154 karma · joined September 15, 2019
What's the state here?
While there seems to be an alternative, the root cause of Google's hostility to foss apps does not make me optimistic about this being a stable solution in the long run :(
I suppose there's some noise in any voting system, and it's fine if the magnitude is small and its distribution random. Looking at the US, I'd be more worried about gerrymandering than a few votes from the dead.
A Beitrag is bound to a well defined objective which means it is determined what the money will be used for at the moment it is collected whereas a Steuer contributes to the household as such.
Also, public TV is not controlled by the government but by a council that is more or less democratic. Still far from perfect, sure
Another thing that bothers me is that I have to subscribe to all pages separately and that the price of the individual venues is just too high. News are too important to lock in with one or maybe two providers, sorry.
Take, for instance, Urban Sports Club where I have a number of plans and for amount X I get, let's say, unlimited gym, 2x sauna and a yoga session per month at their partners. Why not having this for news and other media? Like paying 50€ and you get 25 articles at partnering news sites, 10 hours Spotify and 5 hours Youtube premium.
The flaw with all this is that it is lacking the lock-in effect and let's be honest, competition is only cool if you're not exposed to it ;)