Comments by "looseycanon" (@looseycanon) on "TLDR News EU"
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Yeah, brain drain is not about the EU. Sure, moving may be simpler, but if you have wage differences in area of between 200 and 300% of what you'll earn in your country, people will move even over mined borders. I live in Czechia, our median wage 39685 CZK (according to our statistical bureau), while minimum economic wage (also known as living wage) is around 47000 a month. Minimum wage is 18900 CZK. And we're still wondering why are people leaving, when in Germany is 1584€. which is approximately 40000 CZK. We already have similar prices as Germans and our companies are some of the most profitable ones in the world. Our workers provide very similar value to the German ones. Why don't we raise the minimum wage to match Germans? And I am quite certain, that you'd find similar problems all over the EU. Hell, Romania and Austria had a timber based scandal fairly recently, with Austria exporting free lumber from Romania. Also, given what's happening now in Hungary and Slovakia, I'm pretty sure, you'd find people domestic politics as reason for them to leave.
As to the single market, well... it's not unified. we Czechs pay far more for mobile data than Germans or French, and cellular providers are whining over us still monkey branching between WiFis... That one is likely a problem of the EU, because it doesn't force a rule, that would make same good/service sold in all countries to actually be the same for the same price... Hopefully, we'll get there one day.
As to regional inequality, that would have happened regardless. Business is better done from a hub, for which capitals are predisposed. It is true, however, that the EU (and nimbyism) is throwing some stones under the wheels. Because of nonsensical environmental policies, manufacturing (particularly heavy manufacturing) has left Europe for China and other low wage nations, and major factories is the one thing, that will never be in a country's capitol. Just look at Mladá Boleslav, how some 60% of the city is just factories belonging to a single brand! That you won't find elsewhere. And then there is the issue of employers being able to force people into offices, which also forces internal migration from countryside to the capitol. But that's two out of three reasons not being even associated with the EU!
Italy is not a good example to give for Euro being a problem. Italy has Japan levels of development and wealth creation in the North and damn near Sudan levels in the South, dragging it back. Their lack of growth is not because of Euro, rather, they don't have the Rhein and Elbe, they are in a choked sea, one one end with Suez, on the other with Gibraltar, they have to cross the Alps to get to the rest of the EU for trade. Furthermore, tourism, something they banked heavily on, doesn't generate enough wealth to sustain itself. Famously, Venice is literally falling apart due to overtourism and people don't spend there enough to fix the city. As to saying, that countries prefer their own currencies... well highlighting Bulgaria for it is disingenuous the least, given they are on track to have Euro by 2026 at the latest and Croatia literally adopted the Euro two or three years ago! Let us also not forget, that Russia still has contacts in post-communist countries and has incentive not to allow their former satellites to further integrate with the EU. Public discourse should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt.
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Job hunting was a nightmare. If you don't have both on the job experience and university degree, you're crewed. I feel, that we need to demand more from companies, that are making the profits in our economies. Youth unemployment is fertile grounds for general unemployment down the line, so, what I'd like to see, would be a tax on unemployment. Say 5% of company turnover per each whole percentage point of difference between general unemployment and youth unemployment...
But on a grander scale, Europe needs to reevaluate its goals. Environmentalism had taken away great many jobs in material refining and product manufacturing, which were typically fields, which could take anybody and paid reasonably well, because these are uggly and dirty industries.
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I sooo much hope, that there will be proper oil shock. The West had ostricized oil industry to the point of banks considering them too riskey to provide services to, because of BS CSR rules implemented for political purposes (polititians trying to get environmentalists to vote for them specifically). We've lost the Russian capacity due to the war, which we could forsee since occupation of Crimea would come eventually, yet, we refused to drill at scale under the "oil=bad" mantra (inspite of oil being in one form or another in some 40 000 products). Well now, it's coming back to bite us. Saudis know, that people will vote based on their wallets. US elections are steadily approaching one day at a time and they'd much rather have Trump than Biden in the White House, inspite of the fact, that Biden is essentially second Trump term, as far as economy is concerned. It is our environmental hubris, that we are this open to blackmail by groups like OPEC (which, fun fact, is actually headquartered in Vienna, Austria. One of the most staunch ecologist nations in the EU) or Russia. We need this slap in our faces, to wake up from the green dreams of children and into the black, liquid reality of the world.
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@evilds3261 It is literally the strongest correlating factor. That does imply causation. No, you can't have stance, that says, not having children cost's less money. Reason is economical. Children are those, who make money and provide care, when current generation becomes too elderly to work. Irrespective of gender, there should be at least two children per couple, better yet, three. Elderly care, which you don't need to pay for, when, when you're elderly! That is, how it work's in the third world! Elderly remain with their kids, provide childcare when able to and receive care from their kids, when necessary. The fact, that we don't have children, because women go into education and then persue career, is indisputable and must be resolved, or we're facing massive problems down some thirty years. If you have such a stance, correct it.
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Yeah, hate to take wind out of your sails, but immigration is not a solution for demographics crisis. It helps in short term, but this is a generational problem. Without raising natality, this crisis will not change, it will only be postponed. So what needs to change? There are a few measures, which need to be implemented, some of which will be severly shuned.
1) Economy first. All ecological legislation needs tob e scraped, while labor protections need to be increased, as well as companies need to be incentivised to pay higher wages.
2) Change in laws regarding marriage, cohabitation and general interaction between sexes. Men are begining to evade women due to risks surrounding interacting with them. While this is more of a problem in the US, it is spreading and needs to be stopped, or men will stop dating women to the point, that population collapse becomes irreversible. Particularly sexual assault allegations need to be viewed with greater degree of scepticism.
3) Abortion must no longer be on demand. The standard needs to be, that pregnancy seriously threatens woman's health or life. Foster parenting needs to be strenghtened as counterbalance, but only in full, preferably multi generational families for financial reasons.
4) There is also the problem of too few kids being concieved. Since women are the ones, who determine, who they'll procreate with, we need to promote motherhood as greater societal value than carreer to women. This means reducing women's access to the job market.
I'm listing these in order of implementation. Hopefully, the situation will get reversed, before we'll get to number four, although I highly doubt that.
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This is actually simple:
1) because of influence of Feminism, women now have a choice between career and being a mother. This needs to be reversed, or at very least, career may only be made open to a woman after she had given birth to her third child with the same father.
2) cost of living must be lowered, particularly cost of housing, because you need sufficiently large home to raise a family, something, that has been forgotten by policy makers, who instead chose to go environmentalism route, wiping out jobs, that could actually provide sufficient income to raise these new families, that were never established as a result.
3) companies must be forced to colocate workplace with where employee is, whenever physically possible, not the other way around. If the job uses computers to get done, it needs to be done from home, not from the office.
4) staying with employers for a moment. Only jobs they actually currently intend to fill may be advertised. Failiure to fill a position needs to result in punishment for the company, except of hiring EU citizens (to maintain membership) or for positions intended for knowledge transfer, for which this would be defferred, if company can show, they've trained the specialist they needed in the end. Companies must be forced into being loyal again to their employees (you see, it used to be a two way street back in a day). Two new taxes need to be introduced. One on staff turnover rate and one on average employee age in company, the higher the average age the higher the tax.
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I really see a different problem. In the EU, it has become fashionable to do two things. One, to force people into directions, that don't bring actual benefit to economy, which is what is feeding us as citizenry. The EU as a whole as well as it's institution (I'm looking at you commission, I'm looking at you) need to start taking more realistic goals, that even the poorest in the EU can achieve or actually contribute to. Make no mistake, there were initiatives which were spot on and ambitious. Problem comes, when the initiative pursues tackling way too big problems like climate change (which the EU is not a significant contributor to. Just look at India and more importantly China. Funny that these two nations are never really criticized over this). The second problem is that, there is no reprimand for lying, if you are a public person. Because of this, the Greens and AFD and their alternatives elsewhere could push through policies, which were built on shakey if not outright untrue arguments or empty rhethoric. Case and pont the whole Brexit debacle, where actual economic arguments and words of actual experts in their fields as well as celebrities ranging from Clarkson (who him self is critic of the EU) to Hawking.
We need a more sober look at the problems. Take mass immigration, for instnance. What is it that AFD want's to do? Return checks on borders and ultimately dismantle Shengen, meanwhile, companies in Germany can't find enough workers to the point, that in Czech Republic, in the borderlands, banks started issuing mortgages in Euros, because so many people commute to Germany and Austria for work. meaning they'll actually make another problem worse along the way. There is also way too low birth rate in Germany. Where is AFDs recipe that? Where is AFD going to find new workers, to replace those, which will stop coming from accros the border? Technology so far has not created fewer jobs, than there were before in the long run. Really until cloning get's to the level of Kaminoans from Star Wars and get's it's moral implications sorted, immigration is the only quick way to get workforce, as, as we know, it takes some 20 years, until a newborn start's working. So is immigration really a problem, or a quick fix for another one? Does immigration really need to be sorted out? And that's not even taking germany's brain drain into account! Or what about climate change. There are things, which can't be done without sufficient enrgy. A steel mill can easily eat production of a big nuclear powerplant, if it were to go from coal to blue hydrogen! Not to mention, you'd need to deploy hundreds of wind mills to replace a single nuclear powerplant! And that is what the commission thinks, is going to make us more internationally compettitive... higher production costs at greater distance from main population center on Earh, wich is Southeast Asia! Support for solutions like this comes mostly from old member states, most importantly Germany!
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What they mean is, whether you can effectively tax people more. There's a law in economics, can't remember the name now, that says, that if you increase tax rate beyond certain point, you'll generate LESS revenue, because people will stop buying the stuff they originally consumed and, if they are able to, they'll substitute it with something else. Well, if you increase taxes that hit everything, people will start saving more money, because whatever they could spend it on would become too expensive to justify buying them and the economy slows down in general, which down the line could even lead to bankruptcies of companies, layoffs and further decrease in consumption caused by lower disposable income in the economy. Meaning you could start a deflationary spiral and there is no coming back from that without heads of minister of finance and governor of central bank (at minimum) rolling. Tax wise and by extension subsidies wise, this means, that you will lower the support you can pay out to the farmers, because you increased how aggressively you've been taking money from peoples purses. And it doesn't matter, whether you target income or consumption taxes. Real after taxes income will be the same and that is what will determine consumption in economy and by extension total tax revenue and redistributable portion of it into agro subsidies.
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@HyperScorpio8688 The question is, "just what would the US nationalize?". There is not much they could do with burned down factories and any and all IP in the direct hands of a foreign company.
Also, don't take the US military industrial complex by it's Dollar value. Prices in that sector re extremely bloated.
Furthermore, you're forgetting two things. One, the EU could go full Russia and just fine American companies for not providing service and supplies a decillion USD. Laws can be easily created to facilitate that and make them retroactive. And two, this would NOT be a war of guns, but one of trade. The EU has won one trade war with the US already, one lead by Trump no less! Never forget, that the source of American power is how much it's interconnected with the world. Ask yourself a question, who'll trade with the US, when they're doing this to their closest allies? India? Forget it. They are the only nation on Earth, that can pull off isolationism and they know it. China? Who's been declared a systemic rival and is on the verge of dying out of old age? The Americas? Sure, as long as the US accepts cocaine and heroin as payment... Russia? I'm sorry, if things keep going the way they are, East Poland? Nope, the United States are literally number 2 nation added to their hostile countries list...
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@arhambliss8606 This is not enough. The correct question is, "how much above economic minimum wage is your wage?". Economic minimum wage is individual and refletcts, how much you need to spend on food, drinks, housing, utilities, transportation to and from work and whatever expences you have to maintain the job (certifications, seminars, tools, etc.). Now let me break it to you, but basically every Millenial and latter generation is below this amount in Europe. Even if people wanted kids, why would they have them, if they couldn't feed them selves!
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You want to return fertility rates high? Fine
1) since women are the gatekeepers to sex as prerequisit to childbirth, incentivise them to have children, while remove the risk of having children for males. That means the following. Quotas on women in management? gone. Discrinimation based on gender? Allowed. Divorce? Moving party loses everything, unless the parties agree otherwise. R allegations? Accuser is considered guilty of defamation until proven turthful in their allegation and if not, automatically criminally liable and sentenced. Abortion? Strictly for medical reasons only (eg. pregnancy seriosuly threatens healt or life of the mother).
2) relative costs of living must be curbed. That means a number of things. Rent controls need to be reintroduced. Massive empty house taxes need to be introduced, aiming to force property owners to either sell or rent the properties out. Minim wage newly calculated based off highest minimum living expenses (eg, highest rent for a 3+1 flat, longest commutes using the most expensive commonly used way to commute, most expensive energies... etc.). All green policies, that increase costs of building new homes (like passive house mandates, or pro-environmental zoning) must be terminated to increase supply of housing. Building a house for ones own living must be permissible on any type of land, as long as the builder or the one ordered the family home be built is the owner. Labor market needs to be reinvestigated. Comapnies these days use tactics, such us advertising without intent to hire (to create a database of resumés) or advertising catch all position to hire staff for other roles. These practices must be made illegal. All job advertising must show actual minimum salary intended to be paid for each position and must be truthful. Underreporting must be punished with liquidational fines. The idea being, to increase positive difference between wages and costs of living, as to allow women to return to maternity and housekeeping duties, which in current situation is financially impossible. Staying with the theme of economy, environmental concerns may only be taken into consideration, not being made final goal. Artificial cost increases (like emmission allowances) must be discontinuted. Global warming must be accepted as price for progress. The idea is, to make it ecnomically feasible, to return to the 1 parent working, 1 parent housekeeping model from the past.
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yeah, this is damned if you do, damned if you don't situation... Really, the only way to fight propaganda is through censorship, at least on responsive enough basis. Problem is, you can't censor, because it is either just undemocratic (ie. against not codified but held values) or outright unconstitutional as part of law. Meaning if you implement any measure to diminish spread of propaganda, you give your opponent genuine ammunition to use against you, damaging your legitimacy, because you've shown, that the values you declare to be at the very heart of your state/system mean and are worth nothing. Values like freedom of speech for instance and particularly political speech.
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There's whole host of reasons for this.
1) If you own a piece of land, you can't build a dwelling on it. It needs to be prezoned for residential purpose... which makes spread between farming land and construction slab some twenty to to forty to one...
2) Landlords don't have any incentive to lower their income by lowering rents, and have all the power to shift ANY increases in costs and taxes on to the tennant. Meaning that landlords essentially created a cartel, without ever meeting. We Czechs deregulated rents a while back with promisses of lower rates and better maintained buildings, because the market would force home owners to compete... But someone with microeconomics 101 course under their belts would tell, that doesn't happen to a service, that's this price inflexible as housing!
3) Environmental regulation for new construction forces all of us to invest more in unnecessary things like solar panels, or having to use thermal pumps instead of gas, coal or wood furnaces. The green ideology is coming home to roost. Only those, who don't support it, now have to pay the price of it in completely unaffordable housing, returning us to the effective status of serfs. Basically all other environmental regulation inteisifies this problem, because it increases other costs of living and holding down a job, while not providing corresponding increases in incomes, meaning, people have to save longer for down payment, which is all but preempted by points 2) and 4). Making life more expensive is not going to help and will not save the planet either.
4) Employers are not willing to hire and pay at rate of minimum economic wage (one that covers housing, food and drinks, clothing, expenses to hold down the job, transportation and some small past time activities). I take wage just below median. My wage would have to double, if it were to satisfy the above mentioned definition. As a result, I and others like me, have to stay with our parents in our childhood rooms, instead of setting up and raising families of our own and having children. Currently, even families earning median wage qualify for housing assistance from the state, how low wages are.
So, what needs to change?
1) Land ownership needs to guarantee ability to build any housing for one self and their family, irrespective of parcel type.
2) Rent controls need to be brought back, along with huge empty homes tax. Accounting of landlords needs to be made public. The aim being, to force properties owned by investors to get activated, turning them from investment to rental properties, or get them on the market to be sold to actual families living in them.
3) All environmental regulation needs to be scrapped.
4) Employers need to be forced into hiring people, training them for their jobs and paying them a living wage. No more crying, that they can't find the talent, when those same companies are turning away graduates.
Note that I didn't mention interest rates so far. That is, because they mean nothing for housing! Housing is one of basic necessities to maintain income, kind of like fuel for your car or a tram card, meaning, you always pay, what the last housing unit costs, irrespective of price! Interest rates work for consumer loans, not mortgages, because a drill or a fishing rod are not a freaking house! Those you can go without!
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This is simple, really:
1) Europe has been taking in pro environmentalist policies for decades now, sinking money into anti-growth measures aimed at "saving the planet".
2) Europe has doesn't focus itself enough on Africa, which has a huge market and is expected to grow. Instead of securing itself as continetn's major supplier of foodstuffs and actually productive infrastructure (powerlines, non-green power generation, water management, road and rail transport, healthcare), it focuses on completely useless projects to attempt to stop climate change, which is fighting windmills.
3) Europe fails at anti-propaganda efforts. Instead of destroying Russian propaganda base in Africa and within it's own borders (for long time, this had been Russian embassy to Czech Republic and had since moved to Hungary). This has lead to dissolution of nuclear power in Germany, current problematic status of Hungary, creation of anti-EU parties in most of Europe and shakey
4) Europe has adopted (to some degree) woke culture coming in from the US, which leads to inept people being promoted, when competent people are forced out of their positions on grounds, that have nothing to do with actual job being done.
What needs to happen, to stop this?
1) Repeal Paris aggreement and vast majority of environmental protections EU wide.
2) Reformulate CSR. This must cease to discriminate againt certain industries. Employee compensation in real values needs to be made much larger part of it, replacing environmental concerns.
3) Incentivise mining and processing industry in Europe by lowering their tax rate
4) Ensure as cheap energy as possible. Severe punshments for lobbying on behalf of large scale wind and solar.
5) Create it's own propaganda machine, to shape public opinion abroad. End apologies for colonial era.
6) Union wide strict requirements for surplus public budgets. Simplify tax law in general, with greater emphasis on consumption taxes and VAT.
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There is another problem with the EU. That fails to understand, that only while there is sufficient economic growth, euroskeptic voices don't have valid arguments. Yes, we're at war now with Russia, though not officialy declared, so now is not normal time and before, there was Covid, but even before Covid, the EU, specifically the Commission, had been pushing for anti-growth green agenda, claiming it's necessity for climate change. As a result Europe lost huge amount of manufacturing and material processing to China, and is now losing it to USA, thanks to no proper response to US Inflation Reduction Act.
One more correction, Czechs are not against Euro.Companies are already trading with eachother in Euros and they preffer loans in Euros too (given interest rate differential). If you do a lot of export trade, you can run your books and even pay your obligations to the state in Euros and other major currencies (new thing I think from a year or two ago). Banks are already providing multi currency accounts and our parliment approved of exporters paying a part of sallary in foreign currencies, which suggests there is demand for income in Euros (this being first step to test the concept). I have also been to a townhall with one of my former employers, where request for partial sallary payments in Euros were discussed. The way I see it, there is a very vocal minority, that opposes Euro and anything related to the EU, that is mostly centered around SPD. Even ODS has its pro-Euro block, mostly people to do with export, as could be seen recently in the news. Their opposition to the EU stemms from claims of overregulation (argueably) and green idiocy (definitely), that is currently in power in Bruxelless. Then there is much quieter minority, admittably somewhat smaller, centered around the Pirates, that want Euro yesterday. The problem is, vast majority of people are indiferent and follow golden rule of IT, "When it's not broken, don't fix it.". However, even that is changing. We have effectively become bi-currencial economy already, so I see us accepting Euro eventually, maybe even in under a decade.
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@suchendnachwahrheit9143 It's not. Why do you think Germany needed the electricity producing part of it's gas purchases in the first place? Well, precisely, because they bet on wind and solar, which are intermittent, but forgot, they have demand for energy, which is periodic on a daily basis and nearly constant on larger scales! They needed plants, which can be easily controlled, which are gas powered plants! Closing down nuclear was a colosally stupid too, but betting on wind and solar was worse. Just look at France, what they pay for power from their nuclear and hydro combo!
Why is there a housing crisis? Isn't it so, that large scale buildings, like flats, need EIA? Or Environmental Impact Analysis? Which is a needless piece of paper from the construction standpoint, which only prolongs the approval process?
No, this is all environmentalism.
As to the migrants, be thankful, that you have them. With your fertility crisis they're a blessing. Without them, your retirement benefits would be in much worse state.
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Not sure, if I can agree... The problem with audits is, that the politician then gets to spin it. They either cherry pick or twist the numbers, instead of just plain reporting it's findings and making holistic changes based on expert advice and said audit... If an audit is going to be used as politicians typically do, then it's a waste of money and a PR firm would have been cheaper. As to your comment about physical laborers... well, that is their problem. The market has changed drastically and we have to adapt, or be swept away. The guaranties and assurances of our parents and grandparents are gone, either by them not being sustainable (retirement) or being just abandoned, because it saves money (employer loyalty was killed by employers years ago), so thinking, you will only do one job in life is foolhardy these days. Even if the reason for leaving a job is health, a worker has to prepare for it and be ready to pivot into another field, as hard as it is.
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@naapsuvaimne740 Not in case of war with the US... Not that I'd advocate for it, but with characters like Trump on the ballot, we can't be sure, they won't declare on us. If Trump gets reelected and delivers on his promises regarding Ukraine (eg. abandons them), then any and all trust between the US and Europe will be gone and what then, when you know, that you are completely defenseless in a critical field, because the other side has massive numbers advantage, quality advantage (Europeans don't get the best things the US have, for instance the F22) and can be literally turned off by a former ally? (for instance F35 requires wake up code from manufacturer every day, from what I've read. A wake up code, that US government could ban the manufacturer to give)
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@HyperScorpio8688 Somebody already mentioned HK, but there are still other defense firms in the EU. There's a factory that makes small armas in Cugir, Romania, there is still CSG, which is now Czech company, that actually owns Colt, so moving that production line out of US would both help Europe and damage the US. There's Rheinmetal, who make tanks, there's Tatra, who make trucks which carry artillery pieces. Airbus has military wing, we've got Saab... Europe is not dead in terms of military industrial complex. It's dormant. And Donald will regret waking it up.
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I don't really think, that bringing back the military service would help. I for one would refuse vehemently to even touch a gun, if it meant protecting the politicians, who took away my ability as a civilian to own a gun and made me do psycho-tests to earn a driver's license, which is kind of necessary to hold down a job, even if you live in a city! Rather, I'd say, that what we need, is to finaly federalize Europe and merge our armies together... However, that would mean shutting down anyone, who'd talk about not getting embroiled in conflicts, that are not our own...
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@mikaelantonkurki Let's take plastics for instance. We need them. Even tin/steel cans and paper containers have internal lining made from plastic. We need to produce them and no, they can't be recycled. It's not efficient enough due to how energy intense recycling is. The only other way, thto produce plastics is from biomass. Not all biomass can be used for this. One suitable plant is corn. Now, that's how much extra corn planted? How many acres of rainforests turned into fields? Because you need the land to be cheap to keep costs down and you still need fuel to harvest that corn, or you need to some kind of grid based energy to run the harvesters, because batteries are impractical due to vehicle weight as I mentioned already, further decreasing competitiveness of this method. And that's one product group, that's produced from oil! Even if I claimed it be 1000 different products, that's 1/40 of products made from oil!
What about heating? Are you seriously going to endorse whaling, because not everywhere can have electricity as source of heating, because of no access to grid, not good location for wind and solar won't heat you enough in winter. Nobody wants to permit coal due to CO2 emissions and even wood is frowned upon. So what's the alternative? This is something "green people" don't like to hear, but it's a historical fact. Expansion of use of oil sourced fuels for heating saved whales from extinction, because before this shift, we used whale oil for lighting and heating! Without oil that would have to be walked back.
Roadbuilding. How much more gravel would we have to refine and mine to replace asphalt, which is a petroleum product? The final fraction of oil. That's how much more land destroyed by mines for these resources?
Where will you get sulphur and other chemicals, which are byproducts of oil industry (containted as contaminants in crude oil)? That would now have to be produced actively! Where will you get that? Let me remind you, that even wine needs to be sulfured to stop it's fermentation process (yep, even wine has oil industry product in it)
95% of all food is made with use of oil, mostly in fuel, packaging, but also in fertilizers and herbicides. Those would also have to be replaced or farms would have to be enlarged. That's how much more land cleared, so that we have same foodstuffs output?
The option, of producing less or not producing doesn't work. You need to eat, no way around it. You need to have clothes and have stuff you need for your work, whatever that is. These also have some oil cost in them. And forget about redistribution. That also needs fuel, because you really can't have 100% renewable or electric power source for ships. Forget about sails too. Assuming one TEU (standard for container shipping), weighs 24 tones (limit for three axle trailer for road transport in Czech Republic) and I will be generous and say that's just cargo, to replace Emma Maersk, just one of the larger container ships, you'd need 66 clippers. The last sailship, that could compete with a steamer was a clipper. There are dozens of ships similar in size of Emma Maersk and hundreds and thousands of smaller ones. That's how large total crew and therefore how big a strain on marine wildlife feeding them, if you were to replace entirety of worlds merchant fleet with the best sail had given us? Electricity doesn't work either, because of the distances these ships travel. You'd have to tow a barge with sole cargo of batteries for the ship itself, and that's assuming you'd even be able to move that barge without external source of power! And forget about Lion batteris on a ship. Lithium fire on one would be guaranteed deaths for the entire crew!
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@mikaelantonkurki :D And how do you get electricity to that place? Nope, doesn't work that way. You can't store it in necessary amounts. That is why actual grid specialists were warning against wind and solar. You need fossil fuels for base load, unless you've got nuclear, but look at Germany and even that has it's draw backs, given current prices of Uranium. There are very very few places, where you've got consistent enough winds to have green base. Furthermore, electric heating in any shape or form will always be more expensive than other methods, because electricity is a more refined product, meaning, unless you artificially make other heat sources more expensive (which is a problem, because if you do it in a targeted way, it will get overturned by the courts as illegal market manipulation), electricity will never be competitive with localized heat sources, partuclarly with wood, which is all around us outside of deserts! It is, because at some place, somewhere on the grid, you had to burn some kind of fuel, to have energy NOW. Not when it shines or blows somewhere sixty miles away! What you suggest, leaves you without source of heat in the middle of a winter, because someone wanted to save money on a powerline. However, your "response" didn't answer my other points. Where is your clipper fleet? Where are your alternatives to plastics, that have exactly the same characteristics like plastics? Where are your ecnomically comparable fertilizers and pesticides and where are the laws of physics denying tractors and harvesters to harvest crops on electricity?!
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@mikaelantonkurki Nope. While nuclear can provide base load, Europe doesn't have it's own nuclear fuel production capabilities, nor do we have uranium deposits, which could easily be mined (due to a number of factors, including greenness of today's population. Wink, wink Germany). Solar and wind are intermittent and there is no way of storing power to account for this intermittency on this scale. Consumption is also intermitent, but along a different curve. As for hydro. Nope. Hydro power has one major problem. Water is used for other purposes as well and with increased tamperatures, water storage for drinking and irrigation will become far more prominent uses of dams, meaning they can't be used to counterbalance this intermittency. And on top of that, there is the grid itself, which is already at capacity. Add more high energy consumption like EVs or large scale heating to it, you will cause nation wide blackouts. And that's still note addressing all the need for plastics I mentioned earlier.
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The housing crisis is just a part of it. Just look at what Commission is pushing for. Net zero, which means industry can't exist. Industry, which has the capacity to actually gainfully employ people. Which beautifully ties into wage shortage because employers behave like a cartel even in nations with below natural unemployment. Therefore, young people would need double to tripple the salaries, to afford ANY lodging, even in ghettos, whcih have lower rents! Furthermore, the Commission has pushed through regulation, which now has to be incorporated into the law, stating that fresh drivers can't drive between 12am and 6am tocurb drunk driving. Which is overlooks two major problems. 1) Fresh driver =/= young driver. A 30 something driver with a fresh license won't be driving to a bar... No he'll be driving from work home between 12am and 6am, because he was on afternoon shift! That is, assuming ESG won't kill that driver's employer. This is result of environmentalism!
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