Comments by "looseycanon" (@looseycanon) on "The German Economic Collapse Is Worse Than We Think | @visualeconomiken" video.

  1. While I would agree with you on points (1) and (2) to be a problem, point (3) is not. Just look at the Internet, which has changed to the point, it is unrecognizable. Polish Railways had problems recently with some of their DMUs, because of a software update and the ability of their supplier to change contract post sale (Louis Rossmann had a video on this) and lock their property over the Internet. You have companies these days turning everything into subscriptions instead of innovating and creating products and new uses for their existing products to sell to customers. All they are trying to innovate, is the means of monetization, which doesn't provide new value. In current climate thinking first "how will this screw me over" is the right approach. Sure you don't adopt industry breaking technologies, but you also dodge bullets like Theranos and soon to be Tesla, which is clinically dead without subsidies. As for (4), highways are good. They're in better state than most places I've been to, and I've been to a lot of places. Those are not a problem. The railway though... Railway had caught a virus of bullshit ideas such as high speed rail and now, they're paying the price. Instead of focusing on volume of cargo moved by rail, building up marshaling yards and loading yards, all of Europe has decided, that rail can compete with air, which outside of overnight trains is truly idiotic idea, and focused on high speed interconnects of large cities. Instead of laying third of fourth rail, they've decided to increase speed, which is only usable by passenger trains and therefore the increase of maintenance costs have to be born by passengers alone, because freight doesn't need that speed. Instead of making the passenger trains longer by utilizing through coaches, they focused on speed. Therefore, I'd contend, that Germany, nay all of Europe, doesn't have a problem with the volume of investment, but rather, incorrect focusing of said investment.
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  2.  @asambatyon  I see and raise counterpoints. 1) you still need cash. If not for other reasons, then because of your destination. Just try and visit Iran with just a credit card. I visited Netherlands a few years back. I wouldn't say, that the Netherlands are exactly lagging behind in terms of innovation. Hell, in certain fields, they're at the bleeding edge. You'd think, "I can pay with a card anywhere, right?". Well, guess what. I wanted to buy some icecream from a small shop and they refused my card, because it was a MasterCard, fortunately, I'm crazy enough to have bank with banks and one of them carried Visa, so I was able to pay, but that was my sole Visa card in a eight card setup! This is important, because most banks where I live only carry one card provider! Further more, about a decade earlier, my dad lived in Netherlands for a while. Back then, he told me the same thing about card acceptance. Either Maestro or Visa. A while later, he started trucking to Germany and at about the same time, his bank changed from MasterCard to Visa. Well, for a few years, he couldn't pay anywhere and only postal office ATMs took his card in Germany. This lasted about five years. And banking on banks, pun intended, is not as good of an idea either. Just recall the Trucker protests in Canada, where their prime minister had those protester's assets with banks frozen, to put pressure on them. It was an extreme, hopefully never to repeat again situation, but it showed the necessity of keeping some cash on hand at all times, even if everyone accept's cards. 2) while I'll admit, that pushing an update to someone over the Internet is convenient for both parties, there are problems here. What happens, when a company, that ran the servers for some kind of phone home feature, goes bankrupt and it's assets are sold off? Suddenly, your, in case of Tesla, is at best flying without updates, getting more and more vulnerlable to outside attackers, or worse, get's bricked and you'll have a very expensive paperweight. And that's just a decision by a company, what about errors? Say another Crowdstrike? Either way, you or me as customers get screwed over. We have seen this about a year ago with ANNO 2070, fortunately, the original team pushed an update and took over the server infrastrucutre, but where are guarantees, that others will follow suit? Nowhere. Another problem with pushing "update" to a device is EULA, fortunately, around here it's basically illegal to do, however, in the US, you can end up with update to EULA, forcing you into forced arbitration instead of seeking relief through the court system, and you can't decline it and continue to use a five years old TV for instance, or worse, as showed up with Disney recently, ending losing a family member in one of their parks, and Disney claiming, that because you've accepted a EULA for their subscription service, you can't sue, but have to arbitrate (this is like a year old case). The question really is not, whether software is relevant for a product, but whether it should be.The very concept of ownership is getting erroded away with these "smart" and IoT approaches. Is that worth the "convenience"? I'd argue not. Maybe those mechanical engineers see it from this angle? Maybe have a look at Louis Rossmann's channel. He's been doing videos about these "just push an update" shennaningans. Ultimately, until approach of providers changes, taking the skeptical, nay parranoid route towards new technology adoption is the safer (ei more reliable) bet in my opinion. We don't need to adopt top of the line technologies, if outdated ones still manage to handle the tasks, they were supposed to handle. If not for other reasons, then because doing so will leave you without a backup in case of that new technology failing in some aspect. This, after all, is why, when you're shopping for a backup connection for your home/business, you don't go with Fiber/copper, because that's usually your primary. You go with a WISP, cellular, or, in case of really deep pockets, satelite/Starlink. Or why an EV is never the first car in the family... that is the old reliable petrol car. Because if the nice new one fails, you're not left in a river without a paddle.
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  3. Careful about judging "antiquated" technologies. Truth is, you don't need fiber to the premises. One, you can easily push 200 megs over telephone lines, depending on how far DSLAM is. Coax is dedicated data cable and can be superior in some applications. Hell, these days, you can buy MOCA adapters and push hundred megs at longer distances than with Ethernet. And here comes the question. Do we actually need those speeds? Get an ER-X, put it into your network, log into it and try to fully saturate your connection. You may achieve it, when installing a new game from Steam, but how often do you do that? The answer is, you don't. We don't need multigigabit to home and likely never will. Hence why these antiquated technologies persist. They are adequate to current and future needs and everybody already has the gear they need to connect to the system. Buying newer, simple cause it's newer, is waste of resources under such conditions.
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