of the mix. ICEs will be priced out of the market, but there won't be anyone left to subsidize the EVs. In short, it sounds like buying a car is about to get a lot more expensive in the UK.
In Germany for example(and other EU countries) you get money back from the government on your tax return for your daily commutes to work, if you live far away enough from work to qualify for commuter subsidies. Those subsidies you get no matter which transportation you use, bicycle, train, car, etc. And plenty of people commute by car when their work/home is far away and remote enough for cycle/public transportation to not be very useful or convenient.
Funny how their solution was to subsidize burning fossil fuels for car commutes to the office instead of, oh I don't know, MANDATING WFH!, given Germans are such staunched green environmentalists. Sure, let's turn off nuclear and ban plastic straws, but let's also subsidize the generation of diesel, brake pad and tire fine dust particles we breathe in, for commuting by car to work. We can't forget our car industry lobbyists.
I am guessing its a deduction in calculating your taxable income. You also say it applies to all forms of transport. That is not a subsidy. It is not different from allowing a factory that uses a fuel to deduct the cost of that fuel in calculating their taxable profits.
Some countries literally subsidize gasoline, but even if your country does not it probably supports oil companies with tax breaks ('creating jobs'). There also are lots of untaxed externalities like global warming and exhaust pollution.
They are not so different: it's the same private/public money dynamic but money flowing in different ways. For consumers it doesn't really matter if it's a tax or 'mandatory levy'. For instance: in the EU it's mandatory to pay for disposal of consumer goods, which is priced in with every purchase. That's as close as a 'disposal tax' as you can get.
In the US, at least, we directly subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of billions of dollars a year -- just counting the above-board, direct subsidies through legislation. If you count indirect subsidies, the figures are staggering.
But put a $7500 point-of-sale rebate on an electric car and people go nuts. So the solution is either make the EV subsidy less obvious, like we do for fossil fuels, or try to educate people on where their tax dollars actually go. The former is more feasible, certainly, in the modern political environment where ideology rules over facts.
That is the aim. Its not a bad idea to reduce the number of cars (at least in cities) but the problem is that the British government wants to drastically reduce the number cars without spending on providing more public transport.
And the newer games require always-online play so they can phone home when you launch them.
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