Those rancid fucking ghouls want to kill Chinese online shopping platforms like AliExpress by introducing a 3€ fee per item starting from July next year. Member nations may also impose their own additional fees on top of that. Apparently, the Dutch get to pay an additional 2€ per package while Romanians pay 5€.
This isn’t too bad if you buy more expensive individual items. For example, paying 3€ on top of 25€ would suck but it’s still less expensive than trying to get the same thing from the EU. However, if you had a 15€ package consisting of 8 smaller items, you’d have to pay an eye-watering 24€ in fees.
It absolutely infuriates me how fucking smug EU politicians and bureaucrats sound while they boast about this new scheme, like cops who had just done major drug bust or foiled some terror plot. The media also talks about people who shop on AE and Temu like they’re fucking crackheads or drunk drivers or something while also admitting that the “worst offenders” are pensioners and single parents, aka the poor. Fuck those people amirite
Most of the stuff I get from AliExpress is lower-priced items so this EU protection racket is gonna suck. EU and corporate mouthpieces like to go on about how cheap Chinese goods are bad for the environment but most of the shit I get is replacement parts and accessories for things I already own that I could not get locally at all, or only at some ludicrous markup. I saw some electronics repairman say that they buy individual components directly from China because otherwise you would have to buy many of them in industrial quantities
Edit: Just look at this fucking shit, dude. My latest purchase contained a couple of Micro USB to USB-C adapters because I have a bunch of older devices and I figured it would be easier to have a couple of adapters instead of finding new Micro USB cables. The adapters cost less than 2€. Look at these prices at local retailers:
See that 2.90€ listing? Yeah, that one has a 6€ shipping fee and I’m pretty sure they’re just a middle man for Alibaba products anyway 
Also, as a sidenote, I was commiserating about this and other shit with some real life acquaintances, and we were all in agreement until I brought up how our shitty fucking government is going to gut the welfare state to buy military jets and other weapons from the Yanks, at which point the mood changed completely. “We’ve got no choice but to defend ourselves from Russia” 
All their anger at the government, the EU and the US completely evaporated in an instant. These people are lefties
This entire stupid continent is 99% Nato-brained and there’s like 10 communists. I guess this is better than the time I was accused of being a tankie Russian stooge for disagreeing with the take that Putin’s ultimate goal is to conquer Europe for lebensraum for the Russians and he’s gonna do it any day now
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Putin’s ultimate goal is to conquer Europe for lebensraum for the Russians
Russia famously running out of land and natural resources
It was the stupidest thing I had ever heard but the person saying it was acting like I was being the dumb fucking moron
I hate that I can see their (braindead) thought process. Putin = Hitler therefore Hitler’s Goals = Putin’s Goals
That’s literally it. It’s so scary how fucking unmoored all of this shit is from any kind of material reality. Is Putin a ruthless bastard? Yeah, definitely
He is not literally Hitler though, why is this so difficult
WW2 was the last time a western country was the good (well, better) guys in a war so libs see everything in that frame.
Also Finland is a country where being “the scrappy badasses who beat the big bad Soviet Union twice” is an essential part of the national identity. Also, before that, there was a whole nationalist independence movement from the Russian Empire. Previous wars with Russia back when Finland was a part of Sweden have also been used to frame Russia and Russians as the eternal enemies of Finland
Also Finland is a country where “being the scrappy badasses who beat the big bad Soviet Union twice”
This makes sense because a lot of Finnish people do seem to live their lives as though the nazis won WW2. Swastika-air-force country.
The Finns are simultaneously jerking themselves raw over their sheer display of sisu during the Continuation War while also crying about all the additional land the Russians stole from them and also saddling them with completely unreasonable war reparations
Greater Finland? Ethnic cleansing? Don’t know what you’re talking about, we’re just a plucky Nordic social democracy
Something I’ve wondered about but am not familiar with the history, do Finns hold any resentment against Sweden in the same way they do for Russia? I mean, Sweden also held sovereignty over Finland for a long time.
Not in the same way, that shit was centuries ago. The concept of Finnishness was mostly formed in the 19th century like many other European national identities in large part in opposition to increasingly oppressive Russian rule and attempts at Russianisation*. If I remember my high school history correctly, one of the slogans of the Finnish nationalists was “We are not Swedes and we do not wish to become Russians, so let us be Finns.” This is not to say that Finnish culture and language didn’t exist previously or that they’re not distinct from Swedish or Russian culture, but sort of like the concept of a “German” or an “Italian”, the concept of a Finn in the nationalist sense is quite recent
*Fun bonus fact: the Russians were initially pretty hands off with Finland after taking it from Sweden. As a former Swedish territory, Finland was seen as European and civilised by the Russians and they made it a semi-autonomous duchy and let us have our own institutions… until they began walking back all of that shit later on and kicked off a whole nationalist and later full-blown independence movement that famously resulted in the assassination of the Russian general governor of Finland
Plenty of Finns still don’t like Sweden for various reasons though. During Swedish rule, Swedish was the language of the ruling class while Finnish was seen as the language of dumb yokels. Until the 20th century, Finland’s ruling class were largely Swedish speakers and had Swedish names. During the aforementioned wave of nationalism, many families changed their names to Finnish ones even if they did not speak Finnish. (Until a couple of generations ago, my family spoke Swedish and had a Swedish surname)
To this day, the Swedish-speaking minority is seen as a bunch of old money former nobles born with silver spoons in their mouths that think they’re better than everyone else. Swedish is Finland’s second official language and learning Swedish is mandatory in Finnish schools and for many lines of work. Many Finns absolutely fucking hate being forced to learn Swedish (Conversely, Finland Swedes must also learn Finnish)
Sweden did not directly help Finland in the Winter or Continuation Wars which some Finns resent. During both wars, many children were sent off to Sweden, where many were treated poorly or had their language and culture suppressed. Some were never returned to their Finnish parents. After the wars, Sweden was understandably much better off than Finland for obvious reasons which created further resentment.
After the war, many Finns moved to Sweden in search of better employment opportunities which created the Swedish stereotype of the Finnjävel, a drunken, violent and incomprehensible immigrant with criminal tendencies. “En Finn igen” (A Finn again) was a common Swedish newspaper headline whenever a Finnish immigrant committed a robbery or other crime
Sweden has a reputation for being very performatively liberal which chuddier Finns like to mock. Swedish men being a bunch of effeminate gay sissies is a foundational part of Finnish humour. Here’s a sketch from a 90s Finnish sketch comedy show that combines the gay angle with leftover resentment from sitting out WWII:
Finally, the Swedes have beat us at hockey a couple of times which some people really care about
OP is Finnish, they were nazis during WW2 lmao.
we TOTALLY were not, okay? We just wanted Karelia back from those goddamn Rooskies besides they started it ᵇᵘᵗ ᵉᵛᵉⁿ ⁱᶠ ʷᵉ ʷᵉʳᵉ ⁱᵗ ʷᵃˢⁿ’ᵗ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵇᵃᵈ ᵃᶜᵗᵘᵃˡˡʸWind lightly blows, causing mild discomfort for a moment.
Northern Europeans: “due to this, we unfortunately have no choice but to commit genocide (which is good btw)”.
Yup, they also applied this to tactics at the start of the war when they kept telling us that Putin failed to do a blitzkrieg
I once had a lib who was convinced that China was going to invade Japan any day and when I asked what possible motive they could have said “Polling shows most Chinese people don’t trust Japan”
With all the talk about RAM pricing going on I’ve seen several Redditor types say that China is “predicted” to invade Taiwan in 2027 or 2028 and that that’s going to have a huge effect on computer chips
Haven’t they always “predicted” that china was going to invade them in [date]+3 years? how accurate. China is about to collapse by the way. /s
I think the NATO-brain is really what gets to me the most. Getting called putinversteher (putin apologist in germany
) for thinking war is bad is infuriating because it just ends the conversation right there. People always talk about russiagate in the US but the EU has already internalized it and more people will actually embody it in Europe than in the US.So many of them (progressive EU lefties) think that the US is actually “too stupid” to do anything. Tell them about how the US sabotaged nordstream and you’ll get them telling you how you’re a conspiracy theorist for doubting a yacht can blow up a pipeline and that more than a dozen governments could possibly keep a secret like that.
Tell them about how the US sabotaged nordstream and you’ll get them telling you how you’re a conspiracy theorist for doubting a yacht can blow up a pipeline and that more than a dozen governments could possibly keep a secret like that.
Wait, there are euros who actually still think Russia did the Nordstream attack?
I work with a lib who had doubts that Russia did the attack but didn’t want to entirely dismiss the idea; I had to explain that it would be a gigantic waste when all they have to do it just turn it off on their end without destroying such an expensive project that they pitched in for. I think he still suspects Russia was behind it when there’s literally zero gain for Russia.
Euros have to believe that Russia committed the sabotage because it is the only way to preserve their self image as anything other than the lapdogs of the US (very much a superiority complex).
The Andromeda yacht explanation is the one lifeline that eurolibs have that make their lives make sense. They must not think for a second that they have been tricked by people they consider lesser (Americans, Russians, and the Global South).
European liberalism is a endless void of politely smug white supremacy that makes me want to have dinner with elon musk instead.
The one that drives me nuts is Eurolibs acting as if Trump style fascism happened because Americans are just stupid, as if every European country doesn’t have a fascist party ready to take power in their country’s next election. Eurolibs seem to think that one more round of austerity will make everyone vote for Renaissance/CDU/Labour again.
Or already in government
My favourite euro-ism is people who are appalled by Trump’s treatment of immigrants while simultaneously wanting every black person and muslim in Europe to be put into a death camp
I work with a lib who had doubts that Russia did the attack but didn’t want to entirely dismiss the idea; I had to explain that it would be a gigantic waste when all they have to do it just turn it off on their end without destroying such an expensive project that they pitched in for. I think he still suspects Russia was behind it when there’s literally zero gain for Russia.
Yeah, but have you considered that Russians are Always Chaotic Evil
They just do bad stuff for bad stuff’s sakeIt’s pointless to argue with these people
Same. I remember being in a room full of people the first day of the war and while everybody was visibly upset, I simply said that it was no surprise this happened, “if they had let Russia into NATO before, we wouldn’t be here today”, and nobody disagreed, some even vocally agreed, and none of them were even remotely lefties. Nowadays, if you even attempt to say something like this, you’re immediately reprimanded for being a putinversteher, no matter what their politics are. Propaganda is such a fucked up tool to exist, and I hate how universally accepted it is, especially in Germany.
A few hours after the declaration of war between Russia and Ukraine, shit literally sounded like I was back in South Africa but in 1982.
voluntary uKKKrainian colony of Estonia, btw
23·3 days agoputinversteher
Versteher is literally understander, being a Putin understander is bad!
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
“It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity! Or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop!.. ever… until you are dead!”
Of course the accusation never is on them who also act like putinversteher without the need of any evidence or reason.
Everyone’s collective NATO/Russia/Ukraine psychosis has been actively harming my own mental state for years now. It’s so fucking all-encompassing it makes you feel completely hopeless
I do see the occasional poster for anti-imperialist communist protests so there are at least a few people who aren’t fully in the tank for WWIII but they’re such a fucking minority it’s not even funnyAs a USian I feel the same way. We aren’t frothing at the mouth the same way Europeans are, but the Russophobia is so hardwired it makes you think there was a successful MKULTRA project in the papers the CIA burned.
Witnessing the Ukraine war and Palestinian genocide with the constant backdrop of climate collapse is a doom pill I am still trying to digest
there was a successful MKULTRA project
There was, it’s called 60+ uninterrupted years of anti-soviet/anti-russian propaganda that touched every facet of people’s lives. Entire generations raised from birth to believe the evil ruskies were chomping at the bit to destroy your freedom and way of life. Anyone in America (don’t forget the rest of the West) born after WW2 grew up submerged in a swamp of russophobia
Yup, Bernays’ public relations.
Bear in mind that a lot of people have seen those who speak against status-quo get punished. You won’t see a lot of honest opinions until it’s over.
yes many factors at play
It feels too much calling these few people a minority, it’s like what, 10 people?
At least there’s Hexbear
These people are lefties
Dude ask them what they think of Roma; I want to find out if they’re
leftiesThey will roll their eyes and say that of course they support the Roma while not knowing a single one and holding their purses tighter when ever they see one.
EU made an exception to land travel when they added Romania and Bulgaria to Schengen last year.
I believe in the invisible hand of market and how they regulate themself
No! Not like that!This entire stupid continent is 99% Nato-brained and there’s like 10 communists.
Yeah, solidarity. It fucking sucks. The consent manufacturing is also super aggressive. Yle does: “war is good, actually” or “everyone loves nato and is willing to die for capitalism” type articles non stop. Not to mention the tabloid rags the libs look at when shopping. The headlines are: “PUTIN, EVIL YADA YADA” like every single day.
I have deliberately stopped watching the news or even looking at tabloid headlines for this reason. It was making me feel like absolute fucking shit all the time
I’m safely insulated in my niche interest bubble. Serve me another 4-hour long retro video game essay baybeeeeeeeeeee
If someone talks to me about current events I just nod my head politely and say “damn that sucks” or “wow, awesome” depending on the context before changing the topic
If someone talks to me about current events I just nod my head politely and say “damn that sucks” or “wow, awesome” depending on the context before changing the topic
Not a foolproof approach lol.
“Did you hear evil putler personally vaporized all the wholesome 100 international freedom fighters with an authoritarian missile?”
“wow, awesome”
I’m the same way until a drop of alcohol touches my lips. After that I am basically
I try to be the same way, but when I meet any of my relatives or hear a very outrageous take, this happens (no drink needed):
Tbf though, one relative has gone from a turbolib to reading Marx in a year or two because I kept pestering them about their lib takes.
Same. I do the Yle maybe once in one of two months and it’s all the same. Backed off from Mastodon as well because it’s permeated with all the insufferable local libs.
But when I go to the store I sometimes can’t look away from the PUTLER headlines and it ruins my day every time.
Thankful there is Hexbear.
I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really hang out on the front page of hexbear anymore either. I just browse my niche interest communities
It’s sad because I used to be pretty well-informed. A decade ago I had a bunch of news sites bookmarked and I would make a point of keeping on top of everything but the succession of Covid, Ukraine, general saber-rattling, the ongoing climate crisis, panopticon shit like Chat Control and everything related to AI is so disheartening I just can’t anymore. Everything sucks and it will never get better so fuck it
Have you tried the news megathread? I find the psychological damage is offset by the immediate discussion and analysis with comrades. Often the person posting an article will quote important excerpts and offer their own analysis, too.
That’s why I started hanging out on r/cth and chapo chat in the first place. There comes a point though were the most poignant analysis or the funniest dunk can’t really change the fact that the trajectory of the entire world is set straight into the toilet
Big ups to the news mega
I find the newsmega keeps me sane. It provides a far better and more global view into the world than you would ever get from the excuse of a media we have here.
On Finnish national news the domestic Finnish side and the international English side are wildly different, very much reflecting country branding and how differently things are portayerd depending on the assumed audience. The rapid nationalism and framing everything as somehow neutral, expept Russia and Ukraine, is very much contained to the Finnish side.
Every article is based on “thing happens, here’s an expert to tell you what to think of it”. The expert is by definition neutral because expert and also right, because expert.
But when I go to the store I sometimes can’t look away from the PUTLER headlines and it ruins my day every time.
ugh mood
and theyve been yanking themselves raw with that for years by now! Surely there’s no angle of attack left?
I tried doing this and then watch some “Cinema wins” video where he imagines the evil government guy from this year’s Superman explicitly not being Netanyahu but actually Putin.
Yeah… With all the brown people who superman saves from being ethnically cleansed.
Umm actually Putin is literally genociding the Ukrainians
love to pay a guy 8x markup for reselling me shit off of Temu for the heroic task of setting up a SARL with a shared postbox adress with 800 companies all located in the deep end of the akrotin bay
I bought a phone case on AliExpress earlier this year for about 5€. Out of curiosity I looked around and found a Finnish online store selling the EXACT same fucking item for 17€ + 4€ shipping
It’s the shipping costs on EU stores that always do my fucking head in. "Oh, this thing’s 10€, that’s not too bad, then you see fucking 8€ or whatever tacked on at checkout. I was so fucking ecstatic when I discovered AliExpress and now it’s going away. Just fuck these people so hard
This is my colour out of space. I keep showing people the cheap, sometimes necessary, shit they buy off of amazon or “honest” ““local”” marketplace is literally the same as off of temu or aliexpress, down to the fucking pictures, because nobody puts up a fucking second production line for like 0,2 eurdollars worth of plastic desk organizers. They’re all still convinved if they buy it from aeiou SARL registered at example street 123 they’re getting quality products
It is the duty of every patriotic EU citizen to support their local dropshipping entrepreneurs
They think they are buying stuff made in Europe. At least going by what the people in the newspaper comment section are saying.
(If it’s actually drop shipping, not reselling I suspect that will get hit by the 3€ charge too at least)
I’ve had conversations about your last point with my family and friends: at this point, buying all of that stuff anywhere else than aliexpress is literally racist.
unless i absolutely need the thing in the next few days i use amazon as a temu search engine. just find the thing on amazon and copy the name into temu
9 times out of 10 it will be the exact same item from the exact same factory for less than half the priceOr that it’s somehow more “ethical”.
I do this too, I love sending them screenshots of the same thing they have bough from “a lovely local small town gift shop” for 30€ when it’s a grift that the seller has bought in bulk without doing none of the labor. The extraction the small and big business owner types in the West do through this also does my head in. The website always says something like “Designed in Finland” and will cost you and arm and a leg. The labor aristros and libs very much fall for it though.
I genuinely believe that EU supporters are some of the most arrogant, misinformed and maybe even some of the dumbest people alive today.
And I think the Russians, Americans and the Chinese – and really the entire rest of the world --are perfectly aware of this and have thus collectively decided to treat Europe with exactly as little respect as it really deserves.
It wouldn’t even be any fun to join them, because in order to become a EU supporter you first have to give up any sense of reality and engage in crazy amounts of wishful thinking. There are zero victories to speak of, just endless cope and delusion until the day it all falls apart.
For having known a bunch, arrogant and misinformed nails it. Far from stupid though, deeply aware of their own higher-class interests, and therefore pretty intentionally uninterested in challenging their worldview.
Genuinely drives me batty when people harp on about this shit like 50% of businesses aren’t just reselling the same stuff with a 100% markup. They’re not even providing extra value of local expertise or something, just ghouls sitting on a warehouse forwarding shipping.
I just repaired a timer switch, the NiMH clock backup died. New switch? 50 bucks. New battery here? 40 bucks. Battery from china? same part number: 2 bucks.
Isn’t not wasting money and creating waste good?
The usual examples of bad Chinese imports they use is stuff like cheap, disposable fashion and potentially hazardous toys. Just do something about those then and leave genuinely useful things like electronics and spare parts alone
To be honest though, I think that’s just an excuse they trot out for the media to drum up public support, what’s really going on is those middlemen you mentioned being salty about being left out and lobbying the EU to do something about it
Well yeah, locally we have at least three strores where the entire business model is selling stuff made in China at a huge markup. The chuds love these stores as they are typically very “male branded” and they go buy the same plastic cup holder for their car from Biltema for 10€ that they could get for 1€ from Temu.
Amazon has also been selling this stuff at a huge mark up for as long as I can remember. But it’s ok when the money goes to Bezos./s
I have a few hobbies like indoor plant growing, baking and crafts and why would I pay 10€ for the paintbrushes I can get for a third of the price. The underwatering pots I use cost like 1/5th of the price from Temu compared to somewhere like Amazon or one of these local stores.
What really annoyes me about this is that it is the free market stans who moan about this the most. Again, the market is only free and global only as long as the actual customer has no say in where they want to buy their stuff from. The resellers in the West are all pure leeches.
Yea when you put it like that it makes sense. Maybe a better approach would be more granular, like fast fashion taxed like a motherfucker and part of that goes to subsidize the cost of spare parts for people repairing things.
Did you know that producing a single cotton t-shirt requires 2,700 litres of water, or approximately two and a half years of someone’s drinking water needs? A single fucking shirt! And they’re cranked out by the million! It’s totally bonkers.
Fast fashion shirts ain’t cotton lol (ಥ﹏ಥ)
I feel like a lot of the fast fashion hate is just classism
I don’t need fashion I just need clothes so that I’m warm in the winter and so that people don’t yell at me in the summer.
Well yeah, locally we have at least three strores where the entire business model is selling stuff made in China at a huge markup. The chuds love these stores as they are typically very “male branded” and they go buy the same plastic cup holder for their car from Biltema for 10€ that they could get for 1€ from Temu.
Amazon has also been selling this stuff at a huge mark up for as long as I can remember. But it’s ok when the money goes to Bezos./s
I have a few hobbies like indoor plant growing, baking and crafts and why would I pay 10€ for the paintbrushes I can get for a third of the price. The underwatering pots I use cost like 1/5th of the price from Temu compared to somewhere like Amazon or one of these local stores.
What really annoyes me about this is that it is the free market stans who moan about this the most. Again, the market is only free and global only as long as the actual customer has no say in where they want to buy their stuff from. The resellers in the West are all pure leeches.
To your sidenote: Are you also danish? I fucking hate it here.
Yeah put some American bases on the mainland, it’s note like the water wasn’t polluted enough already. Surely turning Denmark into a yank staging ground will function as a deterrent to Russia.
No, Finnish
By the way, why are Danish politicians so fucking eager to have an AI scan all of my files and messages, what’s up with that?
Don’t worry, you can just become a politician and be exempt, they need their privacy for national security reasons of course. And even if you get caught with 6000 images and 2500 video clips of CSAM you can just claim it’s for research and get a few short months in jail.
No idea, its not popular here either. My main theory is that the socialdemocrats have spent so much time working with the Americans they’ve become like the US democrats and just believe they’re completely insulated from popular opinion for one reason or another.
The European neolib might be the most detestable type of politician on the planet. It’s the smarmy, holier than thou attitude and how fucking bloodless and charismaless they are. Absolute scolding schoolmarms
At least fascists tend to be ridiculous cartoon characters that are fun to hate
We’re being ruled by the most mediocre middle-management types in existence. It’s wild.
Denmark is so cucked man, I hate it. Put anyone in a suit and have them say something in a serious tone and everyone just believes it.
The current editor-in-chief of the national broadcaster used to be a member of Socialdemokratiet, but if I talk about propaganda im the one that’s crazy.
On one hand, these tariffs hurt consumers in the EU. On the other hand, the EU is shooting itself in the foot by preventing its youth from doing engineering projects, thus giving them a hard time limit on any sort of technical lead they currently have. A Chinese or Russian student who can experiment and work with affordable Chinese products is going to turn into a much more skilled scientist or engineer than a westerner that cannot actually try working on anything.
There’s a reason they think that non whites are a hivemind.
I will never understand why UK “leftists” have such a hard on for the EU.
The promise of good regulations; the UK’s regulations have suffered because of brexit
this, plus the brexit movement was entirely fascistic in nature, and it’s easier to just be anti whatever the fascists are doing than articulate a left-wing criticism of the eu to campaign on
Yeah, this is something the Chapos (mostly Amber) never seemed to understand when they were commenting on Brexit
Amber.
Amber.
Amber.
Amber.
Because it’s a respectable liberal institution and they are in fact liberals
I think it’s largely that the brexit campaign was fash in nature. Corbyn didn’t particularly want to oppose brexit iirc but (rightfully imo) wasn’t willing to join people like Farage et al., and there was no way to build up a principled LW opposition to the EU alongside brexit.
“Lefties” who’ve never read theory and have no principled stance just remember the socialists campaigning against brexit, and that brexit itself was largely just racism, and that’s where the analysis stops. “People who hate the EU are racist, no further thought required”.
I don’t know about anywhere else, but at least in Finland joining the EU was very strongly originally framed around joining the progressive, civilized nations of the world bs. Along with free movement myths, freedom to work and study anywhere and just generally a very idealist “one world” framing. I originally fell for it as a teenager at the time and very much get now what was going on.
There was endless debate on how we don’t want to be left alone or behind, how Finland is a part of Europe and every good progressive should want us to join in. Everybody fell for it, just like the Nato push a few years back. It’s very hard to describe to anyone how all permeating the consensus culture can be in a small country like this where the discourses are completely controlled by the bourgeoisie. From education to the media.
There was never any discussions whatsoever about the economic side, the directives that would come or any of the real material changes it would cause. It was a fully idealist sale, much like the discourse around the Berlin wall falling. There was no internet or access to outside media really, so it was framed in just the one way.
This country is so deeply misinformed of even its own history, I mean the people are, and so homogenized when it comes to opinion that the flock mentality combined with the poor national self-esteem and uninterest in learning things outside the bougie sanctioned worldvies that the ruling class has drilled into the population makes us shoot ourselves in the foot every time. The propaganda and supression machine has been ongoing for well over 100 years and been very violent, so I can feel some sympathy for the clueless libs. They did not make themselves.
Fuck, I love ordering stuff on AliExpress.
This is going to kill so much tinkering. It’s not like you can get most of that stuff anywhere else. But who needs people making things when we got an economy to save.
The funniest is multiple times I’ve seen things made by European companies sold on AliExpress that can only be bought on AliExpress because none of those European companies like to sell to individuals. For example I ordered a random, no brand listed jewelers saw and got it in a nice vintage cardboard box from a swiss company.
When Trump started with the tariff bullshit I saw so many posts from American electronics repairers, people who sold crafts on Etsy, etc saying the tariffs would destroy their hobby or business
Should’ve known the EU would follow less than a year later
holy shit most of the stuff i buy from temu and aliexpress is like £3-5
silver lining for brexit i guessMost of the time I buy 1-4€ items until I hit the 10€ limit for free shipping, so that’s mostly over now. A flat price increase would be one thing but I assume this shit is going to be handled by customs, which is gonna make receiving packages an annoying fucking hassle
According to the link its only through IOSS, which is designed so EU customers can pay VAT upfront at point of purchase. So it will probably just be a increase in price. Of course if you were really committed to keeping prices down I guess you can opt out of IOSS and just allow customers to pay VAT when it arrives in the EU, dodging the tariff while sacraficing convienence. I wonder how this affects Northern Ireland, because there might be a pretty hilarious loophole there where you can avoid the tarriff by shipping it to NI first and then into the EU.
AliExpress, Temu, etc, are popular not only because they’re cheap but also because they take care of the VAT shit for you. If you had to deal with customs and handling fees for every single purchase most people wouldn’t bother because it’s fucking annoying, which probably exactly the EU’s thinking
I wasnt seriously suggesting they would do that, the prices will just go up.
silver lining for brexit i guess
Assuming the UK isn’t just going to independently do the same thing.
Atleast you still have aliexpress. It’s just banned in India so I straight up can’t get fringe hardware.
It’s just banned in India
Yeah, the Indian government wants you to use domestic alternatives like uhh… umm… ahh…
MODS, MOOOOOOODS!Seriously, though, are there domestic alternatives? It seems like India just doesn’t have industry for a lot of what China produces, especially electronics. Even less so than Europe, which already has basically none (and what it does have is mostly assembled from Chinese parts).
Not really. You may find some importers here and there but the actual availability of niche stuff is bad.
Seems weird to ban Chinese e-commerce if there’s no domestic alternatives to what they sell and no importer ready to provide zero added value while collecting a bunch of extra money for dropshipping.
There’s domestic industry in some sectors like automotive though, no? But that’s not competing with Aliexpress. I don’t know how much domestic electronics companies there are (like phone, etc.) where this protectionism could actually do something. I guess any textiles will be competing, but how many people are buying Aliexpress textile products?
I think almost any country trying to do this style of protectionism is going to run into this issue, except those with domestic Amazon-type platforms like the US, where some leeches will make a ton of money reselling the same things people used to buy on Aliexpress for 5x as much.
BJP is full of actual illiterate and uneducated idiots like Modi. They banned it because of nationalism, not because it made economic sense.
Common ultra-nationalist L.
Putin’s ultimate goal is to conquer Europe for lebensraum for the Russians and he’s gonna do it any day now
Like… If you got me the Scan Putin’s Brain Machine and it said that conquering Europe for lebensraum was secretly his deepest desire, I wouldn’t have too hard a time believing it. But the idea that he’d ever actually try is just incredibly divorced from reality.
If you got me the Scan Putin’s Brain Machine and it said that conquering Europe for lebensraum was secretly his deepest desire, I wouldn’t have too hard a time believing it.
Pretty sure Putin is a westaboo, so his deepest desire is probably to be considered European. On the other hand, nothing’s more European than lebensraum.
Yeah, it seems that he really, really just wanted to hang out with dudes like Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi
Putin is definitely a westaboo and so willing to to join the neoliberal table and drink that sweet, sweet superprofit.
But then he realized he lives in Russia and was forced out of that dream, the misfortune!
