You can't "fix" war or famine or disease in a faraway country, really. You can try to impact with stuff like aid, or sanctions, or cooperation, but the actual impact on the ground can vary wildly.
I want a digital ID, it would save me a lot of time and would be extremely practical (and it's already technically possible anyway, it would be a waste not to have it).
> Fix the damn war happening right on the border and the resulting energy crisis (I don't mean by buying Russian product)
Oh, just "fix" them, right? Click on the Fix button in the "Diagnose issues" wizard? Why didn't you say that earlier, if only EU leaders knew it was that easy!
The EU is doing a lot to help Ukraine, with funds for the military and humanitarian sides, and donations of lots of equipment. European armies cannot get involved without risking escalation to nuclear war, which nobody wants, so I can hardly see what more you can ask them to do.
A for the energy crisis, guess what, the EU as a whole, and each individual country, has plans already in place and in progress to "fix" it. It just takes decades to deploy enough "green" electricity generation, replace infrastructure, update insulation at people's homes, replace their heating method, etc.
No buttons. Hard, difficult and long work towards fixing. Instead of separating attention across things that are nice-to-have but don't really change that much.
It's exactly because the EU people know it's not easy they instead work on something else. That needs to stop.
My small country did more to help Ukraine than the largest economies in the bloc. There is much more that could be done. Censoring DNS to be more like Russia is not that.
Proving your identity online when you need that is a pain, for government services or other things like banks (opening a new bank account). I vastly prefer having a digital ID that can be used to prove who I am online over relying on varying validation methods with varying levels of actual security - e.g. in France, for the tax office to be able to process your tax returns online, you need to prove your identity which happens by getting snail mail with codes; for banks, there's varying stuff like uploading pictures of your ID, or having to go to a bank branch for them to scan it. Having an uniform digital ID that anyone can attest means the problem goes away and everything is more secure, because nobody needs a scan of your ID card anymore.
> Instead of separating attention across things that are nice-to-have but don't really change that much
Are you under the impression that something as big as the EU can only do one thing at a time?
> It's exactly because the EU people know it's not easy they instead work on something else. That needs to stop.
Or they work on the complicated stuff, but since it takes time, also have the energy and money to work on other stuff at the same time? Shocking, I know.
> My small country did more to help Ukraine than the largest economies in the bloc. There is much more that could be done
Like, what more can be done specifically? Give more money, weapons? Sadly pockets aren't infinite, and especially with the hit due to Covid and Russian gas blackmail, European countries don't have large amounts of money laying around. And yet, they've donated billions of euros and billions of euros worth of equipment, as well as provided training for Ukrainian forces.
I am under the impression that these hard problems require so much resources that not even something as big as EU can split their attention to some small insignificancies, yes.
If they have time for something small and merely nice to have, they're not doing enough about the important things.
Even the smallest countries donated billions, a significant percentage of their GDP. If the biggest economies didn't donate hundreds of billions, there is much more to be done.
Apparently not, from other comments. But then I don't really know what point is being made here.
That's with several major wars going on, including talks of nuclear escalation, worsening crime stats (in the US, but also elsewhere in the west), poverty on the rise (and thus hunger), and after the COVID pandemic toll (regarding diseases)...
Or I’m actually the one doing that here (and your comment is sarcastic as well)?
kamma could have written something like "the EU should solve <really difficult problems> before concerning itself with <simpler problenm>" but that would have made clear that the really difficult problems are really difficult. The sarcasm is rhetorical device to distract the readers so they won't pay attention to the different levels of difficulty. Handwaving, basically, and the handwaving was a little too strong and distracted some readers too much.
That's why we want attention on the hard problems instead of million small insignificant non-problems.
If you've been long enough on internet forums, you'll see every inanity you can think of as "of course it's sarcasm" being presented sincerely.
Also, I've read too many posts/comments of the "the world has never been better" variety (usually citing Hans Rosling or some tech-bro favorite like Pinker), that sincerely push similar ideas of the state of the world in 2024.
It's really possible to not be exposed to war, crime, poverty, hunger if you are living in a closed tech-bubble (which is more likely on Hackernews).
I think about Googlers in Zurich for example, or a VP @ Apple, they can really be disconnected from the other parts of the world.