> Maybe germans have some fucking great plan because in 10 years they won't sell many cars here.
They are trying to build cars there. Germany's trade surplus also leads to German companies investing more money abroad than at home.
Also, what is Germany supposed to do? What are they doing wrong? EZB is not controlled by Germany, Germany in fact always complained about the low interest rates.
What Germany could have done is to accept a change in the treaties for a real fiscal capacity at the European level.
But, instead of that, Germany preferred to enjoy access to a common market and devaluated Mark (that is basically what the Euro is) while pontificating from a high horse.
Instead of a functional monetary union we get this mess. And now we all have to be solidary with Germany energy problems. We will see.
It's not about boogie men, it's about economic realities.
Very different countries can't be in a functional monetary and banking union without a common fiscal capacity. In terms of the USA it would be like there was a Fed without a treasure. Or another way to see it, it's like the countries in the Euro use a foreign currency that they don't control. If you are interested I recommend this prescient article by Wynne Godley (1).
So, if the design of the Euro is bad, why don't change it? Because for some countries is very advantageous. Germany being the best example, they are an export powerhouse that now have unrestricted access to the common market and, because is a common currency, it will no appreciate or devaluate following the commercial balance. Of course, this is sell like they don't want to finance the lazy pigs in the south.
And Germany is stopping the EU from further integration?
If we do this fiscal union, are all countries willing to adopt German fiscal discipline? Are all countries ok with levelling out retirement age? Social benefits?
Also, why are you not mentioning that Germany already agreed to the EU taking on common debt during the corona crisis? That the new government is very much pro further integration?
I hear a lot about what Germany is doing wrong. What are the others doing wrong? Germany was desolat themselves after the reunification, they were called the sick man of Europe. They then did harsh and brutal labour market reforms, and a bunch of luck probably as well. Now they are an economic powerhouse. With 0 natural resources, they are all imported.
It's not the Germans fault that Italy has loads of debt. It's not the Germans fault that Spain built useless ghosttowns in the middle of nowhere. They can only export what others are willing to import. And they are not exactly exporting cheap cars at dumping prices, are they?
Sure, Germany is far from perfect and they do lots of things in their own self interest. But maybe the other countries can also try to do better? How long did the Italians keep Berlusconi in power? Draghi threw the towel today, again, because the parties in parliament are unwilling to cooperate to better Italy.
Maybe try to copy what Germany is doing well, instead of feeling like a victim of German evilness.
You should take a breath and chill with the Jingo.
> are all countries willing to adopt German fiscal discipline?
Most of them have already, you just don't read about it. If anything, German authorities have been excellent at gaming the EU framework, siphoning state aids to this or that industry with all the possible loopholes they could find, while everyone else had to renounce (or even denounce) the practice.
> Are all countries ok with levelling out retirement age?
The pension age in Germany is 65 years ("and 10 months", in my best Lester Freamon accent). In profligate Italy? 67. So yeah, let's have that.
> Social benefits?
Honestly, you don't want to trade benefits with the army of temp workers that Italian "reforms" have generated. They get hardly any paid holiday or sickness, can be fired with no recourse year by year, and so on. German workers get trade union representation at board level, something that simply does not exist in Italy even in the most enlightened companies. They get loads of paid holidays and so on.
> Now they are an economic powerhouse. With 0 natural resources
Ah yes, the Ruhr never existed. From wikipedia: "The Ruhr was at the centre of the German economic miracle Wirtschaftswunder of the 1950s and 1960s, as very rapid economic growth (9% a year) created a heavy demand for coal and steel." All that coal must have been a dream.
Italy had an economic boom in the postwar age too. After all, they were fellow victims of Allied carpet-bombing of industrial infrastructure, and fellow enjoyers of the Marshall Plan. The main difference is that Italy made a few bad choices in the '80s (and possibly another one in the late '90s, when they accepted an Euro/Lira rate too low).
In any case, this attitude is not constructive. It's good that the German political classes, at least, have finally realized that the hipocrisy of privately benefiting from a sclerotic status quo while publicly denouncing it, could not go on forever. Let's build the United States of Europe, everyone doing their bit so we can fulfil the federal dream and be done with these petty rivalries from 200 years ago.
> You should take a breath and chill with the Jingo.
I had to look up what that means. I'm not German. Now what?
> So yeah, let's have that.
Yeah, let's. Italian pensions are about 90% of the former salary? Germany is 50%. Italians make higher payments tough as well.
The difference is, Germany is doing that from a much lower debt ratio.
Temp workers are a thing in Germany as well, they get no inion representations. And again, the difference here: German economy is doing well.
Sure the Ruhr existed, have you been there lately? Crazy decline since the 70s. Wasn't a coincidence that the heaviest german metal bands come from there.
> The main difference is that Italy made a few bad choices in the '80s
Exactly. That's why they have this huge debt now, which results in the whole Eurozone shaking whenever interest rates go up. That's why we had low interest rates, which the Germans were very unhappy with. Draghi tried to work on that, but now he is out. Seems like a right to far right coalition might ein the election in the promise of flat tax and not raising retirement age. Will that be the Germans fault as well?
> Let's build the United States of Europe, everyone doing their bit so we can fulfil the federal dream and be done with these petty rivalries from 200 years ago.
Yes, please! But that only works if everyone is in and works on themselves. I don't thinkt the attitude of blaming everything on the Germans is very constructive either.
Well, then you've absorbed a biased outlook pushed mostly by the German press.
> Italian pensions are about 90% of the former salary?
Ahaha, they were, maybe, 30 years ago. This has long changed, but obviously these changes take generations to be reflected in stats - and we're obviously not going to kill existing pensioners.
> Sure the Ruhr existed, have you been there lately?
Does it matter? You said the German miracle was achieved with 0 natural resources, and I've just proven that statement to be utterly false - which should maybe prompt you to revise your positions.
The truth is that Germany powercharged its economy with coal; since then they've been good at maintaining that advantage, but it's undeniable that they had an advantage like few other European countries. Another advantage is a largely flat surface that makes it very easy to build transport infrastructure, something much more complex in mountainous areas like most of Italy, Spain, and Greece. In fact, it's half a miracle that Italy developed complex manufacturing districts in the Alpine valleys.
> Draghi tried to work on that
Pretty much every Italian PM since the 90s tried to work on that, with various degrees of success. As shown by the Twitter thread linked in another post, Italy actually shrunk their debt faster than any other country over the last 25 years, with wide-ranging cuts. But 80s stereotypes refuse to die even in the face of facts, generating self-fulfilling prophecies in the speculative markets. It's in everyone's interest, including northern countries', that these stereotypes be removed from the public debate. If this cannot be done, sharing debt is the only other option to stabilize a currency from which norther countries benefit disproportionately. And that's what the ECB is effectively doing, measure after measure. It should have been done 20 years ago, as many people asked; but apparently doing it the hard way was politically necessarily, so here we are.
"Many options to retire below the statutory retirement age result in low average labour market exit ages, at 61.8 years on average against 63.1 years for the OECD average. Granting relatively high benefits to relatively young retirees contributes to the second highest public pension expenditure among OECD countries, at 15.4% of GDP in 2019."
Most of those historical benefits have been effectively precluded to anyone born in the '70s, the movement to close that gap has been steady over the last three decades of reforms and is supported by pretty much the entire political class. They even started cutting already-granted pensions, with retroactive moves that are on the border of legality. What I'm saying is that this particular element has already been normalized, and we'll seeit reflected in stats in less than a decade (when the '70s generations will be stopped from retiring in their mid-50s like their parents did).
After the reunification, Germany, as a country, is the poster child of economic success. The balance of trade of Germany, has been just ridiculous. Still, the conditions of the average German have not improve, if something, they are worst.
So, where are all that wealth going? I suppose if you ask the politicians they will tell you that to those lazy guys in the south. Well, that's not it. The Germans should take a good look at what's going on there.
Germany has a lower gini coefficient than Spain. Germany is higher on the quality of life indexes as well.
Also, you keep railing about "the lazy guys in the south". I'm sorry these stereotypes exist. I don't believe them.
Do you seriously believe the problems of the Spanish economy are all because of Germany? There is absolutely not even a single thing that Spain is doing wrong?
There are many things that Spain have done wrong, but the most important one is that it gave away power over its currency to people that have not its best interest in mind.
> And now we all have to be solidary with Germany energy problems
I this it's still better than Germany importing Russian gas. Their whole decarbonization strategy was based on Russian gas. This is how we ended up with gas labelled as "green".
If you don't like'em, don't buy German cars, buy Seat. Technically also a German car built in Spain. At least you keep the factory workers employed.
That's your proposed solution? I shouldn't drive a BMW?
I think I will aim for a political solution if you don't mind. There are two possibilities, a functional monetary union and a really democratic union or every country goes its way. Both work for me.
Yeah, that's one way to put pressure on Germany in order to obtain a political solution. If you go to Greece, almost every food product is labelled with ελληνικό προϊόν = greek product, because they do not buy food from Lidl or German beer. Cars? They usually buy Toyotas, French cars (PSA) or Italian FCA.
I don't even think the author is fully behind it, seemed more like a thought experiment as a reply to grandparent.
Regarding grandma: I don't want to kick her out of the house. But there is a real issue here: young families can't find affordable places, while old families live in places, that are too big for them because the kids left. If they rent, they also pay significantly less than the younger family, since they are on older contracts. Once new people move in, rent is raised to the new level. The older people don't want to move out, because they would have to pay more for their new, smaller place, than the old, bigger place. Meanwhile the young family also has to finance the pensions for that old family.
Noone is being evil here, but ... it sucks. And every idea to work on it is shut down as being unfair to the people who already own houses. Even building new houses is usually opposed by the people who already have houses in the area. If I never get the chance ever to own one, I don't really feel like I have to protect the interest of house owners.
What if grandma lives in a city where there's no jobs for me? Asking people to move in with their relatives is not the answer; the answer is very simple: build more housing. Eliminate zoning rules and start replacing older buildings with new, larger and taller buildings.
Why? Why can’t companies create jobs everywhere? Shouldn’t every American city deserve top notch infrastructure that the states only reserves for high density unaffordable cities where jobs are concentrated.
Maybe this will force the governments to spend some of our accumulated tax dollars to actually improve public transport and efficiently network cities and towns.
Zoning rules exist for a reason. People need infrastructure and water and services and power grids to live well. High density is not desirable nor will it be affordable. It behooves the govt to encourage high density where there are jobs to create artificial scarcity and inflate housing value.
Because higher the home value, more property tax can be extracted. This is the oldest con in the world. This is also why all high density cities are all expensive and housing is unaffordable and everything from water to power is expensive and public services are woefully inadequate.
>This is also why all high density cities are all expensive and housing is unaffordable and everything from water to power is expensive and public services are woefully inadequate.
No, they aren't. I live in Tokyo; it's very high-density, quite affordable compared to anything in America, and public services are all excellent. High density is how you get high efficiency.
>Shouldn’t every American city deserve top notch infrastructure that the states only reserves for high density unaffordable cities where jobs are concentrated.
No, because spreading everyone out means your infrastructure cost per capita balloons, and it's unaffordable for the government. If you want "top notch" infrastructure, you need to live near other people, not out in the boonies.
>Zoning rules exist for a reason.
No, they don't: they just make everything far away from everything else and prevent density. Here in Japan, schools, light industrial, residential, and commercial all coexist in mostly the same spaces. So it's not that hard to live within walking distance of work.
Maybe you should try traveling outside America sometime.
> Eliminate zoning rules and start replacing older buildings with new, larger and taller buildings.
Right now, NIMBY tries to prevent taller buildings.
A land value tax incentivizes more effective land uses-- as opposed to property taxes that include improvements, which reduce the incentive to build high density.
NIMBYism exists because people value their homes and stability. Any society needs stability to thrive. Without NIMBYs, there would be utter chaos and underfunded overcrowded cities.
Housing shortage is due to unions and govts that refuse to establish public infrastructure for everyone. This is done on purpose to create UTism .. Us VS
Them..between property owners and those who don’t own property. Divide and Rule strategy. It has never failed over centuries.
That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.
This however isn't a reason for the rest of the world to accept this. And since the power in the market is highly concentrated and all of it is moving more and more in this direction, regulation enforces these alternative options now.
All this does is regulate the power the provider of a product has over their customer. This does not ruin the walled garden for the people who prefer to stay in it for peace of mind, but it adds a door for the people who want to leave. There is no negative side-effects for the people staying, only the platform providers will have to spend some money and lose some revenue.
That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.
I agree in principle, but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)
Or course, this is mostly a result of Apple being greedy. If they had acted like a good steward of the platform rather than trying to extract a lot of money from developers, we probably wouldn't be here.
Then don't use this particular app? This already exists today: A lot of apps are android-only, or jailbreak-only. In the same sense, tomorrow we'll likely have amazon-store-only apps.
In practice I doubt many apps will use a third-party appstore. Apple has a lot of leeway in how they will implement the regulation - they can make it painful enough to use a third-party store that most popular apps will want to keep using the primary app store to get maximum reach. Just like how almost every android app is on the google play store - despite sideloading being a thing since forever.
Yeah, but for the apps that are on iOS devices, Apple is effectively currently standing in the position of "the lawyer who writes a 4000 page contract to de-risk the wish they're making with the evil wish-granting genie", so that we don't have to. Apple forces apps on their store to obey certain restrictions that make life better (less tracked, especially) for consumers; and those restrictions are begrudgingly accepted by the developers, because there's no other way for the dev to access the iOS user-base.
As soon as those devs can avoid Apple's restrictions and deliver their apps directly to users with the "intended" experience, they will.
Personally, I like neutered-evil-genie apps, and will be sad to lose them (i.e. have them turn into unfettered-evil-genie apps, which I won't use.)
Isn't the answer for Apple to provide operating-system level restrictions to apps (regardless of source) that make it so the only way any application on the system can access the identifier is by permission from the user? I wouldn't be surprised if this is how it works right now anyway, just because an app is deployed by an enterprise developer doesn't mean it should be able to bypass the app tracking transparency prompt.
Or does the EU law prevent them from having private APIs/system components period? It seems like many people are making the assumption that this means that every single sideloaded app will be able to bypass all of the privacy/security features on the device, and I don't see why that would be. My understanding is that this is for "fairness", which would mean that apps that are sideloaded would have the same level of access as those on the App Store, meaning they use the same APIs that trigger the same prompts.
No, because this isn't about OS-level identifiers; it's about things like e.g. applications working together to track you by passing permacookies through Shared Containers; or about apps that ask for microphone privileges then listening for ultrasound beacons in retail stores to determine their location.
These are the sorts of prohibited behaviors that can be heuristically recognized by technical means (e.g. static analysis), but where any such recognition would necessarily result result in tons of false positives; and so those issues, when raised, must be passed to a team of human auditors for determination.
This is, by-and-large, why App Store submissions — even for updates — still require that human-auditor step. They're always watching for those seemingly-minor "this app got sold to someone evil" updates that slip in spyware — the kind you see often with Chrome Extensions.
Your point is valid, but I think those examples are fixable. Permacookies could be fixed as simply as "Would you like to allow {EvilApp} to access data from {EvilPartnerApp}?", as there aren't a lot of reasons that apps should be passing data between each other without user consent (or the share sheet).
The second example has already been fixed with the microphone indicator from 1-2 versions back, where a light shows up in the corner whenever the microphone has been activated (and swiping down tells you what app activated it). A notification could be added if an app tried to activate the microphone when it wasn't in the foreground (but I don't think the OS lets you do that anyway?)
One other obvious "Turing-hard" spyware side-channel, is that it's basically up to the application developer to come up with a list of Internet domains it should be able to connect to, to put into the app's entitlements; and it's up to humans at Apple to determine whether that list is sane — often by starting up the app with syscalls to the network stack shimmed/traced, doing packet captures, and seeing what the app says to each of the domains it lists itself as entitled to talk to.
You'd think that maybe restricting connections to e.g. domains that are rooted in a zone the developer has proven ownership of, would be fine... but there are third-party advertising, analytics, and fingerprinting services that allow you to CNAME them as subdomains of your domain to evade ad-blocker signature recognition.
And, of course, no user could ever be expected to figure any of this out if asked in a prompt. "Example App is asking me to allow it to connect to abcdefg.example.com? Well, they own that, don't they? Why wouldn't I allow that?"
Asking the user sucks. All it does is train users to click yes without thinking about it because they just want to get on with their life. (See: The ubiquitous GDPR cookie prompts).
ANY "solution" that puts more burden on the user isn't.
They could just ask once for defaults not every time and have a per app dialog where the user could tweak the permissions, like browsers do. For instance I have almost everything blocked in the browser: camera, location etc.
They do it for location access, calendar access, notification access, and clipboard access for every app. Access to shared containers shouldn’t be a common occurrence outside of once when the app is set up.
You didn’t disprove what your parent said. People still just tap yes on them. I ran an experiment and put little snitch on my wife’s laptop. She just clicked “accept” every time it popped up without question.
People always make this argument in these kinds of threads and I wonder how it isn't blatantly obvious that operating-system level restrictions are woefully inadequate to deal with unscrupulous developers. Put yourself in the mindset of an unscrupulous developer for a moment, can't you think of a hundred ways to abuse permissions granted by the user or operating system to violate privacy?
> If these abuses happen under the aegis of the current App Store, doesn't that nullify the argument that App Store review is sufficient protection?
Not at all. App Store review is not perfect and no one expects it to be. That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get rid of it entirely. Otherwise you could make the same argument about any system involving unscrupulous actors: "people still kill despite there being laws against murder, doesn't that mean the law is pointless?"
> This also ignores that it's conceivable that Apple can harden iOS's existing permissions system.
Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue I linked above.
> App Store review is not perfect and no one expects it to be.
But Apple is clearly presenting it as such.
> That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get rid of it entirely.
That is correct, but right now it is the only game in town. There's no secondary stores that present it with competition. Already we read about top-10 grossing apps that are actually scammy. Perhaps Apple will strengthen its App Store when presented with alternatives.
> Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue I linked above.
It really depends on what mechanism that Uber is using to bypass the notifications systems. But off the bat, iOS could force even more granular alerts to the user when sensitive permissions are required.
Curious too, how you think that App Store review currently solves this issue. Uber is already too significant to the platform for Apple to do much more than give them a slap on the wrist, as seen historically.
> But off the bat, iOS could force even more granular alerts to the user when sensitive permissions are required.
How does having more granular alerts actually solve this issue?
> Curious too, how you think that App Store review currently solves this issue.
Well, obviously it doesn't, currently. App Store review needs to update their rules to address this type of abuse. Uber is big but they've taken hard line stances against bigger apps before (e.g. Facebook).
I don't think it's a rules update thing. It's more like review didn't uncover this behavior. (In the past Uber had gone all the way to use geofencing to evade reviewers and regulators.) Maybe this could've been only uncovered through long-term testing by reviewers who actively use the app day to day. Maybe they need such a process that does that.
> Sounds like a success story, imagine the alternative scenario where there was no review process and Uber could get away with this entirely.
It'd say 60-40. The 40% downside is that Apple deigned to go through with actually pulling Uber from the store, even just for a few days. Do you think they'd do anything even remotely similar over the notifications permission leak you cited?
> How does having more granular alerts actually solve this issue?
More restrictive and more transparent handling of permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber bundling some sort of library that led to permissions leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being triggered.
> More restrictive and more transparent handling of permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber bundling some sort of library that led to permissions leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being triggered.
I don't think you've thought this all the way through. Once a user grants me permission to send them push notifications because they want to know when their ride shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads through the same channel.
Then it sounds like we have found ourselves a problem that is unsolvable both by OS-level protections and App Store review restrictions, and perhaps we should look beyond to other ways to rein in Uber.
> Once a user grants me permission to send them push notifications because they want to know when their ride shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads through the same channel.
Wait, can't an improvement upon the OS be to make it more granular so that Uber is forced to establish separate permissions channels for rides (vital) vs. ads (not-so-vital), and that every time a notification of a certain type appears, the user is given the option to mute that channel entirely?
Sure, you can offer me different notification channels for rides vs ads. But remember, I am an unscrupulous developer. How are you going to stop me from sending you ads through the rides channel?
My underlying point, of course, is just because the operating system provides certain APIs, does not mean they are going to be used in good faith.
What I mean is if a notification presents itself, allow the user to mute it. If that channel was intended for rides, then the unscrupulous developer simply disables their own app.
Fight the good fight, this is all valid concerns, I don’t look forward to the Netflix store to download Netflix, the Spotify store to download a Spotify, etc
Both Netflix and Spotify are having mounting problems with user retention and growth. Pulling their apps off of the official, most highly-trafficked, App Store is literally suicide for them. Not to mention the inherent difficulty of creating and maintaining their own app stores, of which trying to convince users to sign up for would be a hurdle on its own.
Perhaps they could team up with Facebook and create a rival app store of those who don’t want to pay the 30% tax. Of which they can all hemorrhage users together- it should be noted that FB is also having issues maintaining and growing DAU.
Many of the restrictions that Apple added along the years were reactions to abuse by app developers (which in reality nowadays are "legal malware developers"). Everything you can think of has been tried: from reading the installed list of apps, spying on the clipboard, scraping location data from pictures, fingerprinting phones based on camera sensor or motion sensor and many others.
Permissions represent one of two pillars of their strategy against legal malware developers. The second one is the rulebook associated with the AppStore, preventing publishing non-compliant apps and banning developers for breaking said rules. A classic example is Facebook misusing enterprise certificates to install "Facebook research" which allowed them almost unrestricted access to the data of the users. Apple revoked their enterprise certificate, which also affected internal applications that Facebook employees were using. Facebook relented.
If Facebook launches their own app store, the second pillar is completely circumvented. Additionally they will find ways around the technical limitations, be it through use of private APIs, tricking users into clicking confirmations or bribing them. Technical limitations are not enough when dealing with malicious actors.
> If Facebook launches their own app store, the second pillar is completely circumvented
Meta be forced to offer their adware/spyware Facebook app through the Apple app store as well, as many people will not agree or won't have the technical knowledge to install more than one alternative app store. Apple will probably be forced to provide a list of alphabetically ordered app stores to choose from in the initial iPhone setup. It's quite convenient that their own app store starts with an A.
> that make it so the only way any application on the system can access the identifier is by permission from the user?
And let's say the user says No. Today the app will be forced to work without it. By Apple Store rules. Tomorrow the app will say "this permission is required for app to work".
When we tried to restrict cookie tracking via voluntary consent, every site installed an cookie consent overlay, where agreeing to cookies is one click, not agreeing is seventy-eight clicks.
Almost every site I've had this pop-up on required no more than 2-5 clicks -> manage cookie options -> either select ok because everything but 'required' is already off or deselect a couple of options then ok. That's easy after doing it a couple of times, it's pure laziness to say that's too hard, and we should not accept that as a good excuse to remove it.
It’s easy but very annoying. Especially when you have a secure setup that randomizes identifiers or removes cookies after the session such that the next session and every session after that you get the prompt. And how many people do you think actually take the time to deselect things? Your example here is the simplest case. Many sites it’s much more than 5-7 clicks as the pop up has a tabbed interface with 10+ checkboxes per tab. What was this supposed to accomplish again? Harass users?
WhatsApp is avoidable with this same law forcing interoperability with other messaging clients. Facebook's app is avoidable with a browser and Facebook.com . Actually WhatsApp's app is avoidable in the same way.
They’re all avoidable by just not using them. Use that fancy text message feature of your phone to communicate. 30 years ago these apps didn’t exist and people somehow continued to exist without them.
Because everybody needs their conversations encrypted. What was that liberal saying, what are you hiding? Most people are not targeted by some state actor
Not selling anything here considering every reasonable solution to this problem is something offered for free, or can be mitigated by a user with FOSS.
Yea totally normal for a majority to use SMS in my country when both platforms send messages through their own encrypted servers. I don’t have this problem, nobody in my family does, so now explain to me why I should use matrix?
The obvious counterargument here is that having lawyers write 4000 page de-risked evil genie wishes just normalized the concept of dealing with evil genies. Apple can negotiate around the margins - maybe they stop making their ad tracking identifier opt-out or something. And indeed, that seems good, we increased privacy compared to the alternative. However, this isn't the full picture. Apple is the one who provided that ad tracking identifier in the first place. More generally, they brought a lot of users straight into Facebook's open, gaping maw.
Furthermore, the lawyer isn't just de-risking one evil genie wish, they're de-risking millions of them. Apple does not just have Facebook on the App Store. They have millions of apps. And as you can imagine, many of them are barely reviewed garbage or outright scams. If these apps tried to get distributed outside of the App Store, nobody would trust them. But them being on the App Store gives users a false sense of security. Apple switched from being highly selective in the early days of iOS to doing bare-minimum checks because the latter made them more money.
The issue is what if you have to use a specific app to access some service or community. And then that app requesting access to your location data and your address book even though there is no point in it requesting either. Sure you can deny but if you do it, the app will refuse service. It can only be solved by the app store requiring that users denying access won't result in the app refusing to work, or only the features will refuse to work that actually need that data.
"just don't install the app" won't work in many, many cases.
But this doesn't really happen on Android now. Even though I can sideload apps and use different app stores, my bank never told me to get their app from Shady Store and the public transport company didn't ask me to you F-Droid. The official app store is still _the_ place you find apps in, you're just _also_ free to wander on your on.
The most famous example of an app choosing not to be on the play store is Fortnite. Google even had to add a feature to their play store search to show a message that Fortnite is not available, so that people don't get desperate and install one of the many scams. Fortnite did this because they didn't want to pay the Google tax, but other apps might do it because they want to spy on users more. The danger exists.
We can always use Apple's favorite defense on why they don't have an app store monopoly: use your browser. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. all still work via the browser. I don't know a single one that doesn't (though I could be wrong)
> The issue is what if you have to use a specific app to access some service or community.
Such compulsions are the real problem. In a free society, nobody should be compelled to have a phone at all, let alone install software on one. Government services in particular should never be gated in this way. If no compulsion exists, then there is no problem with people having the choice to use any appstore they wish.
If by 'have to' you mean something along the lines of "My brother keeps badgering me to install WhatsApp" then the answer is to simply say "No." Real example. He texts me instead.
It's thankfully not mandated by governments. However, often there is social pressure to obtain a given app. E.g. when a friend group is all on snapchat and they organize outings via the group chat. Do you want to be left out of that discussion and only be informed by one person from that group who forwards the decision when and where to go to you?
In US I have not seen any government services that are available only via mobile devices. Most online government services are accessible via a website, and one can go to a public library to use a (non-mobile) computer there.
The app might be able to detect the pattern generated by the fake data generator and refuse to work in that instance. E.g. apple's approximate location feature often puts you into the city center at a very specific location. It's trivial to detect devices that are always at that precise location and only move around in discrete steps between those points.
This can lead to an arms race where the OS creates increasingly advanced/realistic fake data, and apps get increasingly sophisticated logic.
So I'm not a fan of solving this the technical way. A policy is way better, but you need to be able to enforce it.
Sure, it'll lead to arms race like you describe on one side, but let's say 99% of the apps won't even engage in that arms race if the fake data is generic enough to cause a high number of false positives (blocking someone who's not actually faking the data).
Then, we can focus on the remaining 1% of worst offenders to actually enforce the policy.
Ultimately I think the only person this benefits is Tim Sweeney, as he gets the Epic store on iOS/Android/Playstation/Xbox.
Realistically this just drives people into a different walled garden. One that is device-vendor agnostic, but a walled garden nonetheless - in that your purchases are tied to Epic. This law could have been so much better, but now it just trades one problem for a bunch of new ones (some even worse than what it's trying to solve).
One thing that might have been nice - making allowances in the law for centralised certification authorities with fixed tariffs, so that Apple still checks the builds as it does now for the App Store, but then the builds can be released elsewhere (as the signatures will match). For this they could charge a fee, which could be capped in the law at a percentage of the sale price (and obviously much lower than 30%). This way iOS/Android could still have guaranteed protection, for which Apple/Google's costs are covered, but the user would have freedom to get their software from wherever.
The problem is that hardline free software advocates would still complain about this, insisting that the certification authority be scrapped. iOS and Android are now Windows, and it's going to be a mess.
You underestimate the blessing that is an app store that's free of bullshit policies restricting what you can and cannot publish. With F-Droid on Android, I used to have access to apps like NewPipe that Google would never even consider carrying on their app store, but - because I had a third party store, that wasn't a problem.
Now that I have an iPhone, I miss NewPipe greatly. But with this law, I might be able to get something like it in a few months without jailbreaking.
Not underestimating it at all, it has value. Unfortunately it undermines so much of the security model in other areas that both platforms will rapidly become malware swamps.
if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust
This will be a problem but the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple and just let them decide which third party apps you are allowed to use.
In some cases that will mean making a hard choice between accepting the risk of using the third party app store, or accepting that you won't be able to use certain apps. The benefits are significant though - your device will actually be under your control. You will be able to do all the things Apple prevent now.
> ...the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple and just let them decide...
Very good point. It's almost like people believing it to be better for a "benevolent" dictator to make all decisions, so that they won't be bothered with having to make choices.
Not every user wants to give over their freedom of choice to Apple (or any seemingly "kind" dictator), and many would prefer they can make decisions about what is best for their particular situation and based on their own preferences.
> This will be a problem but the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple
Will the solution involve a method to negotiate degrees-of-freedom? Or perhaps a freedom grant method with revocation protocol? Do I get a little widget to see how free I am at the moment?
I'd love to see a laundry list of changes to industry practice, too. But the language employed for these compatibility fights is just getting goofy.
The F150 cup holder is enslaving me, somebody pass a law quick!
> In some cases that will mean making a hard choice between accepting the risk of using the third party app store, or accepting that you won't be able to use certain apps.
You already have that choice today: I can buy into the walled-garden, or go to Android and side-load to my heart's content.
Clearly the market has chosen the preferred route. (I personally am also in the camp of preferring the simple, locked-down approach for my family that Apple has created.)
> You already have that choice today: I can buy into the walled-garden, or go to Android and side-load to my heart's content.
So if Google decided to force this policy onto Android phones, you would support the EU introducing this legislation to bring back the option of side-loading?
Or would you want the legislation to only apply to Android phones, and not Apple devices?
> you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)
As apposed to today where you can’t get it at all if apple and the app disagree about anything?
I know you are thinking of another large enough player you don’t trust as much forcing their store as the only avenue for an app, but it’s hard to imagine how that wouldn’t provide large incentives for a smaller party to make a competitor on the official store.
As apposed to today where you can’t get it at all if apple and the app disagree about anything?
Since there is only one app store for iPhones, almost every app vendor is willing to conform to Apple's guidelines (which are often pro-privacy and protect the user). Otherwise they lose out on a significant market share with a lot of spending power.
smaller party to make a competitor on the official store
Sure, they will pop up. But Facebook, Microsoft, and Google will start iOS app stores and app developers will go to their app stores because of network effects.
> Since there is only one app store for iPhones, almost every app vendor is willing to conform to Apple's guidelines (which are often pro-privacy and protect the user). Otherwise they lose out on a significant market share with a lot of spending power.
You've just described why these changes are good. I feel like the word "willing" in your statement is carrying a lot of weight.
Apple forces developers to publish from Apple devices, spend $100 a year for a developer account, give up 15-30% of any revenue generated from that app, use WebKit, etc.
That is not at all what I describe as restrictions that lead to "willing" app vendors.
This doesn't happen on Android, so don't worry too much about it. I can bet my 2 cents on that 99% of users will only use app stores even after this regulation and Apple has a power to make it happen. Of course Apple will need to spend some of its energy on suppressing real competition but that's not what customers need to worry about...
Any of this is already possible on MacOS, Windows, and Android. It's not actually so wild as you're making it out to be. Just ignore the software merchants you don't want to affiliate with. I don't like Valve, so I don't install their 'appstore' Steam. That means I can't buy games that are only sold on Steam. Big whoop, it's a consequence I accept of a decision I am free to make or reconsider. Life goes on.
Yeah, even the ones run by major tech players- the Amazon and Samsung Android app stores, are really just there to serve their own devices. They don't contain any exclusive apps that are forcing Android users off of the Play Store for.
>I agree in principle, but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)
You have Android as a real world experiment, go ask an Android users to search the Facebook Messenger app on Google Play store and you will see it is there, FB did not forced Android users to install the app by side loading it and FB did not created their own app store for their apps.
What could happen though is you would get fair prices, say an app/Game would be 30% cheaper if you buy it directly from the developer and not from an intermediary, though I did not see this happening on PC (getting a better deal if I buy directly, I am wondering what causes this)
We did not see this as being in an app store actually has value: these 30% cover server/traffic for downloading, billing, discoverability, ease of use in getting the app, little marketing (getting featured). For lots of developers, this seems to be worth whatever the market in question asks for.
I have never needed to install an app from Facebook, and never have. Amazon has an appstore; I have never been forced to install it or anything from it. Should the day come when people are actually forced to use any facebook app or appstore, that compulsion is the problem that needs to be corrected. The problem isn't having the option to install a facebook app; the compulsion is the problem.
> but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust
I often hear this argument but Android has had third-party app-stores and 'side-loadable apps' since day one and I can't think of a single major app that needs its own app-store.
> I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust.
This works both ways. Some people want to use iOS exclusive apps but can't justify buying an iPhone because of how restrictive it is. This act alleviates that.
- Third-parry app stores exist, the app in question is available on one of them. You have a choice: install it, or ignore it and stay fully under Apple's aegis, as before.
- The app in question does not exist because the only existing app store run by Apple rejects it. Tough luck, no choice, but you still can stay safe.
Don't you agree that the latter situation is a strict subset of the former?
Also, if I were Apple, I would implement a one-click return to "safe defaults", and a prominent badge to tell Apple's software and setting from third-party.
Don't quote me on this, but there was some discussions early this year about dominant platforms (I didn't read what does cover this Act, but) need to provide API to allow users to use third party alternatives, like Facebook, WhatsApp, iMessage, etc, so you could now have an app like Adium again where you have all your chats. So in theory this will be not an issue.
I think you missed the point of the new restrictions. Stopping those practices that are harmful to users is a good thing. Ending endless spying, aka corporate surveillance, that can be a good thing. When Apple made their changes, Apple conceptually blocked any new facebook app that spys on you, because you can't install it. If there's a future facebook store that has the only facebook app (because facebook won't agree to that more limited apple ad/surveillance world capability), you'd have freedom to install that app because of european rules described here - but you wouldn't necessarily be better off by having more spying.
European (and other) regulators are concerned about tech data collection. It’s an issue that’s not necessarily orthogonal to this development. If Meta wanted to try their luck at putting their apps on an exclusive Facebook app store, such a platform would be subject to regulator scrutiny as well, and would be an even more convenient target for investigation.
You can't believe how jolting people and/or companies make them change for the better. Maybe this is the kick we needed for the companies to start innovating and "Think Different"?
I use MacBooks and iPhone, and I love their current form, but they are victim of their own success at one point, like how Intel just dragged its feet to just keep the performance gap enough to keep the lead. Maybe this can help us to see a better, more exciting Apple and tech ecosystem, no?
The last battery lawsuit brought us "Battery health" menu, and this is immensely useful, even if it only reads a couple flags and shows us what the iOS is doing.
> if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust
This sounds like iPhone user argument.
In Android world you can have multiple app stores, but if you want your app to be used you must be on Google one, because it has the most eyes.
Facebook didn't create their own app store.
Custom App stores are fringe apps, with exceptions of f-droid which is source of open source apps and many prefer it to google play (and apps are frequently on both stores) and maybe samsung/amazon ones because they are preinstalled on some devices.
>Or course, this is mostly a result of Apple being greedy. If they had acted like a good steward of the platform rather than trying to extract a lot of money from developers, we probably wouldn't be here
I don't think so. Another comment was mentioning how some desktop apps are built to install ONLY from a certain marketplace (eg Steam) so you can't install them from anywhere else. It could easily happen on iOS.
This will immediately happen, and is the intent of the law.
Direct downloads from websites isn't far off - I wouldn't be surprised if we very rapidly get to a place of each-app-is-it's-own-store for the purposes of complying with the law so you can freely download apps from websites.
It'll be Windows all over again, with all that implies.
> That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.
That’s actually not possible though. For instance, Microsoft is likely to create its own app store, as is Adobe, Google, and obviously Epic, among the many others. So now I will have to install a bunch of app stores just to install different softwares.
I already have this problem on my gaming PC where I not only have a bunch of different app stores, but a bunch of different update tools, payment providers, logins (not just for the games, but for the app stores). It’s a freaking pain in the butt. I just want to play a game on my PC and I have to deal with crap like that. I don’t want it on my phone!
Then maybe someone come with a platform that is agnostic. Like Humble Bundle - they offer in many cases both Steam codes AND ability to download directly from their servers with no need to install any additional platform software.
Best way to get away with some crime is to act all casual about it. Wear a warning west, you can even got one printed with some official town logo the people will recognize.
I either need something really quick, or I can wait. If I need something really quick, they basically need to be very close to me. If they are close to me, I can be just as quick myself. These service only work in dense urban areas. I have 3 supermarkets in 5 minute walking distance.
The non-rapid delivery service in the other hand is a godsend - that's how I got me food when I had COVID. And I guess there are a lot of people sick, injured, old or somewhat indisposed for which this service can be a real life saver. In these situations, I'm also happy to pay for this kind of service.
The rapid delivery part of it always made me feel bad for the delivery people. One time I happened to wait for the delivery on the stairs, he took 15 minute instead if 10 minutes, I was enjoying the sun in the meantime. He apologized for being late and was really stressed about it.
I think they're trying to rewire teen/young adults brain to reach for them before even thinking to step out.
Kind of like food delivery companies do/did. I know people who get pizza delivered from literally 50 meters from their front door. Or buy basic pasta with tomato sauce/cheese for 15 euros when you can do the same thing at home for 15% of the price and 15% of the time
Don't forget that it literally buys you time. Even if the pizza place is 50m from your door, you still have to put on clothes, wait in line to order and then wait for the pizza to be ready. Delivery on the other hand takes 1 minute out of your day.
If you have kids, time is worth a lot.
Pizza is simple enough that you can easily make it at home and it would probably be better and cheaper than delivery chain quality. But this will take even more time.
I'm talking about 20 something tech bros, they had plenty of time.
Also, you can call the place in advance and just come to pick it up, no wait time
I understand that time is important but as some point you still have to go through life. Otherwise what's the ultimate goal ? Matrix style pod with automatic feeding, that's what peak efficiency would look like
Making a pizza with your kids can also be quite a nice experience, better than putting them in front of candy crush while you do unpaid extra hours for mega_corp_of_the_day
> Also, you can call the place in advance and just come to pick it up, no wait time
Two way drive time, plus, depending on parenting situation, possibly needing to pile kids in and out and both ends, is not negligible time.
> I understand that time is important but as some point you still have to go through life.
Yes, and personally prepping every meal, or picking it up, is not the experience of life everyone wants to focus on. There's time to prep meals with the kids, or while they are home doing something else. There's time to pick something up for them. And there's time to schedule a pizza delivery that arrives about the same time as the babysitter. And lots of other things, that are sometimes right for some people.
> Making a pizza with your kids can also be quite a nice experience
Sure. But it is not necessarily the right choice every time you or they want to eat pizza.
> better than putting them in front of candy crush while you do unpaid extra hours for mega_corp_of_the_day
That's hardly the only reason to order pizza; holy false dichotomy, Batman.
Not everyone enjoys cooking. Not everyone enjoys food. And not everyone has oodles of spare time all the time. I love food, and I like cooking it sometimes. I also don’t get instant delivery, but mostly because the quality sucks. I get food delivered all the time because calling a place, picking it up and then going back home to eat it is a lot of time I would prefer to spend working or reading or doing literally anything else.
> Making a pizza with your kids can also be quite a nice experience,
Maybe the people who order pizza[1] have better experiences with their kid due to the time saved by ordering pizza.
If you're making pizza with the kid (or muffins, or anything really), it's not a 15m prep, it's at least 30m, usually more. You cannot rush things with kids.
[1] I make things with my kid, but I'm not snobbish about people who buy things to save time, and then spend their time with their kids differently.
> Making a pizza with your kids can also be quite a nice experience, better than putting them in front of candy crush while you do unpaid extra hours for mega_corp_of_the_day
Agreed, the problem is that making pizza with kids or just with your partner tends to be a lot of work and especially mess: preparing dough, wait until it rises, spreading the dough, slicing toppings, placing toppings while preventing the cats from snacking off the ham, put it in the oven, clean everything because EVERYTHING will be covered in flour, oil and tomato juice, eat, put out wastes to the compost bin...
It's one thing to do such a meal on a weekend where you actually have time, but after nine hours of work (8h+lunch break) and two hours average commute? Shit no, who got time for that?
(Side rant, we need lower working hours. 20 or 30 hours, not the 40 hours that were only made possible by having women as house keepers)
Not to forget that you need to be pretty sure you want to use the ham and cheese in next couple weeks... And if you don't it is pretty much wasted. Inventory management is restaurants problem. Which again makes life simpler.
> Also, you can call the place in advance and just come to pick it up, no wait time
I suspect both the orderer and order-taker are both a bit happier to have orders come in online instead of taking calls. It enables a bit more asynchrony and batching, and removes the potential for miscommunication.
Big advantage of moving food ordering online is that it's gotten rid of trying to read off an order through the phone to someone who barely speaks English, standing next to the phone in a loud kitchen with dishes clinking and people yelling in the background.
I certainly hope you aren't getting delivery from a pizza place 50m from your door. Just order takeout, and it'll take 3-5 minutes instead of 1 if it's really that close.
For every parent stuck at home with the kids, there's got to be a quite large number of people who could go out and get stuff, but instead do not - and some percentage of them aren't doing "something useful" with the time beyond Netflix. I doubt delivery services could survive only catering to those who "need" or can "really use the time".
(Amusingly enough some customers of delivery service are the very workers for delivery services, I presume.)
It doesn't buy you any time when the delivery driver gets lost. This seemed to happen at least a third of the time. I gave up on delivery drivers. I order take out and pick it up myself.
I can confirm this happens. I used to cook, but even when I didn’t cook I would make a simple sandwich or pasta sometimes. But a huge number of people have forgotten how easy it is to prepare something simple since they became reliant on these apps.
It makes perfect sense when you need something quick, but can't leave the home.
Eg, you're working from home, cooking your own food, but are missing something. You have enough of a lunch break to cook something simple like pasta, but not enough to run to a shop, buy, then cook the pasta. Ordering it online means you can keep on working while it's coming.
Another scenario is where something else is expected to arrive. Eg, you have an important package from Amazon coming. You don't want the delivery person to try leave $2000 worth of hardware on your porch, so it's not comfortable leave the house for food.
Or when you have another schedule to keep. I have regular meetings with a trainer, and on those days it's great to have predictable deliveries, rather than "during the day".
Or you can buy an extra bag of rice and a few tomato sauce cans for these rare events instead of paying $15 for $2 worth of groceries
My grandparents had full time jobs and five kids, they managed just fine. This is a first world problem coupled with an edge case you can easily avoid
> You don't want the delivery person to try leave $2000 worth of hardware on your porch, so it's not comfortable leave the house for food.
Delaying or skipping a meal never killed anyone.
I feel like people completely lost their mind and make up semi fake scenarios to justify their crazy way of life. Either way I don't see how it justifies a multi billion $ industry
In my experience the dark stores were identically priced to my nearest supermarkets. The bigger issue is they didn't have the cheap brands. None of the $1 Barilla pasta sauces, instead it was the $5 brands.
> You have enough of a lunch break to cook something simple like pasta, but not enough to run to a shop, buy, then cook the pasta. Ordering it online means you can keep on working while it's coming.
Or you could do what most sane people do and buy the pasta and sauce in advance so you can prepare it whenever you want, for a fraction of the cost. Dry pasta and bottled sauce last approximately forever, so it's easy to keep an inventory at hand.
You've never ever been without an ingredient for a recipe? They're not saying it's their weekday routine to forget ingredients. But don't act like it's never happened to you.
Sure. And sometimes I forget something, and then don't want to sit for the rest of the work day annoyed and hungry, when I could just pay for my mistake with a bit of money and get over with it.
There's also the rare cases that don't work out sensibly otherwise in one's particular situation.
Eg, one time I ordered a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks because I've never actually tried one. The closest Starbucks to me is an hour by foot, half an hour by public transport and 8 minutes by a car I don't have. It's also in an industrial area I have no reason to visit otherwise.
So win-win-win in that case I figure. I got my curiosity satisfied, Starbucks got money from somebody who'd otherwise never buy there, and some delivery person made a bit of cash.
At one point I spent two weeks ordering stuff from every restaurant around because I had a bunch of stuff to do and going all around the town would consume a lot of it, but I still got to try what everyone around is cooking.
Do you have any source to support this claim ? AFAIK, France does not rely on Russia for uranium import. France imports uranium mainly (>90%) from Australia, Niger and Kazakhstan [1].
AFAIK nuclear output can be controlled only in a certain range, but if you go below a certain threshold it shuts off and you then have to restart it, which takes a lot of time.
Coal has a similar issue, these plants also can't be turned on and off quickly. In fact, the term "base load" originally was driven more by the minimum amount of power that has to be consumed to keep a plant running. Only now with the move to renewables with varying output the meaning has shifted to the consumption side of things.
Gas plants however can be turned on and off and easily, they work similar to aircraft engines. In Germany, the heat produced is then used for district heating, which gives these plants almost perfect efficiency. It's not a coincidence that Germany picked gas as supplement for renewables during the transition to 100% green energy. Gas (in the form of hydrogen directly ~ methane made from hydrogen) is also a key contender for very long term energy storage (in Germany, you have to save energy produced in the summer for use in winter, the batteries needed for that would be roughly in the order of ~50 million Tesla Model S (100kWh) batteries). The cost of overbuilding renewables and storing the energy in gas, with a lower round-trip efficiency, seems to be lower than building the big battery that would be needed.
Wind is also better in winter than solar, which is why wind is such an important and hot topic in Germany. Solar doesn't bother anyone, but wind turbines are huge and people can see them in the landscape. Solar does not have this problem, but during the winter, the output goes down to almost nothing.
Nuclear, coal, and gas powerplants only differ in how you produce heat. After that they work the same (heat water, make steam, drive turbines). There is usually a few stages of turbines to extract as much work as possible. Reaction time is 1 hour or more.
The waste heat can be used for district heating no matter how you produced the heat (in my city they use coal powerplant for this). It's not just gas. And it's not "perfect efficiency", it's about 80% for the best cogeneration powerplants compared to 60% without cogeneration. It's a little less in practice cause most powerplants aren't as modern and as efficient.
All of these is usually used on regular (not peaker) powerplants, because it's only useful if you use your powerplant for long periods of time.
There are also peaker powerplants. They work differently, and they are optimized for quick reaction time (so the energy they produce is more expansive and efficiency is lower). Reaction time is about 15 minutes. They don't only burn gas - they can also burn any liquid fuels (but gas is indeed the most common). Usually the efficiency of peaker powerplants is about 30-40%, can be almost as good as the regular ones but it's not worth it to install cogeneration if your plant runs for few hours a day.
I'm not sure which kind you were talking about. If they use cogeneration it means they must run for long time, and peaker powerplants running constantly is wasting money and fuel. Do you know what reaction time (from 0 to 100%) they have? 15 minutes or more like 1 hour? Or maybe less (then they are piston engines - and efficiency is even worse).
Anyway - there are also grid-scale batteries that can deal with power fluctuations on the order of milliseconds. That's why if you have lots of renewables and reasonably free energy market - grid scale batteries economically beat the crap out of peak powerplants (like gas plants).
In USA and Australia grid scale batteries already made building new peak powerplants unprofitable. It will soon happen in Europe too (unless lobbying stops this). Here [1] you can read more about how it works. It's basically the same advantage that High Frequency Trading has over regular traders on regular stock market. Just the difference isn't 1 second vs 10 milliseconds but 15 minutes vs 10 milliseconds. Before gas powerplant start up to produce the missing energy - the battery supplied it and shut down again. So now energy price lowered and gas powerplant has to either to produce that energy anyway and sell it for a fraction of price, or to shut down wasting fuel and not earning any money. And gas peak powerplants aren't designed for producing energy cheaply, they are designed for producing energy when there's shortage so energy is expansive.
So when you have grid scale batteries - they drive peak gas powerplants out of business :)
Good luck with that. My parents purchased 60 acres of beautiful land and built a very nice house on it. My dad was a construction worker and my mom was a part time school bus driver/eventually USPS worker.
My wife and I both have degrees. There's no way we could ever afford their place. The population has increased too much and space - even in rural areas - is finite.
> with increasing rate the ‘burbs of Toronto are down 25% in the last two months
Are you saying that real estate prices in Toronto suburbs have fallen by 25% in two months? That's incredibly quick; generally real estate crashes take a couple of years to play out and bottom out at a ~40% decline.
During Covid, the price of real estate went up so much, that the increase of the 20% down payment, which is recommended in my country, is more than I can save in year. I'm saving 60% of my income and I'm in the top 20% income bracket.
This is why I’m wary whenever I see “top X% in the income bracket.” I think it’s misdirection, because if you can’t afford something, then you can’t afford it, regardless of how well off the statistics say you are. You can save for a down payment, and then interest rates and mortgage will obliterate you. So really, the scale for these things in terms of affordability starts somewhere beyond what you’re making - and most of the upper 20% I bet, and then extends onwards to the actual ruling/owner class.
So the metric we should use isn’t this. It’s something else.
I won’t speculate with the usual HN nonsense of armchair economists. I will say I remember Michael O’Church’s two ladder theory and I agree with it based on personal observations.
If you have cash savings, then you’re ideally positioned to take advantage of lower real estate prices without suffering (as much) from the impact of higher interest rates.
I'm actually not even eligible for a mortgage any more considering that interest rates around here are at 6,50%, which is more than the 30-year average.
They are trying to build cars there. Germany's trade surplus also leads to German companies investing more money abroad than at home.
Also, what is Germany supposed to do? What are they doing wrong? EZB is not controlled by Germany, Germany in fact always complained about the low interest rates.