I envy you, this has been my dream for years. But obscure payment gateways make this a task for the chosen few in this country. If somebody could point me to a workable solution (on Linux / cross platform) for Germany it would be highly appreciated.
“Every financial system is broken in its own way” (ex-coworker who had worked in financial services)
I use `aqbanking-cli` for grabbing transactions from my banks' FinTS/HBCI API and generate a CSV out of that. That CSV then goes through a bit of Python that splits up the entries into transactions. Those get rendered out as `beancount` transactions (but `ledger` works as well, I used that before I switched to beancount) and appended to my actual ledger.
I then use `fava` (a beancount web UI) to fix mistakes, and have another piece of code (this time written in Go, but could be Python/whatever as well) that takes transactions that are generated from my brokerage account and enriches them with data parsed from my brokers' PDF reports (since the FinTS/HBCI info doesn't contain stuff like ISINs or taxes/fees separately).
This is for my personal finances, but I used the same system (minus the brokerage stuff) when I managed the finances of a hackerspace in the middle of Germany for a few years.
Ok. But written in Haskell? Why would you write this kind of stuff in anything but python - it’s trivial after all, and it should stay trivial through all layers…
There are companies that offer APIs to access bank accounts as a service. Plaid.com is one of them, although you might need to search around for another one that supports your bank.
At one point, there was a decent standard called "OFX" which financial institutions were supposed to support. It let you use an app like GNU Cash or QuickBooks which could automatically connect to your bank account. That died apparently and was replaced by some API/standard called "Open Banking". It's shittier in every way since it seems to require a middleman now (like Plaid) whereas with OFX you could just query an endpoint easily.
Why should developing countries share the externalities for products that you consume and use?
Maybe the market won't be able to solve these problems even with appropriate measures like those suggested here. Your argument seems to be, "it won't work so we shouldn't try because it will be worse for us" which doesn't seem convincing to me.
The money we pay doesn't magically disappear, it goes to the state as revenue. We could use said revenue to do like a UBI or something to counteract the negative effects.
This is absolutely the right direction to take. Ambitious programs are hollowed out since voters get angry and shift to conspiracy theories and populist parties to maintain their lavish lifestyle.
CO2 emissions worldwide are still growing every year. This is painful to watch as western countries have started programs for reduction a long time ago - but they are vaporized by the strongly growing emissions by Asian countries [1].
China has a very ambitious program and will likely peak in the coming years - not being bound by short-sighted election cycles. But India is another story.
We must all realize that within our lifetimes, we need a proscription on _extraction_ of fossil fuels. Otherwise it would be a laughable attempt to collect the damage after it has occurred. And most likely, this needs to be done through the court system.
Having unelected judges dictate important economic policy instead of elected politicians is the “right direction to take?” Do you see how attitudes like that might be contributing to the rise of “populist parties?”
Unfortunately our democracies have a blind eye when it comes to internalizing external costs and executing on policies that might take 20, 30 years to get implemented. It is a process with many setbacks every other election cycle. This is one place where a king or queen actually makes sense - their interest is to leave a heritage for their firstborn. But even monarchs need to fear the wrath of the people when they do it, and besides, they might be too stupid.
Modern civilization simply isn't possible without fossil fuels. There are finite reserves of oil, gas and coal, and it is inevitable that these will continue to be exploited until it is no longer viable. Without oil it wouldn't be possible to grow or distribute enough food to feed the current human population.
Climate change is a very real threat to human civilization, but mainly because of the size and distribution of the population, and lately expectation of people. The earth has been hotter in the past, and so the CO2 locked up in fossil fuels was originally in the atmosphere.
The "earth has been hotter" take seems a bit silly. Sure it's true. But do you want to live somewhere with an average summer temperature of 100F instead of 80F or 90F? Or more extreme.
Sure, the earth and life in general will survive global warming. But humans have a good chance of not.
I've come to believe/agree that it is not possible for humanity to give up fossil fuels, but the physics of adding ever more carbon into the atmosphere is also calamitous. Taken together it seems we are on a path to certain doom.
>Otherwise it would be a laughable attempt to collect the damage after it has occurred
Why do you think that? The number of extreme climate events is higher today than in previous centuries, but the number of people killed by these events - controlled for population - is much smaller. We are WAY better at mitigating climate problems after they happen than we are at stopping them from happening
It depends. If (big if) previously both were far from their family, now one of them is not. Net positive.
We live very close to my in-laws, and there are lots of benefits from that, even if my parent and brothers live far away. But some months ago my brother moved close to my home and now we see each other every weekend, we both have small children that now have the time to play together and form new bonds. It's really great.
My friends are now in different cities or distant neighborhoods, we make plans every now and then, but it is really complex to maintain closeness when physical distance gets in the way.
If everyone they are close to also moved to where this guy and his brother live--and so on--they could have quite the 1 easy trick to found a new megacity.
Here's the plan: you and 5 people closest to you move to the same area. Then each of those 5 people moves 5 of their closest people to the same area. Repeat ~13x and we can all finally be together.
So if a mega-city had a billion people. Maybe that's too much, let's say a 100 million people. Let us say this may be possible this century with some innovations in our habitat. So with a 100 million people in this mega-city, how many people can actually live close to each other? Even if you go 3-dimensions (connected skyscrapers), not sure this model will bring people close. Will it?
I’m curious about this too. My partner and I are both from different cities and live in a third city. We have friends and family in the original two cities and friends in the third city. There’s no way to make it work for both of us, and in fact the neutral third city is probably the most fair option despite being far from the best for either of us.
I get your point but the compromise isn’t “suffering”. We’re perfectly happy in the third city. It’s the moving to the original cities that could cause one persons suffering for another maximisation of their happiness.
> The implicit definition of "fair" as "equal suffering" is always a bit concerning to me.
For family peace, it may be the best thing. My personal anecdote:
I'm from city A. My spouse is from city B. We lived in city C. Our parents were fine with that.
My mother-in-law developed a rare disease. She had no children nearby. Now we live in city B, close to her.
In city A, despite having two of my siblings nearby, my parents absolutely resented our move. They were quite hostile at some point.
That sent my spouse to therapy and there's been no contact between them since. I'm fully on my spouse's side, especially given what my parents said and did.
Life gets complicated. We’re in a similar situation - family and friends are mostly in cities A and B (in different countries nonetheless). We lived in a compromise/neutral city C until we needed help with the kids and it’s impossible to choose where to go for the long term.
Flourished? Well I read the stray dogs you find there are very young, they die at a young age.
Which has made them an attractive study for how quickly their genes adapt. Apparently many of the features that domesticated dogs had from human-controlled breeding, like short snouts, have regressed back to their wild ancestors.
“Every financial system is broken in its own way” (ex-coworker who had worked in financial services)