Ten months ago, I wrote I wish I weren’t born in Europe. All of a sudden, the planets realigned so that I felt the need to write a much shorter follow-up.

When I say that there’s no such thing as freedom in Europe, this doesn’t mean there’s any place on Earth where “true freedom” was achieved. I just state that my continent is a huge fuck-up. Sure thing, the grass is always greener on the other side, and I would have most likely chosen to live elsewhere if I were 30 years younger. Unless, of course, I’d have considered Europe as the best place to be. You know, today’s teens need to take Xanax because they’re terrorized about how the carbon footprint of the meat we eat will cause an even worse climate change, so we’ll all die before GTA 6 is released. Not to mention TikTok and the music they listen to. Brainwashed retards.

EU + Google = sick love

Android Authority: EU Age Verification App to Ban Android Apps Not Licensed by Google:

The EU is reportedly planning to add an Android app integrity check into its age verification app. This would mandate the user to only use the apps licensed and installed from the Google Play. It uses Google’s Play Integrity service to identify and verify the app’s authenticity.

The EU has been on a crackdown for the protection of minors from social media and unauthorized content. The Union was previously testing an age verification app that would mandate users to verify their age and confirm whether they’re 18 or older before accessing social media apps or any other type of content rated for adults. It is now planning to add an Android app integrity check into the system.

After releasing the blueprint of its age verification app, the EU is now planning to integrate the Android app authentication check into the system. As per a Reddit forum, the EU is developing a white-label app to perform verification of the app’s integrity. This is being done to make sure that the app being used for the age verification service is “genuine”.

Now, since the new system of the EU’s age verification relies on the Google Play Integrity for the Android app verification, the app must be licensed by Google. It should be downloaded from the Play Store, and most importantly, all the device security checks must be cleared.

Though this seems like a step in the right direction, it is going to be concerning for custom ROM users. Since Play Integrity is mandatory, the user will be tied to using only the apps installed from the Play Store. This also means that no sideloaded or compiled application is going to pass the check.

The Android app integrity check, which is part of the EU’s age verification system, is still under planning. If there are no changes in the final version, it is going to restrict the users from installing third-party apps. The EU has, however, assured that the user will have complete control over their data. The app will not monitor the usage or take any type of data input once the verification is completed.

Of course, Huawei AppGallery will also implement this shit, I guess.

As a result, the EU will have banned the use of F-Droid, APK Mirror, APK Pure, Aurora, Aptoide, and whatever else might exist, as well as sideloading of apps!

Once again, you need to install from Google Play (possibly from AppGallery, too) because your device needs to have installed the EU’s Age Verification app, which needs not to be tampered with!

FYI, sideloading apps isn’t illegal even in China!

But the EU wants to prevent certain content from reaching the eyes and brains of those under 18, under 16, or under 13.

I never considered censorship to be the solution to anything, except for national security. Totalitarian regimes used and use censorship. 13-year-old kids don’t need to be “protected” from seeing an erect dick. If they feel disgusted, good for them. If not, this is information. I did have access to information as a 12-13-year-old kid, even if this included, for instance, a couple of American books on sexology translated to French, because the Romanian communist regime didn’t publish such books. Today’s nanny-state regimes want to insulate teens from TikTok, FB, and other social networks merely because today’s kids have no judgment. But when you look at what’s posted by adults on TikTok, you realize that most adults too lack judgment! So either you fucking stop censoring things, or, on the contrary, you establish a comprehensive censorship of the content (rather than the access by age) like in China.

I don’t care about censoring content for people under 13, and the EU wants to make sure you’re 18+!

EU’s project is not a joke, nor fake news! Here’s the GitHub repository for the Age Verification (AV) Android application, part of the European Digital Identity.

Here’s a talk on Reddit. Indeed, “How on earth can you design an EU system that requires citizens to have an account in a US company?” OK, “Because that US company builds an operating system used by many EU citizens.” But then, let’s admit we’re slaves who belong to the US corporations!

Democratic People’s Union of Europe

It even happens on Twitter:

Nobody asked me anything about my age, and there’s nothing I can do. I cannot even see the link to the tweet. Elon Musk’s retarded software engineers. And, of course, the retarded European Union Digital Services Act.

When your car is a cop

Several news outlets, including the infamous Daily Fail, conveyed this information: All new UK cars could have breathalysers and black box-style recorders under Labour plans to align with the EU.

Nothing really new. And no, such a requirement is still only partially in force in the EU. But you have to appreciate the evolution towards totalitarianism. Could cars also perform a colonoscopy?

To the point. The EU introduced new rules introducing the requirement that all new cars sold in the EU from July 2024 must be prepared for the installation of an alcolock (alcohol interlock/breathalyser): Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/1243 of 19 April 2021 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2144 of the European Parliament and of the Council by laying down detailed rules concerning the alcohol interlock installation facilitation in motor vehicles and amending Annex II to that Regulation.

Here’s a generic fact sheet (PDF)—no mention of a breathalyzer or of an alcohol interlock system:

Now, for the “Advanced Driver Distraction Warning” (ADDW), even the small BYD Dolphin Surf (BYD Seagull in China) includes it. If your eyes are not towards the road for a certain period of time, you’ll hear some beeps. I’m not sure, but this might also work as an “attention warning in case of driver drowsiness” (DDAW, Driver Drowsiness and Attention Warning). These systems became mandatory for new vehicle types from 6 July 2022, and for all new registrations from 7 July 2024.

But the alcohol interlock facilitation isn’t present (or visible) in all new cars because, for the time being, what’s required is for all new cars to have

a standardized interface that allows easy future installation of an alcohol interlock system.

That is, an interface, not the device itself! Not yet. For now, the keyword is “facilitation.”

So, when such devices will eventually be fit to vehicles, the first targets are going to be buses, trucks, and delivery vehicles. For regular cars, either some Nordic countries might start mandating them, or courts would mandate them to users having prior DUI convictions. And that means a breathalyzer that would activate an engine lock in case the driver tests positive to alcohol.

Apparently, countries like Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands already encourage a voluntary or semi-mandatory use of such devices, and some school buses and government vehicles are required to have interlocks. In Sweden, many new cars are sold with interlocks already installed or offered as options. The cost? €1,000+ per unit! Welcome to the Brave New World!

Why am I bothered by this? I rarely drink, and I hate people who drink and drive. But this is not only a matter of public safety, nor one of self-policing. This is also a problem of ownership of your vehicle and even a potentially life-and-death situation for the owner!

If I own a vehicle, I should be able to start its engine and use drive on public roads, no matter what. Emergencies can happen.

If I own a car, I should be able to start it with a mechanical key regardless of the fact that the fob’s battery died, regardless of what one of the 140+ sensors believes to be broken, and regardless of what the EU believes regarding my breath! If I am in the middle of a desert or of a jungle, I need my car to be able to drive me out of that place, you fucking retarded shitheads! OK, let the car “call the cops,” but still let me drive it!

These days, nothing belongs to you anymore.

If the EU wanted to really do something for safety on roads, it should have regulated something else, such as:

  • Forbid common controls, including air conditioning, to be exclusively adjustable via a touchscreen.
  • Forbid touchscreens that are placed at such a lower level that the driver couldn’t possibly see the road, not even with the peripheral view, while watching such a touchscreen.
  • Mandate such touchscreens to refuse any input whatsoever when the car is driving above a certain speed.
  • Mandate a car’s C/D pillars to be designed such that the rear visibility is improved. Cars manufactured in the last 20–30 years have almost ZERO rear visibility using the internal mirror!
  • Mandate a car’s A-pillar and the front side to be designed so that the frontal and frontal-lateral visibility allows for small children to be seen by the driver.
  • Ban all SUVs in all urban environments!
  • Moreover, ban in cities all vehicles over a certain weight if the weight is not justified by the number of passengers (vans, buses) or by the fact that merchandise is transported (trucks).
  • Pick-up trucks should have a much lower height of the place of impact. So should SUVs, even if they’d be restricted to rural areas and small towns.
This shit should be illegal in cities! And it’s not even a RAM…

But the stupid regulators are retarded.

The Milei paradox

I’m by no means a libertarian. I hate and despise the Cato Institute, the Mises Institute, and any similar organizations, regardless of the flavor of libertarianism they advocate, although I admit to having read Reason Magazine in the past.

At the same time, I am against bureaucracy, over-regulation, and I’m strongly for personal freedoms.

Deregulation, when it happens, should benefit everyone, and in particular the individual, not the corporations and the richest people.

Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is a nincompoop and an asshole in the line of Bolsonaro, Trump, Musk, Thiel, etc. I don’t believe he reduced poverty and unemployment, because all that matters is how and who you count, and that’s easily manipulatable. Inflation is a different issue.

But having read Deregulation in Argentina: Milei Takes “Deep Chainsaw” to Bureaucracy and Red Tape, something struck me.

Much of the impact of the deregulations has not yet been measured, but the hard or anecdotal evidence that does exist suggests that the reforms are making a significant difference. The following are some accomplishments from Milei’s first year:

  • The end of Argentina’s extensive rent controls has resulted in a tripling of the supply of rental apartments in Buenos Aires and a 30 percent drop in price.
  • The new open-skies policy and the permission for small airplane owners to provide transportation services within Argentina has led to an increase in the number of airline services and routes operating within (and to and from) the country.
  • Permitting Starlink and other companies to provide satellite internet services has given connectivity to large swaths of Argentina that had no such connection previously. Anecdotal evidence from a town in the remote northwestern province of Jujuy implies a 90 percent drop in the price of connectivity.
  • The government repealed the “Buy Argentina” law similar to “Buy American” laws, and it repealed laws that required stores to stock their shelves according to specific rules governing which products, by which companies and which nationalities, could be displayed in which order and in which proportions.
  • Over-the-counter medicines can now be sold not just by pharmacies but by other businesses as well. This has resulted in online sales and price drops.
  • The elimination of an import-licensing scheme has led to a 20 percent drop in the price of clothing items and a 35 percent drop in the price of home appliances.
  • The government ended the requirement that public employees purchase flights on the more expensive state airline and that other airlines cannot park their airplanes overnight at one of the main airports in Buenos Aires.

While most of the aforementioned measures seem commendable, I’d like to applaud two of them.

There are many shitty “Buy Argentina” kind of laws around the globe. Replace the name of the country, and you’ll get, if not mandates, at least favoritism for “buy national.”

Or, in France, in Québec, and in other places, there are minimum quotas of “national productions” on public (or sometimes even private) radio and TV stations. This is absurd and unacceptable!

The OTC medicines made my day. You see, in continental Europe, one cannot buy aspirin, ibuprofen, paracetamol, and sometimes not even calcium carbonate (as an antacid) outside pharmacies. Such common substances should be purchasable in supermarkets, gas stations, everywhere! Nope.

Some years ago, you could find effervescent NAC (N-acetylcysteine) in DM stores in Germany. Not anymore. Even more in the past, prior to Romania’s adhesion to the EU, plastic jars with pastel-colored calcium carbonate (American brands) could be found in Romania. Not fucking anymore.

There is absolutely no reason why all OTC medicines are not allowed to be sold everywhere!

I have a long-standing war with the governments and the regulatory authorities (the European Medicines Agency and the national counterparts) banning medicines or making them prescription-only. I have a long list of complaints, and there are many drugs that were OTC in the 70s and 80s even in “communist” Romania, and now they no longer exist or they’re heavily restricted. Where is the fucking freedom we’re told we’re enjoying?! (Some such complaints, in Romanian, can be found here, and as comments on another blog, via the links that can be found here.)

So yeah, whoever managed not to die during Milei’s years of huge budget cuts should enjoy some freedoms and liberties we definitely don’t have and will never have here in Europe.

Since we’re at Milei’s reforms, I want to comment on some premises from the aforementioned article that I partially disagree with.

For more than seven decades, Argentina has had a corporatist system that Perón set up using Mussolini’s fascist Italy as a model. Under that system, the state organizes society into groups—trade unions, business guilds, public employees, and so on—with which it negotiates to set national policies and balance interests. It’s a kind of collectivism that erases the individual, centralizes power in the state, and incentivizes interest groups to compete for government favoritism through public spending and regulation.

This system gave rise to a proliferation of rules intended to protect and promote particular sectors through price controls, licensing schemes, differential exchange rates depending on type of economic activity, capital controls, preferential borrowing rates, compulsory membership in (and support of) guilds, and other interventions.

Well, OK, but consider this.

First, Perón did indeed establish a corporatist framework in Argentina, but it went through significant transformations over decades, so this oversimplification is dumb.

Secondly, Franco’s Spain did have a somewhat similar system with the Cortes as part of its “organic democracy” model, representing business guilds, families, municipalities, and syndicates rather than political parties. Sure thing, Franco’s system was more centralized and authoritarian than Argentina’s, but there were similarities I want to discuss briefly.

I really believe that involving the business guilds and the trade unions in the lawmaking process is more relevant than putting the political parties in charge. The guilds and trade unions represent certain professional groups; any political party is merely an organization of liars and thieves who only represent themselves, but we’re fooled into believing they could represent our interests.

Of course, by stating this, I run against the official dogma that “representative democracy only works through the means of political parties.” Nothing is farther from the truth. In ancient Greece, when democracy was invented, there were no political parties. The concept of a political party began to emerge in the 17th century, but it only consolidated in the 18th and especially the 19th century. It’s such a modern construct! And yet, we’re already living in a partitocracy, where the citizen doesn’t count. In which way is this a democracy, regardless of the fact that there are “free elections”?

And how about Hong Kong during the British rule? Trade unions, business chambers, trade associations, and professional bodies (lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, etc.) were those giving representatives in their equivalent of a parliament, the Legislative Council (LegCo)—not political parties.

However, some such organizations already shape the legislation of today’s countries. Let me show you how much Peronism there is everywhere.

  • Many countries have something called Conseil Économique et Social (translated to the respective language), a body composed of social representatives (employers, trade unions, NGOs). Such a body has a consultative, optional, or obligatory function within the framework of the legislative process.
  • The maximum quotas for public notaries, pharmacies, and other such businesses are set in legislation through the lobbying of the respective professional guilds, who don’t like competition. This is literally medieval.
  • Taxis also are regulated by the means of a limited number of licenses and their cost. While this guild (because this is what it is!) complains about the cost of the licenses and the competition from Uber, Bolt, and other similar companies, the legislation actually tries to protect the taxi drivers from competition. The problem is not the “illegal” competition from such companies but the medieval protectionism created by the limited number of taxi licenses! (Note that the name of “ridesharing” is semantically wrong, as there’s nothing shared, as this is not carpooling. “Ridehailing” is also wrong because, unlike taxis, such vehicles cannot be hailed on the street. The only correct denomination is the French one: “voiture de transport avec chauffeur” or VTC.)
  • While there’s a shortage of doctors (and nurses) everywhere (in the UK, in France, in Germany, in South Korea, etc.), France and South Korea had a numerus clausus meaning that the universities couldn’t offer more admission places for the medical profession. But when the government of South Korea wanted to liberalize the formation of physicians, who went on strike and protested in the streets for months, in many cases threatening with resignation? The existing doctors! They didn’t want competition, even if competition was economically and socially necessary! The guild wanted to maintain artificially high fees!

Peronism is everywhere in our modern societies. We need reforms. We need fewer regulations. This shouldn’t mean fewer taxes for corporations and rich people, but more rights for everyone and more competition.

But no, we don’t need someone like Milei. We need a really decent guy.

Will such a change ever happen?