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14·2 days agoSure, do what you want, of course, but you said “I can’t install it.”, and that’s not true.
If you want to go support GOG by buying another copy of your games there, I think that’s great! But other people might not be able to or want to do that, and I wouldn’t want them to think they can’t play their games on Steam anymore when they can.
Yeah, you need to go through ‘Library’, not ‘Store’.
Library > Search ‘Cyberpunk’ > Click it > Click ‘Install’
What happens when you try?
- This also blocks the reinstallation of existing purchases (a very big deal if so)
I’ve checked this. I was able to install an already-owned R18+ game with no problems. I can’t view its store page.
- MA15 games are also blocked (I don’t believe that is true though?)
Not as far as I’ve seen. The Witcher is MA15+, and I can view its store page.
That’s all just my experience, though. Maybe other people are having a different experience, but I suggest people try for themselves instead of accepting worst case scenarios people are saying online.
Locked out of games I paid for.
You can still install and play games you’ve bought (I have personally verified this), you just can’t view the store page, which is more than a little silly.
But yes, GOG deserves our money more: DRM-free and preserving old games. I always buy from them if I can.
3·18 days agoIt’s technically illegal for an Australian citizen to fight for another country IIUC.
No, it’s not illegal to fight in the armed forces of another country, it’s illegal to fight under any other circumstances:
Under Part 5.5 of the Criminal Code, it is an offence to:
- enter a foreign country with an intention to engage in a hostile activity, unless serving in or with the armed forces of the government of a foreign country
- prepare to enter, or for another person to enter, a foreign country with an intention to engage in a hostile activity
- recruit persons to join an organisation engaged in hostile activities, or to serve in or with an armed force in a foreign country.
From this page: https://www.ag.gov.au/national-security/australias-counter-terrorism-laws/foreign-incursions-and-recruitment-offences
There may be organisations violating the law against recruitment with regards to the IDF, though: https://michaelwest.com.au/lone-soldiers-new-australian-idf-recruits-due-to-arrive-in-israel-in-january/
1·18 days agoStill not looking good, unfortunately. I just cross-posted something to !auspol@quokk.au, and when viewed on aussie.zone there’s nothing on that community before my post for 3 months. In reality, there’s dozens of posts on the community in that period.
Would you support removing the tax on tobacco and alcohol? Why/why not?
Only if they no longer buy soft drinks, which means they don’t pay the tax, which means it doesn’t raise revenue.
You seem to be assuming a binary choice in consumption, but the modelling in the study was that those numbers for dental outcomes would be produced by a 24% reduction in consumption of sugar sweetened beverages.
From the SBS article:
Assuming a 20 per cent tax is passed on in full to consumers, the study predicted the price increase would result in a 24 per cent reduction in consumption.
So there would still be tax revenue from the remaining 76% of consumption. But it’s a public health measure, just via a tax, so if it produced no revenue that would (from a public health perspective) be considered a huge success. It makes sense that the amount of revenue you raise and can spend on dental health would scale in proportion to the amount of consumption and dental harm. It’s a way of partially de-externalising the health externalities of the sugar-sweetened beverage industry.
It’s of limited imparting also note that (1 + 0.2) x (1 - 0.24) = 0.912. So with a 20% tax, modelled to reduce consumption by 24%, on average people will be spending 9% less on sugar-sweetend drinks.
Or they keep buying soft drinks, pay the tax, and end up even poorer which will increase the likelihood of further health issues.
As pointed out by @observes_depths@aussie.zone, if the revenue is directly tied to funding dental care for poorer citizens, care which someone who maintains 100% of their consumption is more likely to need, then they may end up less poor than otherwise. Not only is their tax contribution going into that funding, but revenue from wealthier consumers and those who have reduced their consumption and are less likely to need dental care.
I’ve also seen proposals where the money is spent on subsidising fresh food, so that the average weekly shop comes out to the same dollar figure even if behaviour doesn’t change, while people are doubly incentivised to make healthier choices.
The SBS article also mentions that the tax can be designed to encourage reformulation of drinks, with drinks below a certain sugar concentration exempted from the tax, as happened in the UK:
In 2018, the United Kingdom introduced a tax of 19.4 or 25.9 pence per litre, depending on the sugar content of beverages.*
It led to a 46 per cent reduction in the sugar contained in soft drinks, the UK government said, with nearly 90 per cent of the market now containing sugar below the level at which the tax applies.*
So in the UK 90% of drinks are no more expensive to the consumer, but tax-incentivised reformulation has meant sugar consumption from sweetened beverages has decreased by nearly half! (Again, revenue raising is not the aim, the tax is just a policy ‘stick’.)
The study the SBS article is about also modelled for a similar level of reformulation:
The health impact of the SSB tax is up to three times larger with 50% reformulation as compared with the base case and nearly five times with 100% reformulation.
A 300% greater health impact over the ‘base case’ (20% tax, 100% passed-on), and it’s hip-pocket neutral 90% of the time!
Your arguments can equally be applied to the tax on tobacco, but we know that applying a tax (to a point, it seems!) reduces tobacco consumption and the associated health harms, and provides revenue that makes up for the cost of tobacco-related disease to our health system.
A sugary beverages tax like the ‘base case’ (20% tax, 100% passed-on) would be similar to the tobacco tax and could be used to similar effects, but, as I hope I’ve made clear above, there’s lots of options.
A powerful speech.
There’s a recording of it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XlJM5UYxCw
Increasing taxes on low income earners is only going to make them poorer and sicker.
The article is literally about how a study found a tax on sugary drinks “could prevent 3.7 million cases of tooth decay, 191,000 cases of gum disease, and 115,000 cases of complete tooth loss across Australia over the next 25 years.”
That’s people being less sick.
I’d also note that making people less sick also makes them less poor, because they don’t have to pay the cost of dental and other health care (yes, it should be free, but it’s not)
If revenue raised by the tax is used to provide services to low income earners - e.g. subsidised dental care, subsidised fresh food - then low income earners could come out ahead.
The levy as outlined in the article, as @blind3rdeye@aussie.zone pointed out, is intended to be passed on to the consumer, with the price increase causing people to consume fewer sugary drinks. If they didn’t pass it on, it would have no effect on dental health.
From the article:
Assuming a 20 per cent tax is passed on in full to consumers, the study predicted the price increase would result in a 24 per cent reduction in consumption.
However, there are ways you can design a policy like this to reduce the cost to consumers while still having an effect on dental health. In the UK, their levy is only applied to a drink “if it contains at least 5 grams (g) of sugar per 100 millilitres (ml) in its ready to drink or diluted form.” As as result, the UK soft drink industry reformulated their drinks to fall below that amount (often by partially substituting non-sugar sweeteners) so that they wouldn’t have to pay the tax at all and they wouldn’t need to pass it on to consumers or absorb it.
From the article:
In 2018, the United Kingdom introduced a tax of 19.4 or 25.9 pence per litre, depending on the sugar content of beverages.
It led to a 46 per cent reduction in the sugar contained in soft drinks, the UK government said, with nearly 90 per cent of the market now containing sugar below the level at which the tax applies.
The study (https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/3/e002110) actually modelled the effect of reformulation, too:
To explore the impact of possible industry responses, we also modelled product reformulation scenarios with 50% and 100% sugar reductions (and no consumer response) and 50% and 80% pass through scenarios.
The health impact of the SSB tax is up to three times larger with 50% reformulation as compared with the base case and nearly five times with 100% reformulation.
Since the UK’s policy has resulted in a 46% reformulation, we have a clear real-world template for bringing about a 50% reformulation and the health benefits that would accompany it.
Direct link to the published study: https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/3/e002110
But sweet, carbonated beverages (on the shelf; the refrigerated bottles are kinda expensive) are one of the last, somewhat inexpensive products in supermarkets.
That’s exactly the problem it’s intended to address. It’s cheap to buy, and expensive in its consequences.
I’ve seen it proposed that revenue from such a tax be used to subsidise fresh food, so that’s another option that would double the nudge towards healthier options while being hip-pocket-neutral for shoppers (the devil is always in the detail, of course).
Sugar is in everything, so the price of everything wil go up.
You don’t have to apply the levy to everything. The proposal the article is about is specifically “a levy applied to non-alcoholic drinks with added sugar, such as soft drinks and most juices”.
It’s not proposed as a revenue raiser, it’s intended as a public health measure.
The idea is that people buy less sugary drinks and have better dental health.
Your concerns raise a valid point, though, that revenue raised (and $1.4B isn’t nothing) should be directly funneled into new programmes that benefit the working class. The study suggests that the money go into dental and other health services, but I’ve also seen proposals for using the revenue to cross-subsidise fresh food.
Either way, the working class could see a net benefit to their bottom line from government subsidies (which benefit from efficiencies of scale) and because they’ll have less need of dental and other health services if they reduce their sugar intake.
What’s obtuse about it?