One city has a millionaire who builds a yacht for 100M dollars in a local shipyard and uses it for holidays. The neighbor city has a millionaire who spends 100M dollars to build 10 ferries he gifts to the city.
The general population is clearly better off in the second case, even if it does not matter for the workers in the shipyard.
I think the core idea is to avoid someone actually losing money. The producer might end up with a loss, the actor's profit is strictly positive (not accounting for opportunity costs...).
It's important to be precise because everything is not the same. In the German case the ruling was not because someone posted a critical meme, but because it was not entirely obvious the picture was edited (as in: you and I can immediately see the photo was edited, but some people will not recognize the edit). I do not agree with the ruling, but as a citizen I am happy that in Germany we still care if claims are true or not (and try to prevent people from lying).
The irreversibility is still important to highlight, as it is distinctively different from a similar consent issue with search: "Google indexed my website against my will, but I will just forbid them to include me in search results going forward".
Hydro power is a great thing, it was the first renewable energy that was available in meaningful quantities. However, great sites for hydro power are definitely limited. We will not suddenly find a great spot for a new huge dam. Imagine the only source of vegan B12 to be some obscure plant that can only be grown on a tiny island. In this scenario, the possible extend of vegan consumption is fixed.
Just to add to that: Any fluctuation in prices works to incentivise storage, negative prices are not so special in that regard.
Negative prices allow for some weird actions to become profitable - like starting an empty washing machine, turning in the light in an empty room or needlessly heating some water tank. Basically everything we are used to think of as waste. It sounds absurd, but it's not really a big deal.
That's a very optimistic outlook after it was revealed what preparations had been taken to deal with a global pandemic, a risk scenario that at least every country had a playbook for.
I just think it is not possible to meaningfully prepare for a once-in-a-century event. You simply cannot sustain significant budgets for such scenarios.
If the pot size stays the same, you are just shuffling around between artists. So artists who are listened to by people who only listen to a bit of music benefit, and those listened to by people who listen to a lot of music get less.
I guess there are two groups of people who listen to a lot of music:
1) young people
2) people who like music a lot.
So bad news for Taylor Swift AND obscure bands only interesting to enthusiasts. Not sure that's better overall. I would prefer a system that is regressive, that pays more for the first 1k listens than the last 1k - but that's definitely not fair :)
It's a tautology, as no implementation of a concept will ever be equivalent to the pure concept. The real existing examples of implementations of concepts will still tell you something about the viability of the concept.
It's an artifact of how the measurement is made, as it accounts for insurance profits. While a good proxy in normal times, corona sent this measure into a wild rollercoaster-ride. However, it is generally a good idea not to change the method of measuring because you do not like the measures in the short term. The most important measure is the headline number (and MoM is more informative than YoY in these times), as it is the basis for actual politics. The headline number absorbs a lot of craziness in the underlying measures.
I can imagine that many great academics might have difficulties 'holding a job'. A PhD is certainly something to be proud of, just as running a marathon, raising a great child or having a great corporate career.
Wherever there is a Tarif, there are Außertarifliche Angestellte who can freely negotiate their salary, if it is at least 110% of highest Tarifgehalt. Unions cannot do anything about layoffs because that's the job of the workers council. Who are quite powerful in that regard . Unions are for coordination across the whole industry. Sure, you can still have a toxic boss - bit she cannot fire you at will!
On my Android Samsung Galaxy, when I want to know the password of a saved Wifi, I generate a share-QR, screenshot it, and have a QR scanner scan the picture to extract the password. It drives me nuts, the password is clearly not secure/protected, still the UI will only give me the QR code, not the plaintext. PLEASE tell me I am just too stupid to find the right menue!