Yep we have no way to compete with low income countries.

Firstly their wages is very low.

Secondly the amount of inductions and safety related stuff people have to attend to even for an office job, it was literally the entire first week and a yearly update.

Then all the other compliance you have to do. Twice yearly fire drill. Need multiple people on site that’s certified for first aid, fire wardens and the whole coordinator.

A whole month of people’s working life every year is paid in annual leave and that’s not even counting sickies or other personal leave. Overtime rates starting at 1.5.

When someone dies on the job here people get in a lot of shit (and rightly so).

In China people are kept in dormitories and a friend who was born there said that lower educated people who usually takes this job are kept in dormitories so they can spend more time working (less time commuting). Some are known to only get 1 day off a month, which isn’t unusual.

Definitely no overtime rates, no sickies or personal leave (don’t work don’t get paid) no annual leave.

If someone has an accident at work well there’s 10 waiting at the door to replace them. Same if they quit. You want more wages? Well bye, there’s someone to replace you.

Not saying that’s correct but that’s the reality. We will never be able to complete because their standards for workers is way lower.

We should focus on high tech industries. Health/education industry we should increase wages for nurses and teachers.

More investment in IT, FinTech etc. Banking, consultancy, etc white collar jobs.

Let the lower income countries do the dangerous jobs and focus on high return safer jobs in Australia.

With Dutton in the opposition Albanese doesn’t even need to try. He can practically do whatever he wants and be re-elected next time.

I think if they passed the legislation first as a trial and then if it went well put it through a referendum there would be more support.

I’m not saying he would but he could just force it through legislation now, with the greens support and independents support, Pocock is in ACT who was the only place to vote yes, I think they have enough to pass.

Sure it will go against the results of the referendum, or “the will of the people” but it will be a legal way to do it. I think if it went through legislation it would become like GST, deeply unpopular at the time but it just becomes fait accompli and noone would dare reverse it. Because once in noone wants the optics of being “the racist in the parliament” besides maybe ONP.

Are you hosting it through a provider such as AWS or Azure? That might be why. I had no issues when setting it up on my own.

I have 2x ISPS and through that multiple raspberry pis. Set up docker, then you can set up multiple VPNs (e.g. OpenVPN which I used just before pandemic) so after 2017. It always worked but these days I would also esim it - they can’t block roaming mobile due to the way roaming works and the travel Sim prices are quite competitive these days.

Tldr no issues hosting on personal internet rather than through a cloud provider.

Example ones I use, simple to set up via docker files.

https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/openvpn-as https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/wireguard

For some unknown reason the parties are swapped in NSW.

For example LNP in NSW would bring in policies that the Labor party would bring in other states, whereas the opposite is true for NSW Labor.

NSW LNP had very good policies like the electric vehicle policy, electric vehicle charging grants, they are the party of infrastructure with the westconnex and metro projects up, Parramatta light rail.

Whereas Chris Minns and Labor I’d actually compare Minns with the onion eater of all people. Very good at cancelling projects because he didn’t think of it first and provides no policies or thoughts of his own.

Wanted to cancel the metro, whilst providing nothing in replacement (only saved because the project is too far to be cancelled), too scared to do anything in regards to housing policy, no pill testing is the latest one. Cancelled the ev grants. In fact I’m not sure of anything that they’ve done through their own policies since they came in. Hopefully an one term government because they seriously lack vision.

Funny they’re all very patriotic when it comes to these things. However when asked if they personally want to go to war…well, not so patriotic when you have to put your life on the line.

Actually for me it’s quite good. Get like 1/3 back from dental. Then a bit back from gym fees. Optical is another one I use regularly and I get a massage a year. And most importantly ambulance cover just in case.

Granted one or two of them I would have skipped if I wasn’t paying private health (optical and massage).

At the higher salaries if people didn’t want to pay the Medicare surcharge and having to buy junk policies they can funnel their discretionary income into investments, the costs of the investments can be negatively geared so you can earn for example a million dollars and only pay 90000 taxable income worth of tax (an extreme example I know). ASX, property, into the business etc. where you reduce your taxable income in exchange for gaining (investable) assets.

If China wanted peaceful unification they can have it tomorrow.

Cede all power to Taiwan and they can be one country. They definitely won’t be bullied by Taiwan and unlike China Taiwan would accept differing opinions. It’s been done successfully before to a large extent. East and West Germany joined together as one country without the need for border fences or two systems in one country. Just imagine what a basket case of a country if it happened the other way around. 2 systems, border fences different currencies, declining standings on corruption, political freedom etc.

But of course they’ll never do that. Because deep down it’s not the country they care about. They only care about the CCP itself.

Edit: looks like the wumaos are in force, not surprising as a large number of them are otherwise unemployed now 😂

It’s not even internal strife. It all comes down to it’s now or never. If they let this opportunity slip by they will never get Taiwan.

Their population is declining and there’s nothing that can be done about it in any meaningful way. Nothing has worked to get people to have more children. As they get older people of military age will decline.

Right now this generation the males outnumber the females. Which means expendable soldiers. These people will never marry and benefit the state in anyway.

The leverage China has is it’s consumers it’s one of the largest markets. But the Chinese buying things to support international companies is quite minuscule as a percentage of the population and will decline as time goes on, they get all the media attention that’s all . They’ve been struggling to boost internal consumption for years.

And it isn’t that surprising. Chinese people are one of the most tightarse people ever. They haggle everything and that’s even if they get to the point of actually going to buy it. Spending money to make money usually doesn’t factor in.

Dictators seem to outlive most people it seems. Mugabe made it to 90s. Obiang is 81. Everyone is waiting for Putin. Xi could also join this club, if he starts hitting the gym.

I like NSW governments policy. Highrise depends on infrastructure and not how far it is from the CBD. But it is still not good enough.

We have 220m+ in Parramatta which is 20km from CBD and from what I understand the application for it to be higher was denied because it was too close to the airport.

Macquarie Park, Rhodes are new suburbs with 150m+ (definition for a skyscraper). Many others are getting 100m+, Olympic Park, Liverpool etc.

So it is quite spread out already. Even places very far away from Sydney like Penrith, Rouse Hill, Edmondson Park and Leppington will be zoned for high rise.

But we need to overhaul the zoning laws for the missing middle. In Sydney Bankstown to Marrickville and Revesby to Turella should all be up for 100m towers or maximum allowed due to proximity to airport.

Three times the minimum salary doesn’t seem too enticing to go into a warzone. Money is useless if you’re dead and won’t cover for your disabilities if you get injured. But hey that’s just me, each to their own I guess.

I don’t get what’s so special about Grindr. I only knew about it because it was on the news one time and was known as the gay tinder ripoff. Even down to the name.

If the app was known by something else that doesn’t sound like a Tinder ripoff most people wouldn’t even hear about it.

Not my type of app so I’ve never used it but I can’t think of anything that tinder couldn’t do. All tinder has to do is to have a new column in the database

All the other apps need to do is to check if the person’s gender== their preferred gender then that person is gay. If gay show people of same gender otherwise show opposite gender. Any app can do this.

I hope they lose alot of revenue for forcing people back into the office.

It’s nowhere near a good salary to be potentially shot at blown up and killed. You can get way more than that sitting at an office (most likely at home now due to WFH).

I wouldn’t go at all but if I were to go I would probably want 5x+ that amount minimum due to the inheritent danger.

Edit: since you’re at war you’re effectively working 24/7, I fail to see how anything less than minimum 15-20x the amount is a good salary all things considered.

I wonder how this affects countries like China and Russia. I would think this would be a good plan maybe a decade ago when whilst still a dictatorship it was governed by more than one person.

Now with those countries it’s basically governed by one person who obviously has many internal enemies. If they change course then Xi is a dead man, same as Putin and Fatman Kim.

In China’s instance Xi has ruined many of his fellow citizens lives (by clamping down on a few industries causing significant job losses because they were a threat to his power). Basically as time goes on their policy would be influenced by the survival of one man.

Whether they do or not isn’t really the question. Can more be done? Yes of course. But Catalan, Occitian, Basque and Galician is co-official which affords them use as a medium of instruction, media usage, can ask for services from the government in those languages etc. How’s France doing for those points?

And more importantly Spain has changed in the past 50 years. Keep in mind even half a century ago Spain was the same as France in terms of repressing cultures. France well, it’s still the same.

Well let’s start.

In Spain the medium of instruction can be and is set by the regional government. Catalan, Basque, Occitian and Galician is used extensively as a medium of instruction in public schools (fully funded by the government)

There’s extensive media which includes government owned media in those languages. And for government services you can ask for someone to speak to you in those languages.

The languages are promoted and are co-official. I have friends from Galicia and have been there.

China is a closed society dictatorship. They’re not attractive to higher educated talented people who have a choice where to immigrate to. It would be good for society as a whole for China to get smaller because of they get too big they will try to conquer a few other countries.

Japan is different and has changed over the last half century. They don’t arbitrary detain you or try to be repressive. Society will not lose out if there are more Japanese in the world.

In fact Japan does well with soft power, all my friends love holidaying there and some would even immigrate if the rules were relaxed. Whereas none would go live permanently in china even if they gave out PR on arrival.

Apples and oranges.

It’s France they’re very xenophobic. Just look at how they treat the Corsicans, Brentons, Basques and Catalans.

Night and day to even a few hundred metres across the road in Spain or Andorra.

China is all aggressive because they know it’s now or never. Even before the bad news with their economy it was already a foregone conclusion beforehand.

Everyone knew their population would decline. Then their comparative advantage disappears. Their advantage is a shitload of people, even with a lower GDP per capita it’s still significant as it’s 4x the population as the next country (besides India, who are on an even lower GDP per capita right now)

Due to the sheer numbers they can use their internal market as political leverage. Disagree with them and no money for you.

There’s a few skirmishes but I think Putin has made Xi think twice. Although I do believe China can sustain quite a bit of losses if they do go to war before their advantage of many people disappears.

Firstly they have excess males so theoretically even if they lose excess soldiers it wouldn’t affect their birth rate as the issue is lack of women not men.

Might be a two eggs in one basket outlook for them, gain a bit of territory and rebalance their gender ratio.

We can only hope Putin’s war has made Xi think twice whilst we bide our time whilst their population decreases.