Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3466 to 3470 (24th to 28th April 2017)
Case:
--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 24 Apr 2017, 08:52 ---...
That was a cheap shot. I apologize, and I take it back. A) It is likely that if we tried, you would find something in the way we do things strange or even intolerably complicated (but for lack of experience I just shrug at them), B) I only lived in the US as a grad student, and I was still in the process of becoming a financially independent adult. Consequently I only needed a limited subset of all available financial services. C) The scale of things. In a small nation with 4 nationwide chains of banks, it was undoubtedly a lot easier for them to agree on a system enabling us to pay utility bills, rents, grocery bills whatnot without the need for mailing bills and checks back and forth (EU-wide SEPA didn't give us anything new).
--- End quote ---
I guess it may also be due to the type of federalism preferred by the US' citizenry (I've heard it described as "competitive federalism").
(click to show/hide)Wrt. stuff like SEPA there's even more incentives:
D) Strong Integration-forces at the EU-level:
Especially amongst the founding members (Belgiun, France, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and the FR of Germany (formerly "Western Germany")), the EU is still more-or-less seen as one of the two pillars guaranteeing European peace (the other being the US (& USSR as a common external threat), which sort of acted as "the impossibly powerful aliens" that made intra-European squabbles look increasingly provincial and petty).
"Not going back to the bad old days" still carries a lot of currency in many EU countries.
E) The normative forces that accompanied the standardization implicit in the European integration process - "You want peace & prosperity - then you'll put up with us standardizing the curvature of Bananas (and the banking system)"
Compared to standardizing Bananas, the standardization of the banking systems looks positively ... "not bananas at all" :mrgreen:
F) Intra-European travel & labour: The contemporary EU (including UK) has a population of some 510 millon people (157% of the contemporary US) living in half the land area - 116 vs 35 people/km^2 - divided between some 28 countries. So travel & working abroad is easy & attractive ... when national bureaucratic hurdles are removed. In the mid-20th Century, it was mostly mediterraneans who worked in the north-western EU as "guest workers", today it's pretty much everybody.
When I visited my parents while I was living & working in Antwerp, I'd travel 260km and cross two national borders (Belgium/Netherlands/Germany). It's not just "polish plumbers" (*) who find the four freedoms attractive - German physicists completely agree!
European standardization may represent a fatal lack of national autonomy to folk like Le Pen - for many, many Europeans, starting with Gen-Xers (Macron's "Generation Erasmus"), it simply means "less bureaucratic insanity".
(*) I also fail to see what's so terrible about polish plumbers - my cousin-in-law is a naturalized German, born in Poland. She's also the hairdresser I trust ... :-D
Thrudd:
--- Quote from: oeoek on 24 Apr 2017, 02:09 ---
--- Quote from: Pilchard123 on 24 Apr 2017, 00:38 ---And 'spathe ham' was an option for how long?
--- End quote ---
Spathe ham is always an option.
--- End quote ---
(click to show/hide)
--- Quote from: Case on 24 Apr 2017, 06:12 ---.... Since those are run by SWIFT, which famously grants the NSA access to transfers and with the NSA's famous unconcern for their treaty obligations regarding EU citizen's privacy rights ...)
--- End quote ---
The NSA and other alphabet agencies ignore everybody's supposed rights.
You are not them and therefore an other.
As such you are not to be trusted.
The untrustworthy have no rights except to comply.
Failing to comply makes you a criminal.
Criminals shall be punished.
:psyduck:
sitnspin:
--- Quote from: Thrudd on 24 Apr 2017, 12:18 ---
The NSA and other alphabet agencies ignore everybody's supposed rights.
You are not them and therefore an other.
As such you are not to be trusted.
--- End quote ---
To be fair, they don't trust each other, either. Mistrust is endemic, even within the same agency/department.
Mehre:
I like how there can be semi-serious debates on economly, law, politics, physics, AI and whatever else. :D
By the way wasnt it when dora moved in that her relationship with Marten started going downhill?
TheEvilDog:
--- Quote from: Mehre on 24 Apr 2017, 14:48 ---By the way wasnt it when dora moved in that her relationship with Marten started going downhill?
--- End quote ---
Eh, it was going downhill long before Dora moved in with Marten, it was just one of the last nails in the coffin.
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