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11 days agoIt might sound kinda radical, but I feel that we need a culture shift to people paying for things, even if it’s small amounts, if we want to be truly competitive to „big tech“. Big tech uses venture capital to offer free stuff and thereby establish monopolies. We expect developers to work for free. It does work to an extent, but obviously it’s limited. And also people deserve being paid for their work.
Some work could be done in the area of how the funds are managed and presented, so it’s transparent and fair.
What’s deeply ironic about this situation is that one of the main reasons the EU has remained distant to Russia is the US. Cold war was between US and Russia. More recently US opposed Nord Stream 2. Now US suddenly is friendly to Russia and EU are running around like headless chicken because they made it their own identity to be hostile to Russia. There haven been people suggesting that while indeed Russia is antidemocratic etc. one can still try to carefully cooperate, because it happens to be a neighbor and it makes sense strategically. Who knows, maybe in the process one could positively influence Russia, it doesn’t have to be always the other way. But these people are instantly called Russian assets and demonized. And it’s not like this kind of reasoning was the real issue anyway, as in the meantime you see western democracies happily collaborating e.g. with Turkey or Saudi Arabia. The Ukraine war complicates things though. Aside of the humanitarian and economic tragedy, it’s a diplomatic disaster, as it makes Russia look quite hostile to Europe, whether they actually „want to continue“ beyond Ukraine or not.