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Yes, education is welfare. I'm not sure how anyone could possibly argue otherwise...

As per the UK government for 2026-2027 9.2 Chart D.2: Public sector spending 2026-27:

Social protection - 400 b

personal social services - 54b

health - 294b

Education - 145b

industry agriculture and employment - 51b

housing and environment - 51 billion

That accounts for roughly 70% of public sector spending, not 33%.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2025-docum...

>It’s hard to deal with that when people have been paying into the system for their whole working lives on the promise that they will be looked after in old age.

They weren't paying "into the system". They were being taxed.

Treat it for what it was, and stop feeding the pyramid scheme.

>People wonder where all the money is going and there's no particularly good answer.

The answer is welfare. That is the original sin of all of this, and the one people refuse to acknowledge.

You need to let people fail.

What do you mean? If don't take a principled stance on something even when it hurts, you don't have principles.

Copyright is evil. Disliking LLMs doesn't change that.

>What lead it to being "banned in dozens of countries all over the world, including the United Kingdom and China"?

political pressure. Same reason lots of stuff is banned in the EU even when it's safer than other things that aren't banned.

>I’m not moving away from my kid’s grandparents because my local costs have gone up, for example.

If you're unable to eat because you spent all your resources paying for that residence near the grandparents you would certainly move.

>If you're the elected authority who, by your rule, creates corporate winners and losers

That is the actual problem, and you're not fixing it by stopping them from buying stocks.

> for a country, the constitution is probably more important than a treaty.

The constitution is always supreme, because the ability to agree to the treaties derives from the constitution.

>It's because some prices, like salaries or rent just refuse to go down.

a common argument, but one that doesn't bear out in the absence of regulation enforcing that.

>You're 'technically correct' but the total amount of land being created is so small as to be meaningless in a global sense.

By that argument we don't even need to create any land at all. There is plenty of empty or nearly empty land all over the world. It may not be as desirable as specific places, but i can assure you the cost to make large swathes of land inhabitable by humans is comparatively low.

>Real estate(the land, not the mansion) is a really good long term storage of wealth as it is fixed, finite, and doesn't depreciate in value except through market trend and it basically only go up as long as the economy itself grow.

None of this is true.

Step by step:

>as it is fixed

Something not being able to be moved is a negative, not a positive

>finite

New land is created all the time. The netherlands has created an entire new province.

> and doesn't depreciate in value

Only true legally. I can assure you land does depreciate, as can any farmer that has used it to farm the same crop for years and now finds its yields reduced as a result.

>except through market trend

So, just like any other asset?

> it basically only go up as long as the economy itself grow.

Untrue, simply check any number of rural areas that have had the life drained out of them over the past 50 years.

Land is useful, but let's not pretend like it's something it isn't.

>There's literally 0 startups I've been part of where data protection laws or even the infamous cookie banners have been anywhere near relevant (unless your business was literally profiling).

Thats kind of the point...

> clearer safe harbors for small actors

Different rules for different people huh?

Just because you like the group you're benefiting and dislike the group you're harming doesn't mean that is good policy.

>Like, if you overstayed Schengen visa for one day because you messed up with counting entry and exit days, but used it otherwise for its intended purpose, the border officer likely won't even notice.

When that wasn't automated that might have been the case (not that its a good thing).

It's certainly not the case now that there is literally an API that tracks that.

I can reduce reported crime rates by simply not doing anything about the crime that is reported for extended periods of time. People understand that reporting does nothing and so they stop bothering to do it.

No one should be compelled to aid in their prosecution.

-What about KDE NEON?

Those problems are artificially created by regulation. There is nothing inherent to these topics that makes servicing them physically impossible.

Charge backs, etc... can be effectively solved by appropriately pricing in such risks (or not offering those services at all).

This isn't a payment processor issue, it's a political choice.

>The minimum wage can be an effective policy tool for mitigating economic inequality, but public demand for higher minimum wages has not kept up with rising levels of income disparities

They could start the paper by not stating something obviously false.

>I reject the implication, that corporations are always better at solving most problems.

The only person mentioning corporations was you.

>Most of the stuff the UK is struggling with (transport, healthcare, energy) are "state capacity" issues.

None of those are state capacity issues.

Those are "State is pointing a gun at anyone who would fix them" issues.

Friendly reminder that 95%+ of the UK railway system was built by private for profit companies, with state involvement being primarily limited to not preventing it from happening.

All of these issues are 100% self inflicted by the state getting in the way.

All that needs to happen for them to fix themselves is to stop actively preventing private individuals from fixing them.

>So the alternative is to defend democracy by letting a foreign authoritarian entity take over your country in the name of (their) freedom?

People being convinced to change their countries geopolitical policies seems to me a perfectly legitimate thing to do in a democracy.

If the american people would like closer relations to china and vote accordingly that seems to me to be the whole point of democracy.

China engaging and supporting that is also a perfectly legitimate means of achieving its goals, no? Or would you prefer that instead of convincing the american people of that, they should instead bribe or coerce their politicians behind closed fdoors?

>That would make legitimate civil asset forfeiture impossible to execute.

There is no such thing, so that is not a concern.

I see you didn't answer the question i asked (probably because it would make it obvious how untenable your argument is), so I will ask again.

If i pay some money to google to run some ads for the 2 main parties, and don't report it, do they also get disqualified?

>The EU is not involved in directly financing candidates or political parties in Romania, they've already given us tens of billions of dollars to develop our country.

Wow, seems like they're spent tens of billions of dollars in long term election interference campaigns. Are we going to see the politicians elected going to jail over it?

>You would be in legal trouble for breaking electoral law. Based on what happened today, if there is proof that the electoral process was tainted, the elections can be annulled by the constitutional court.

So, your stance is that any foreign nation can disqualify any candidate they like by running a few ads for them?

Think seriously about what you're saying.

>Literally, that is what he declared he spent on his election campaign.

>The million euros for the TikTok & social media storm that got him elected has to have been paid by someone though, and according to law this money has to be clean and have clear sources.

What if he did indeed spend 0€ ?

If i pay some money to google to run some ads for the 2 main parties, and don't report it, do they also get disqualified?

Oh? Is there some dispute that did EU called Tik Tok about these elections? https://apnews.com/article/romania-tiktok-elections-european...

If Russia had called them in for not blocking or censoring pro-EU candidates would you not have called that election interference?

If i spend money on all the other candidates and don't declare it, will they get disqualified? Or is this a rule that only gets applied when the wrong person wins=?