Custom exception for goods below 150 EUR have been routinely, if not systematically abused by companies from abroad mislabeling orders larger than 150 EUR. Add to that, that because of outdated international agreements, shipping across half the world have to be facilitated at prices that are usually lower than shipping within a single EU member state. Those 3 EUR are merely bringing the shipping costs more in line with that and can help handling the huge additional costs that all that waste creates. And that in the near future there won’t be a customs exception below 150 EUR is something Chinese companies have really brought upon themselves. I know some consumers loved to evade customs but to think one is entitled to that is well, a choice.

Didn’t he manage to go all the way to Moscow?

Brave New World is sinister but it is more of a “hell is paved with good intentions” story, while 1984 is straight hell with no good good intentions anywhere, the only aim is to secure a regime, from which no one is even really benefitting a lot. I mean the elite does have a materialistically better life but hardly a lavish one while being actually the least free. It is not clear but I always liked to think that there is no real “big brother”, no real, guy at the top. The system is just kept up by some double thinkers at the top. Fully exchangeable, with as little freedom as anyone else.

The thing in Brave New World is, that those rejecting the regime are actually free to go. I always found that the world outside was portrayed in a pretty exaggerated way, but one can also believe that this was possible mainly propaganda by the regime itself. Either way, people could leave if they wanted forsake the comfy life and experience struggle and freedom. Even then, when choosing that, their lives would have been materially probably still better than those in 1984.

Like I said, I believe we are heading towards a combination of Brave New World and 1984. The latter was too harsh, there is a benefit in letting people enjoy some things, give them something they can use to forget things. The Third Reich for example figured out along the way. That indoctrination movies were counter productive and rejected by the population. However, harmless entertainment movies, with no or maybe only a mild propagandistic twist helped them much more. People rejected the former but welcomed the latter, so that they don’t have to think about the unpleasant stuff. In our modern world, 1984 type surveillance and the death of democracy will be sold by Brave New World style convenience.

We are heading towards a future that will see marks of both dystopias but we would wish to be in a pure Brave New World instead.

To be fair, I always considered Brave New World a much less dire dystopy than 1984. I mean you have a really hard time arguing otherwise. People are not free in either but if you could choose, don’t tell me you’d choose 1984.

But this debate is moot anyway, what we are heading towards is a combination of the worst of 1984 and Brave New World combined.

In Austria ATMs do not only have 100 EUR bills, if you are not careful it will also hand out anytime it can.

This is … exactly what I expected from him.

Instead they settled on fabricating an escalating Hungary/Ukraine conflict.

Brexit benefits keep on giving. Just imagine not being able to facilitate a war the UK government is supposedly not facilitating.

And yet, the Eu has given the largest aud of all to Ukraine so far. Hungary makes a fuss and things complicated but the EU can always fudge around it, it just causes a slight delay.

If you bully Germanball or EUball enough, you’ll get Reichtangle though.

France has already its own independent nukes. No need for reinventing the wheel. The umbrella merely needs to be enlarged.