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Comment by sunshine-o | Hacker News Reader

Yes congratulation, you get to benefit from a lot of regulated and subsidized things: housing, education and transportation.

While enjoying a high paying job in probably a still very unregulated domain (computers/internet related).

This is not about one country vs another.

The problem is you cannot have a society with everybody winning on both fronts unfortunately. You also need people making, cleaning stuff, growing food, cooking, etc. Not everybody can live in the capital with "very cheap all electric state-subsidized rental car" and Vienna is probably not food self sufficient...

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> Vienna is probably not food self sufficient

No, but Austria is. And our farmers enjoy much support through subsidies - from the EU and our own budget - and social protections, often having better and cheaper health care than most other Austrians, since they are insured under their very own social insurance law (BSVG), contrary to other employees (ASVG) and self-employed (GSVG).

Farmers also enjoy very high levels of respect and appreciation here, even in Vienna.

> While enjoying a high paying job in probably a still very unregulated domain (computers/internet related).

Calling Information Technology an 'unregulated domain' in the EU when we're all busy implementing NIS2 regulation and preparing for the Cyber Resilience Act entering into force soon seems disingenuous.

> And our farmers enjoy very high levels of subsidies

Yes, thanks. This was my original point "the agriculture sector hold by a string". It is by design unsustainable and if you cut those "high levels of subsidies" it collapses.

> Calling Information Technology an 'unregulated domain' in the EU when we're all busy implementing NIS2 regulation and preparing for the Cyber Resilience Act entering into force soon seems disingenuous.

Yes this is why I said "still"

I do not understand what you're trying to communicate with "hold by a string" - we subsidize our farmers because we do not want to completely wreck our local agricultural supply chains just because food from, say Brazil, would be theoretically cheaper today. Another factor is that we actually have the ability to properly enforce quality standards if the food is produced within our jurisdiction.

This is no different to subsidizing public transport, because having this infrastructure local and autonomous is just strategically important enough for the tax payer to finance it. Would you say that public transport in EU capitals is "holding on by a string"?

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