Why yes, I’d love to pay an additional $250 fee to be shipped off to a gulag.

Except the ‘least bad’ party gets 0.8% votes and almost all the votes go to worst and second worst. What most people mean by ‘least bad’ is simply ‘less bad’, as in ‘less bad than the other one’. And even that ‘less bad’ classification can be troublesome to wrap your head around.

This is precisely why it’s every government’s top priority to cripple the education system. Or if it’s already crippled - either cripple it further or just keep it as is, depending on the circumstances.

Personally I live in the EU, so it’s not nearly as bad for me as it is for Americans. However, even in Europe most politicians and their parties get elected simply because people don’t know better and follow whatever their preferred TV station says.

A lot of Europeans also have difficulties separating personal feelings from politics. You criticize one politician and suddenly everyone is mad, because that means you must be a devoted supporter of their opponent. Sometimes it feels like everyone is brainwashed, because they can only do ‘white’ or ‘black’, as if there were no other shades in between.

Found the husband!

Sounds like a massive overreaction and abuse of century-old laws.

If those devices are so bad, why not forbid selling them in Italy, instead of punishing people who buy them completely legally. Imagine going through all of this because you bought a laptop and posted a review online.

Right after? Depends on the scenario. For shorter trips like grocery shopping (depending on your area) it may not make very much sense to take a bus or tram.

The EVs’ carbon footprint is marginally smaller, and even that tiny difference is highly dependant on drivers taking care of their cars and using them for many years. The only realistic advantage is that the pollution moves from cities to power plants. It’s a pretty nice improvement, but it does nothing to ‘save the planet’.

In the EU maybe, where there’s a lot of protected bike lanes and where most drivers are relatively competent (and don’t carry guns).

We all see and hear what goes on over there.

Do we? We only get a little bit of news from there, and I wouldn’t be sure how reliable it is.

Why don’t any other countries step in to help those people.

Help how? Go to war and slaughter most of their population? They are already heavily mobilized, and no doubt they’d conscript a lot more in case of a conflict. Not to mention they have nukes.

Why do we just allow this to happen in modern civilization?

Who is ‘we’? No offence, but this sounds like some oblivious American patriot asking why America hasn’t saved the world yet.

Is just not lucrative to step in?

Most countries don’t have their own nukes, so they will never even consider getting into a conflict with a country that does have them. Most countries don’t have even a fraction of the resources needed for any sort of operation.

Plus, North Korea has powerful allies (like China) and is technically a member of the UN, so you can’t just disregard everything and conquer it.

Ban American big tech? Okay, makes sense.

Create a European Silicon Valley? I don’t know about this one.

The reason China and the US are global leaders in technology is because of their complete disregard for human rights and the environment. Creating a “European Silicon Valley” would simply bring us down to their level, or at least closer. Mimicking America has never worked well for Europe. We need our own European systems born from our own European ideas.

I think this is true. Billionaires and their corporations are obviously morally bankrupt and have been manipulating all of us for long years. But at the same time, it seems to me that there is also some ‘consent’ on our part. There’s a lot of people who will still choose to be oppressed, even after having everything explained to them and seemingly having understood.

Perhaps thay’s how deep all the decades of social engineering go. Or maybe we just really like convenience, to the point where we’re willing to become slaves if it means our lives are convenient.

Kind of true, but the EU is not America, so don’t apply the same standards. In the US it’s extremely difficult to find a single politician that is not a completely corrupt criminal. The EU, on the other hand, is filled with a lot of politicians that also prioritize their positions and comfortable lives, but at least generally have somewhat positive intentions.

As for the European Citizens’ Initiatives - they are very serious and usually result in actual legislation. Of course, there’s no guarantee that this specific petition will lead to consumer protections. The only guarantee is that the European Comission will consider and talk about this. Afterwards, they’ll negotiate with the lobbies and sometime later we - citizens of the EU - will get to write public feedback about the Comission’s proposals in a post on their website, that may or may not be taken into consideration.

Overall it’s still a fairly corrupt, far from ideally functioning system, but it’s nowhere near the level of rot that the US is throwing out on full display. Despite the MEPs primarily looking out for their own best interests, we regularly receive more and more laws that benefit regular folk and not corporations. Meanwhile the last time the US has seen any real pro-people change was what, 40 years ago? The EU may be far from perfect, but please do not put it on the same shelf as America. There’s no comparison to be made.