• 25 Posts
  • 256 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: July 11th, 2024

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  • Governments want a stable distro, which has great general support and the option of hiring developers for additional features. If something breaks government workers can not do their jobs, so it costs money anyway. So having professional people behind it, who can be talked and fix the problem quickly is something a government really wants. In addition to that, they require some niche features, which need to be developed. In other words, they really want a stable distro with a professional team behind it and as it happens Suse is the only such company in Germany. Even better they already have experience in dealing with government agencies and well speak German. The alternatives would be CentOS or Fedora from RedHead or Ubuntu from Canonical. However those are not German or European.







  • What I am saying is that if the economy grows and the it requires more money, then adopting the euro there are two options. Either money flows in from other countries or the European Central Bank raises interest rates. Unlike just adopting another countries currency like say Ecuador the USD, joing the Eurozone wourld mean that Sweden gets a seat on the Gouverning Council of the ECB, which gives them a vote on raising interest rates or other central bank policies.

    As for the second point. Between 1983 and 2003 Canadas economy shrank for only a single year. Debt to GDP was at its highest in 1997, so they most certainly did not give a crap about balancing the budget or anything like it. They wanted to sell public assets and needed an excuse to do so. Thats all that is an excuse.


  • The problem with printing money to keep deflation in check is only a problem, if the central bank does not care about it. So in the case of Sweden joing the Euro, the ECB absolutly print of destroy money to keep inflation in check. If anything the larger region the currency is used in is going to create more stability.

    If a government wants to sell assets to its friends, then it can do so. No need for an economic crisis, austerity or the like. Since you mentioned Canada, Canadian National Railway was privatized in 1995, the years before that the economy grew somewhat well.


  • Money is just a way to make somebody pay. The problem you describe only happens, when a government is bad in using its money. That leads to high debt. If the country controls the currency it borrows in, then a solution is to print a lot of money to pay back the debt. However that comes with inflation, which usually means poor people have to pay for it. Alternativly the country might not pay at all, which would mainly hurt the rich.

    One really important other part of that is that private capital is not able to force austerity. If they have it in your country, the government can just tax them.