I think the main problem is that this will not survive very long once implemented.
Politician A will promise "no VAT on bread" to get elected. The next guy will promise "no VAT on essentials". The next guy will promise "no UBI for the rich". And so on.
And you end up with the next politician dismantling the whole system as unfair.
I think of this in reverse. It's legal for the government to track mail - who sent a message, and who it's going to. They have access to the "outside of the envelope". But it's not legal for them to read the message inside.
And this same principle allows them to build massive friend/connection networks of everyone electronically. The government knows every single person you've communicated with and how often you communicate with them.
The government is claiming that Facebook bought Meta and Whatsapp because it couldn't compete with them.
Is that illegal? I don't understand! Every company that buys another company buys it because it adds something to their business. It's a ridiculous claim.
Since Apple apologized for the ad, it seems they, too, agree that it wasn't a good ad.
They wouldn't apologize for something if there were nothing wrong with it.
Personally, it was too real. It was CGI, sure. But that hydraulic press crushed (destroyed) the tools humans use to create every handmade thing we consider beautiful.
Apple absolutely intended to convey the meaning that Apple an iPad can replace a piano or a trumpet or paint.
I personally have had the experience of having to talk to two people (with a third person required to fetch the product from the back room) at an Apple store in Toronto. You stand there waiting on the side for 10 minutes while the gopher finishes with a couple of other customers.
Near me, they keep the products locked up in the back room, and the person who you talk to on the floor often doesn't have direct access and needs to find the person who has access to get them the product.
It makes sense. There's not a pile of 1000 Macbooks on a pallet back there. It's locked up in a cage, and they go in and get one at a time.
You keep using the word scam. I don't think it means what you think it means. ;)
If two people want to send some bits between each other, and they both know what they're doing, it's not a scam. It may be risky, it may be unwise, it may be speculation... but scams involve deception between the receiver and the sender. And crypto is equivalent to dollars in this sense.
The trucks were acting as a buffer, if you believe the CEO of Flexport. So if you increase the buffer size, then the trucks can be trucks again and it's guaranteed to increase truck loadings per hour.
OK, so what if you don't want to be friends with your boss / co-workers. But have excellent work performance. Should this hold you back from promotion?