ro-_-b

exactly. While living in Germany I had an expensive supermarket in walking distance, but I'd almost never go there because I used the car to go to work and stopped at a cheaper one on the way back. In Austria in the cities it's almost impossible to go by car to work because parking is incredibly expensive so most people use public transport or bikes

Also important to note:

Germany is a car country: most ways to work, gym, etc in the average German city are done by car. Makes it easy to drive the extra mile to the cheapest supermarket.

Austria is much better for using public transport or the bike. In this case you won't make the extra way to stop at the cheapest grocery. And in the areas in Austria where people use cars population density is so low that not a lot of competition between supermarkets exists

I lived in Austria and in Germany and it's 100% true, prices in supermarkets are significantly higher in Austria even for products produced in Austria.

The reasons IMO are: * less price sensitivity: German people are extremely price sensitive, they discuss and compare prices all the time. In Austria people care way less about this on average. Supermarkets take advantage * higher logistics costs: population density in Austria is less than in Germany. Furthermore, many supermarkets are located in areas hard to reach like mountain areas. Higher logistic costs translate to higher prices * VAT is slightly higher in Austria * unqualified labor that works in supermarkets and logistics makes slightly more money in Austria than in Germany * there indeed is a higher supermarket tensity in Austria than in Germany. Supermarkets of the same company appear more appealing in Austria than in Germany: nicer presentation of food, cleaner, way less people in the line waiting. All this makes them more expensive

For all these reasons mentioned above prices are higher. I argue it's mostly related to consumer choices. If they would care so much about prices and so little about esthetics as in Germany then prices would come down. If people would start to walk the extra mile for the cheaper supermarket prices would come down.

That's very interesting! Thanks for explaining! Let's assume some people would have wanted to bridge OETH back to Ethereum: with the potentially increased supply would it have meant that all the ETH on optimism could have become potentially worthless?

As unrelated as it may seem I consider this statement to be true. It's terrible that society is not creating a tax system that prevents real estate from being an investment vehicle. If real estate would be cheaper I would have probably settled down already several years ago. Now I am just thinking why should I work 40h+ just to afford an ugly, old & noisy 2-bed-room condo in suburbia if instead I can use that extra money to live like a king in an emerging economy, affording everything I desire from restaurants to cleaning services & at the same time afford the luxury to work less. Also many of my friends gave up on buying real estate & opt for working less/ more leisure instead. It feels like the boomer middle class society is breaking apart & I believe that to be a good thing because as more people change their views real estate will become affordable again. In the meantime I believe there are better investment opportunities anyways compared to current real estate prices in Western Europe.

A mandate in this case is different because

a) this vaccine is not highly effective at preventing the disease (especially after 6 months+)

b) long term effects have not yet been studied

c) fatality is still much lower than for diseases where vaccines are mandatory

I'm vaccinated myself twice by I feel extremely uncomfortable to force other people to vaccinate. I don't think liberal democracies should go this path.

What I don't understand is why they complain about the high costs of setting up a business in the US (tens of thousands of dollars). Shouldn't this be pretty cheap with Stripe Atlas?

That is precisely where Coinbase doesn't excel. I know several people who bought crypto on Coinbase in 2017 and forgot about it. They are now trying to restore their account but Coinbase support takes¡months! to complete this step. The best days for Coinbase are already behind them. I recommend looking into other exchanges & not to rely on exchanges for storing your crypto.

So for the vaccination it seems that:

It does not prevent the virus from spreading It does not protect against certain variations that we are seeing like in South Africa

This means that the pandemic will still be there next winter some how. Likely not as bad as it is now. But it won't be over yet as a thread for societies. Remember most emerging/developing countries are not expected to receive vaccinations any time soon.

They'll be able to update the vaccination but many people will lose trust in them unfortunately

Means that our economies & currencies will be in trouble

Remote work will break through. After 2 years nobody is used to anything else anymore

Many people will permanently lose their job/business, but software companies will continue to do extremely well (although there will be some regulatory crack down on the largest companies)

I remember that in March somebody posted here an entry saying that mutation of the virus will make vaccinations only useful in the short term. Were these concerns already addressed at this stage?

We have seen mutations due to minks recently which could make the vaccinations ineffective. These mutations might have been controlled but similar situations may arise in the next years.

For these reasons I am not entirely sure this is the beginning of the end.

if you look at how expensive gold is you would typically compare it in relation to other assets such as real estate or the S&P 500 and not to CPI. that's at least how I would make up my mind when is a good time to buy sell/gold. Gold/precious metals are an asset class and BTC/crypto-assets are an emerging asset class IMO also I think it is not fair that central banks only focus on CPI and not asset price. for me as a millennial it matters a lot that real estate price in central Europe are today 2x compared to what they were 10 years ago. also rent is mostly not reflected correctly in CPIs

I believe it is not fair to only take into account consumer price inflation instead of asset price inflation. Asset price inflation in the US & Europe has been massive lately. BTC is obviously an asset and therefore the inflation that is relevant for the future valuation of an asset IMO is asset price inflation

I don't believe that gold is predominantly used for practical use cases. The majority of people keep it stored somewhere in a vault. And yet it provided a good store of value over thousands of years due to its scarcity. Oil indeed has practical uses and is therefore mostly compared to Ethereum and not BTC