"The banking industry promised that from mid-2019 name checks would be carried out when customers sent money to other people"
Wow. So far behind.
"Barclays said it asked the person who received the cash for permission to return the money, but he refused."
There is nothing to refuse. The law in my country would be pretty clear about this. Honestly, just to prevent the guy withdrawing and spending it, it would very likely pay him a visit. But that is me.
This book was written in 1989 and was already skeptical about the stability of the soviet union and also thought what might happen to Ukraine if the the USSR disintegrates (attracted to EU/EC).
ICs and computers may have been a huge part of the downfall, especially if you consider how important they are in warfare.
"1. its economic model was dysfunctional and a failure"
The USSR had a good economy for some time. During Stalins brutal industrialization, growth rates may have even outclassed Chinas. E.g. 13% p.a. over 12 years, the numbers are controversial. I have a paper about it. Fact is, in WW1 and WW2 Germany faced a very different country.
The later decline may also correlate with declining oil production. The USSR sold a lot of Oil and Gas to the west.
"The soviet union failed, because centralized, collectivism, and having all the output owned by the state is a failure as a model...."
This is also true fro China and the last word, if the system is sustainable or not, is not spoken in this regards.
I tell you a secret: The western market oriented, capitalistic system is also bound to fail.
1. Due to the inherent feature to use debt to prefinance production, the economy has always to keep growing. It is not possible to use our current capitalistic system in a steady state economy.
2. Since wealth and economic growth are interlinked and energy is more or less limited, the system has to come to a stop sooner or later.
"I'm not an economist but I've never heard of competition described as "negative-sum.""
It is obvious that, if competition is strong for a cake with a given size, that costs, e.g. for advertisement, may actually decrease the profits. While the size of the cake stays the same, the market players have less profits due to increased costs. So in the end everybody has a smaller slice. If I remember correctly, this has happened in a stagnant cigarette market where one player decided to increase his share. They spend a fortune on advertisement, as did the other since they don't want to lose their share. After some years the war stopped and everybody had more or less the same share as before, while having lost a tremendous amount of money on advertisement without gaining any benefit.
A zero sum game has nothing to do with consumers in this example. It means, the cake has a given size. If you want to increase the size of your slice, you have to take something away from another player.
A non-zero sum game would be were the cake (market) is growing. Every year you have a bigger cake. Then it is possible that you can increase your slice without reducing the slice of another player.
It is well known. VEF, Eletrotehnika, Tondi Elektroonika and others. Also big biotech hub in Soviet times. AFAIK. Even the first soviet atomic bomb was partly build there ("Sillamäe").
I spare you the details for the Czech republic since this should be well known. They were always an industrial and manufacturing hub, even during German occupation in WW2. Airplanes, Tanks, guns, cars (Skoda!), machinery etc. Don't forget, they are a comparably small country.
To sack it may have been one of the stupidest decisions ever by a CEO (Apotheker).
After the blow out sale they had something they were lacking before: huge customer base. But the idea to make money with software and apps instead of hardware may not have been compatible with HP business culture.
Just a SEO blog post that posts something obvious.
They mention ThatOnePrivacySite.net but criticize him:
"Here's the difference. They include virtually every provider — the good and the bad — and present them at equal value to sort through. Instead of providing their readers with answers, they provide them with information that can be used to deduce their own recommendations, based on their values as an individual. "
1st: providing them all guarantees that there is no conflict of interest
2nd: "Instead of providing their readers with answers" You can not provide this answer since there a tons of reasons to use a VPN
"Your VPN provider should not be hiding away in Panama controlled by anonymous leadership."
This is also bullshit. In fact, some of the most resilient VPN provides provide no legislation at all. They only exists in Cyberspace. "Sue us!"
It is the only VPN that I am aware of that works out of the box with softether. I have not tried it yet. I currently use Astrill. Astrill is not cheap but works pretty well to circumvent censorship. A disadvantage of Astrill is that it often leaks DNS like a motherf....
This should prevent DNS leaks on Linux if UFW is installed.
Access the internet via an anonymous SIM card (tethering), then use TOR to access your VPN (paid in Bitcoins, money order or whatever). This gives you a decent level of anonymity, if need be.
"If a whole other continent joins, it will be the biggest?"
Yes. The biggest free trade zone. Read the news from time to time. The EU-Mercosul FTA is supposed to be signed but may not due to Austria and partly also to France.
"so that no one would stifle the company's path towards autonomous EV's."
Who is "stifling"? And many companies work on autonomous cars.
"This will produce pressure on Europe to ease for instance the AI regulations"
What AI regulations in Europe? And what is Europe? The EU?
"and basically removed Customs tax"
This is not how custom taxes work. The EU is one of the biggest free trade zone in the world. If Mercosul joins, it is the biggest.
"I just don't understand why Tesla is slow in expanding to other countries. Here in Israel we don't have Teslas and it's an extremely innovative place"
Because Tesla is burning through cash like a motherfucker. And Israel is a tiny place. This is also why, to my knowledge, nobody build cars in Israel. I mean, why not Dubai?
Wow. So far behind.
"Barclays said it asked the person who received the cash for permission to return the money, but he refused."
There is nothing to refuse. The law in my country would be pretty clear about this. Honestly, just to prevent the guy withdrawing and spending it, it would very likely pay him a visit. But that is me.