Wasn't the EU fresh from a scandal that they voted all sorts of laws, sued lots of EU companies, and then allowed Chinese companies to import lots of stuff that obviously violated all those laws for 20+ years?
From safety regulations to baby toys with lead paint.
The EU has allowed large scale imports of chinese fake honey for the last 20 years.
All of the beekeeper associations complain about it, regularly conduct lab tests with honeys from supermarkets, most of them being not honey, or mixed with fake honey.
The EU of course has done nothing : the beekeepers aren't powerful enough to distribute the right bribes to the right people. Meanwhile the consumers buy glucose syrup at 15€/kg.
No, it's up to the EU to stop imports from China. It's not possible for individual countries to do it:
- Lab testing is complex, requires to identify the DNA of pollens in honey and few countries can do it at the moment.
- Honeys are mixed, so it's trivial to receive fake honey in a country that allows it, mix it, and reexport to another one that forbids it. Same happens with olive oils, no one cares.
- Many brands just lie, given that there is no enforcement regarding food traceability and safety in general in the EU (it's a meme to reassure consumers). Where I live a brand advertising "locally made honey" was found to sell glucose syrup : nothing happened.
Because correlation is not causation. If A and B correlate there's 3 options:
1) A causes B
2) B causes A
3) C causes both B and A (in some order)
4) your correlation figure is bullshit (hence not counted in the 3 options, but certainly with news these days, it must be mentioned)
A famous way to illustrate where this goes wrong is to show a map which libraries that loaned out Harry Potter books, and a map of where poodles got raped. Very high correlation, and obviously an example of the 3rd option.
(obviously both were caused by population density, which leads to both library creation and poodle-related crimes. And probably non-poodle-related crimes)
That often results from p-hacking. In a world of infinite variables, if you look hard enough you are guaranteed to eventually find two completely unrelated variables that correlate with each other over a statistically significant period of time.
I guess it could be? I interpreted what the parent commenter wrote like "the variables aren't actually correlated" (which definitely does happen sometimes)
Whereas my point is moreso when, the variables really are correlated but it's purely due to random chance. Not bullshit, per se, just bad luck (or possibly, p-hacking).
(Though the solution to both is the same - you shouldn't trust a study until it's been independently replicated on new data.)
Exactly. Even though your m5 max laptop will run the x86 binary just fine, if you don't compile it for arm, your m5 max laptop drops most of its speed and only has the same performance as an x86 server ...
Where in Europe do you find large amounts of small stores? (and for real, not fake). Or is your point that Europe has a different supermarket chain per country? Malls have the same stores across countries ... but they differ, somewhat, if you move from one country to the next. And they're fake. Every company has 3-4 store brands these days so malls have 4-5 stores that look different, but aren't.
So ... what a difference that makes?
(I mean, I get that it does make a difference. Carrefour clearly takes some pride in their chocolate selection and aldi ... well it's an insult to any product to be sold at aldi. But culture in shopping in the EU? Where do you find that?)
> Where in Europe do you find large amounts of small stores? (and for real, not fake)
I live in a small european town and all the followings are found less than 3 minutes away from my home: butcher, baker, shoes store, newspaper store, convenience store, barber.
The town hosts a market once a week that sells more divers products, and many people do shop there. Some of the stores are owned and operated by descendants of those who owned them 60 years ago, all have their owner working in the store.
Maybe you won't consider that to be "large amounts of small stores" but that is somewhat the point: all my basic needs can be covered by a handful of small stores.
Granted that type of life and town has become less representative over time, but I heard the trend is now to go back to the countryside as people flee the big cities.
> I live in a small european town and all the followings are found less than 3 minutes away from my home
walking, cycling, or driving? For where i live, in the USA, all three net me no shops. I have to travel 3.5km round trip to get candy and a cold drink at a gas station, ~19km to get fresh vegetables and fruit at all, and sixty-four kilometers to get to a "real" grocer. those are all round trip distances (had to edit 11 to 19 because i just multiplied by three instead of 6, and corrected the distance, too; oops!)
I think we have a vastly different definition of "small town"!
Now, i grew up in Whittier, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles, and a city so big it's the size of a parish/county most other places. Nominally 80,000-150,000 people in the city/metro limits. all of those things you mentioned were within 10 minutes of my house, including a "German butcher" and a non-German butcher, salons, barbers, etc. there was a pretty big mall within 10 minutes, too.
Whittier's population was "quaint" when i lived there, as it's 100% US suburb, with a long way to go to get to any freeway/interstate.
I think that young USAmericans are deathly envious of a community like yours, myself included. I have nothing really novel to contribute here (in my view, North American urbanism, zoning regulation, the aforementioned globalism and, if you will allow me to briefly beat a dead horse, car-centric planning are to blame.)
I was playing Stardew Valley the other day and it hit me. For me, that type of close-knit community and simple living is merely fantasy, absolutely unattainable in real life.
There's absolutely places like that in the US. I have multiple of those establishments, non-chain, minutes away. No newspaper store IDK about that, there's also McDonalds, CVS, Subway, but the independent restaurants and business outnumber chains easily. It's just not in a major metropolitan area.
To add to this, I live in the suburb of a large European city, and the same is true here, except owners change more often. It is also true in the city center.
I also live in a small European town and there is a convenience store and a hairdresser. Oh and restaurants. That's it. Doesn't matter if you go to neighboring towns, they're the same. One of the neighboring towns has a supermarket, an Aldi.
I am also old enough to remember what it looked like in 1985.
Sounds like a very small town? In general most places are filled with shops you can walk to. In southern Europe in particular it's almost overwhelming the amount of options you have.
Berlin and surrounding towns and cities. Before the pandemic/brexit, also found them in the UK, but visits afterwards suggest catastrophic decline at least in the specific places I visited.
Just because we also have malls, doesn't mean we only have malls.
"Where in Europe do you find large amounts of small stores?"
Im vibrant city centers of every bigger city I visited. The ugly malls are taking over much and online ordering is heavy pressure, but some are still very much alive.
Vibrant city centers in the US have small stores, too - even town centers in high-income areas. In Europe (especially, in my experience, France) they're common, because they've supported and subsidized them in all sorts of un-economically "optimized" ways. Americans prefer them, too, though - when they can afford them; they just haven't made having that kind of economy a political priority.
Yes but you won't hear them talk about what happened to people who consistently chose not to work. Which is relevant here because motherhood was effectively one of the only ways women could get out of working for a longer period of time (3 months before, sometimes more, and a full year after birth), without going to prison ... or worse. Plus a baby was one of the very few ways to get a raise.
Of course this fact isn't mentioned in the article.
I will say, one of the very few things that the Soviet communists should receive credit for is indeed their rejection of traditional social norms. Equality for women was much further along on the other side of the Iron curtain. Women became doctors sooner. Women became professors sooner. Etc. That was definitely a Soviet achievement. True.
But something this article really tries to downplay: this didn't stop fertility rate from falling fast. It just took slightly longer before it started falling. Slightly.
Except the regulators first outlawed what is generally considered to have caused the great depression (savings banks allowed to invest, which translates to very, very rich people being allowed to take massive risks with poor people's money) ... then re-legalized it.
So not only are the regulators not going to allow things that cause another great depression, they're allowing the things that caused the first great depression too. They must want a rerun.
(Because if you don't allow this you're effectively demanding the extremely rich make good investments to stay rich ... and not even France, otherwise pretty socialist, dares to go that far)
I don't think you can short it before the IPO happens. Well, unless you've got a few millions and go to a bank and have them make a product for you specifically. But for normal people, for now, not happening.
From safety regulations to baby toys with lead paint.
The EU will probably do nothing again.
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