The next step, in my opinion, is strong privacy and decentralized organization that fully leverages constitutional rights.
I.e. a privacy preserving social media where labour unions, political parties and religious groups can federate with each other. Servers hosted on their premises and members register through an on-premise process.
A church in a foreign country could generate a thousand aliases and distribute them to their federated sister organizations in a privacy preserving way. Only the church knows which organizations got which aliases and they protect this information.
Your local labour union chapter picks up 20 of those aliases and distributes them to members. They are the only one who knows the person behind the alias.
An observer in this private fediverse trying to obtain the identity would first need to approach the church. The church can stall them and warn downstream through a canary.
The labour union chapter observes the canary and immediately wipes all information.
And if that fails, then full I2P and Tor, with nodes hosted on-premise of churches, political parties and labour unions.
Perhaps read an introductory article on carbon storage, or ask ChatGPT:
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): This involves capturing CO₂ emissions from industrial sources, transporting it, and storing it underground in geological formations.
Direct Air Capture (DAC): This technology captures CO₂ directly from the air and stores it underground or uses it in industrial processes
It's a sad state of affairs that a fellow human being is more insufferable to talk to than an AI.
It would feel fair, but it's also not that important for either the EU or the Euro itself.
The Euro is really a 1990s invention, when cash was dominant. Now that all payments are digital, it really doesn't matter if countries use the Euro or their own currency.
There is a lot of BS about setting an example and punishing them, but I have not seen anyone who actually knows how the process works say anything remotely like that.
It would also be a massive case of the EU cutting off it's nose to spite it's face. That's just not how the EU rolls.
The normal process of joining has requirements geared towards poor peripheral countries that the UK already meets or exceeds.
The UK can join anytime it wishes and there is even a lot of room to negotiate mutually beneficial terms.
In my small village of the Netherlands there are graves of RAF pilots. And in NATO, we are still allies.
My wife made scones and lemon curd this weekend.
My favourite heat pump geek (urban plumbers on youtube) is a Polish guy living and working in the UK.
All these attempts by people trying to divide Europeans are pathetic. It's sad that many people fall for it, because we share a culture and a history.
The UK rejoining the EU in some shape or form (perhaps the EEA) is just a matter of time. Same with Ukraine.
And personally, I think we should already start planning on how to form strategic defense and trade alliances with Turkey, Egypt and a post-Putin Russia. That will solidify a peaceful and prosperous 21st century in Europe and West-Asia.
I honestly think that's very wrong and one of the last brexiteer arguments that still seems to be believed by reasonable people.
Under the old terms, the UK was one of the largest net contributors to the EU. And also one of the countries absorbing the most immigrants. In fact, the exemptions they got were all quite reasonable.
Without the exemptions, the UK would have been an even bigger net contributor and would have had even more immigrants.
Just from pure self-interest, the EU would be foolish to demand more than the old terms. In fact, with smart negotiating, I am sure the UK could get even more exemptions than they used to have.
And we, the EU, know this. The war in Ukraine is expensive af. The UK is already helping above and beyond what we could expect from them.
The EU economy isn't doing all too great either.
The mutual benefits of the UK rejoining will be billions if not trillions of extra economic output on both sides. It would be billions extra budget for the EU.
Why would we drive a hard bargain to squeeze out the Brits?
Friendly terms that make the British politicians look good and that make the UK public feel like winners and which provide direct short term economic benefits are the way to do it.
No it would not be even close to being equivalent to gov+dd, because the government and fund would be totally separate power structures.
You could modify the scheme so that dividends and profits only go to retirees, which would make it a giant retirement fund.
Some people argue China is capitalist and others argue it is socialist or communist.
Truth is, these are all 19th century debates on archaic terms. Every developed country today has a mixed-mode economy with some form of capitalism combined with some form of communism.
It's more fruitful to discuss how we harness the power of each system in a way that benefited humanity.
Suppose you would take the system we have today, put all the stock of every company in a big fund and give everyone equal voting rights in, and profits from, the fund.
That would be a very anarcho-communist world. All economic power would be with the people, not the state, evenly divided, so no one would be richer than anyone else.
But others would call it capitalism because it would be the exact same system we have today.
The BRICS are already trading without dollars. They might price things in USD, but the actual trades don't use USD.
But is he really gonna tariff 55% of the global population?
The world economy will just adjust to operate without the USA. It will be painful and take a few years, but it will also be irreversible.
To be frank, we don't need a global reserve currency in this digital age.
Businesses and consumers can cheaply trade any currency pairs with minimal costs.
My (great)-grandparents were part of the Dutch resistance during WW2. Along with a full 1.5% of the population.
Most people will not do anything, even if they are literally rounding up people for a genocide.
On the more positive side, a lot of people will support the resistance in small ways.
The number of people who actually, whole heartedly collaborated with the Nazi's was quite small.
Even some of the German soldiers stationed in their village would turn a blind eye. Some of them realized they were on the wrong side and they just did the bare minimum of what they needed to do to not get in trouble and not get killed.
And if a single person does it a lot, then the tax authorities can easily examine their spending and prove that they are spending more than they are officially earning. And then they can apply punitive measures.
He's trying to get foreigners out of the USA and trying to placate his right wing at the same time.
Honestly, I don't think getting a student visa cancelled is that bad. There are universities in other countries eager to accept foreign students and the tuition they pay.
Even China has a huge program to attract foreign students. I know people who studied there.
"Big Tech" is Apple, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta. Companies which were fully allied with the Democrats, and which were king of the tech hill until now.
Musk, Thiel and Ellison (Tesla, Palantir and Oracle) are allied with Trump. Lets call them "Tech B".
Vance is doing code speak for: Tech B is gonna break Big Tech up and take top spot.
And Big Tech knows this, which is why they are scrambling to get into Trumps good graces and trying to get Trump on their side.
They have more money and influence right now and they are trying to leverage that to keep top spot.
And Trump is just letting the two teams bid up each other for his favour.
The company will only reduce margin if they expect to lose volume and if they expect that they can regain sufficient volume by reducing margin to make up for the loss in margin.
And the reduction in volume will only happen if there are alternatives for consumers, including the alternative to not buy.
When consumers need the tariffed good regardless of price, the company will not reduce margin.
(Yeah, it's complex math).
Long story short, someone else said it better, a tariff works well, with little impact on consumers, when there is a comparable non-tariffed alternative.
At the other end of that spectrum, i.e. an essential good with no non-tariffed alternative, the tariff cost is fully borne by consumers.
Finally, in the case of TSMC, their main product right now are the most advanced AI chips for which there is no US alternative. And US Big Tech needs volume that the US cannot produce.
You are missing the point.
Those days might be numbered, but these places are the last bastion.
They will invade private homes, businesses and offices with impunity first.
Churches in particular have a long history of being relatively safe in (civil) war.
Not immune, just relatively.