“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon”

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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: March 24th, 2022

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  • How will they enforce it? I’m sure big/medium businesses will comply, but how can you track a cash transaction between private citizens?

    Furthermore in the country where I live (Italy, one of EU founding members) more than 60% of independent professionals (partite iva) evade/elude taxes in some way or another, and it’s very common (so common that every Italian experienced it many times in their lives, me included) for small businesses and professionals to offer you a slight discount if you pay cash under the table (no receipt, so no taxes) and, even if we have an entire police force dedicated to financial crimes, the submerged economy is just so big that they can’t deal with it now, imagine when they’ll have to arrest/fine everybody that accepts more than €3000 in cash.

    What somebody writes on a piece of paper and what happens in the real world are 2 very distinct things, many stores in Italy don’t accept credit cards even if it’s against them law, and only a minuscule fraction of them gets fined.

    The EU has extremely nazi-esque control on the private financial life of its citizens (the state monitors your bank account, to open a bank account you need to give every info about u in the future they’ll ask for your DNA probably, if you withdraw/deposit a “suspect” amount of money our IRS will come after your ass, ane you need to prove your innocence basically guilty untill proven otherwise, ecc, there are a thousand examples, I’m sure EU citizens can relate) but I can’t see how they’ll be able to track pieces of paper.

    TLDR I can’t even see how they will be able to enforce this law, especially when we talk about small businesses/independent contractors, and the situation gets even funnier when its a transaction between 2 private individuals.



  • frippa@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlAre you a 'tankie'
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    2 years ago

    And they sometimes get called “tankies” too by people to the right of them. That’s why I both think it’s a useless term (if everybody is a tankie, then nobody is) and why I think I fall in the definition (as most leftists do, I’ve seen pretty mild social democrats being called “tankies” by liberals)

    Plus ultimately these blanket descriptions are pretty useless IMO, you’ll find extremely heated debates between “tankies” themselves on many topics, there’s no consensus, and there are many different ideologies “tankies” subscribe to. It would be like saying that Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and Greens are all the same thing. We could call them “dronies” maybe.




  • All those cars and solar panels that Chinese companies counted on selling in the US must go somewhere. Every other country in the world (excluding the EU, although to a lesser extent than the US) isn’t hell-bent on sanctioning China, their production will be just redirected elsewhere.

    And since the US, biggest net importer in the world, just stopped… importing, there will be more goods sought after by less money, AKA more supply (old supply + goods that can’t profitably be sold in the US anymore) but less demand (since the US just passed these new tariffs) and as you know, this is gonna make prices fall, maybe not a drastic fall but still.






  • Some kind of marketplace like eBay.

    Having bought and sold there the rules are quite arbitrary, and their cryptic algorhitm is a nuisance to buyers (you clicked by accident on a stove? You’re gonna see a ton of stoves in the recommended for a while!) and periodically harms sellers (if you don’t post daily and basically make it your day job, good luck making money!)

    a federated alternative, with different instances for various interests and categories, meta-categories even and so on. Maybe regional instances like we have on here, one for the EU (quite convenient to ship and receive packages from inside of it, no customs wasting time and money) one for North America, one for East Asia, etc. With one being able to purchase from all of them.

    Federation would also ensure that rules are properly enforced without abuses or other malpractices like eBay does (did you know eBay shipped a pig head to somebody who publicly criticized them?) since those instances would naturally be avoided and new ones would be made. It would also prevent excessive fees, as the fediverse is generally not a for-profit endeavor, and still, there will always be the option to shop around from other instances.


  • frippa@lemmy.mlOPtoLinkedinLunatics@sh.itjust.worksOk.
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    2 years ago

    It’s horryfiyng but for other reasons. I’m actually on disability and like every other single person on disability in Italy (sure it’s better in other countries) I’m fortunate to have a family (as to not have to rely on the meager check) or else I’d be on the street or worse. Life on here costs about ~800€ a month but they expect (?) people with disability to live with 300/500 a month (the average disability pension) the only person I knew who received more than that (not even that more, barely 800€) was a lady that was literally a vegetable and her cares costed many multiples of 800€, at least the cool thing is that you can receive these brownie points and keep working. Can’t comment on other European nations as they’re all different in som ways.

    Edit: oh also when you turn 18 the gov agency in charge of disabilities and pension does whatever is it in its power to strip you of your meager check🙄