I’m aware, and yet, that is not what an authoritarian government is… But sure, continue to spread your ignorance and double down with dull insults, that will do a lot!

Ah! So you consider that every single restriction a country applies makes it authoritarian. Yeah, I don’t think you understand authoritarianism, and in today’s context, that’s dangerous.

But I won’t lose sleep over it!

Absolutely not! I encourage you to re-read the definition of authoritarianism and research a bit more about the governments all around the world!

Not fully yet, but heading there head first, yep

It absolutely is. Have a look at the definition of authoritarianism, China checks all the boxes.

Yeah, MFA is pretty standard these days. The only apps I know that do something different are the big ones. Steam, Google, Paypal…

It makes no sense to go and maintain your own MFA system as a smaller company.

Not really to be honest. They’re an authoritarian regime, but they do a lot of social policies. It’s a weird mix but not a new one.

Well, you’re already saying “we”, which implies you share that net worth with someone else! That’d be 450k/head, and no one is a millionaire!

It is definitely not the average european city experience. For a comfortable one-person appartment (if you want more than one person apartments, then it’s worth is shared between the occupants, of course, and ends up cheaper per person), let’s generously say 70m2, then you’d need the price per square meter to be more than 14k€ for it to be a million euro home.

That’s way above average, unless, again, you’re looking at city centers, which are always going to be expensive no matter the country.

So, if you live in a european city, not in a city center, and your street has housing costs above 14k€ per square meter (even, conservatively, 10k€), then your city is an outlier, not the average experience.

If you have a source for this (and by that, I mean a source on the rate of cars bursting into flames in China vs in other countries), then I’m interested.

But most likely you’re pulling this out of your ass, and your only reasoning is “cheaper = shit quality”.

Not sure where you get that claim from. Even here, in the Netherlands, where the housing market is through the roof, it’s not that expensive to own a basic house (maybe it would be in Amsterdam but that’s far from the average european city experience)

Unless “basic” for you means 4 bedrooms in the city center.

Of course, there will be edge cases of industries that have not improved their margins over the years. But the fact that prices follow inflation, and wages do not, is enough information to generalise that businesses are just greedy as fuck.

Do you really think that wages are low because higher wages would make the businesses fail? Wages are low because businesses have no incentive to raise them in an employer’s market, that’s it. They make higher margins and keep the difference.

“Takes away lane of road from motorists” is a wild way to say “Created a bus lane”. These people need help.

And I agree to all of that. And I vote in alignment with these opinions.

But this is not a reality right now, and this EU change would still benefit the general population better than no change at all.

You can work towards a world where essentials are a right and work towards bettering the current system at the same time.

Why should I, as a consumer, give a fuck about competition between capitalists and states?

Because it is directly affecting you. Unfair competition means chinese companies get a bigger market share globally while european companies get a smaller market share globally. That means more jobs in China, less jobs in the EU. That affects the general popuation immensely.

The hypocrisy of the EU (and western world) here also exists though: We benefited from cheap chinese labor for decades, and now that China has made it so that they benefit from it more than us, we’re deciding to put a stop to it.

All I care about is how much I have to pay for the car

That is the same shortsight that has brought us to this economic failure.

Nationalizing jobs does nothing if you can’t sell the products.

I don’t know how more clearly I can spell it out.

Start with some open-mindedness to recognize that your train of thoughts is flawed.

I get you, but this is not an instance of it. This is about fighting unfair competition practices. What China does is competing with EU companies in the EU while preventing EU companies from competing with Chinese companies in China.

This is not a great interpretation of the situation. China has for a while adopted a protectionist direction. China complaining about other governments going in a similar direction is hypocrisy.

I am so glad they specified “not US”, I almost thought that by “Europe” they actually meant “US”

Oh, no. People will rise up eventually. It’s just a shame that most people turn out to be olympic athletes in mental gymnastics and delay the realization to the next generation(s).