From my point of view, that you have to support your elderly sounds crazy.

Here most elderly either gets support in their own home by professionals (by the local government) or at a home with professional care (run by the local government).

I'd rather spend time with my family on our own terms and not because I have to support them.

> I'd rather spend time with my family on our own terms and not because I have to support them.

Speaking as an Asian, I grew up in a culture where parents, and elders in general, are super-important. Things are changing now, but many of us are still very close to our parents.

In old-school thought, taking care of one's parents is seen not as an obligation, but as an opportunity to serve them, and to repay them (in some small measure) for the love and care we have received from them in our childhood.

When my grandfather passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in his 60s, my father was distraught that he did not get an opportunity to serve him.

My point is, many of us view the situation differently - not as a burden, but as an opportunity.

However, it is undeniable that sometimes it can be a burden, and for those situations, it would have been excellent to have the government take care of the elderly, as it is done in your country.

Edit: A typo.

> Here most elderly either gets support in their own home by professionals

That’s common as well if they can mostly look after themselves and only need say a weekly visit from a nurse.

I think the only difference is the children are expected to pay.

It’s maybe half live with their kids and the rest live independently.

> or at a home with professional care

This is common when they need full time care. But this is usually only a small % and not for long.

And again the kids pay.

> I'd rather spend time with my family on our own terms and not because I have to support them.

That’s one way to think about it.

My perspective is my parents supported me for 16 years and so I have a duty to support them.

I think it is good for character, helps people to appreciate life, and helps build meaningful relationships. It also means grandparents get to spend lots of time with their grandchildren.

It differs depending on where in Europe you live of course, my perspective is from the Nordics. I see it, instead of "they take x % of my pay", as that we collectively decided to fund these healthcare, paid vacation, maternity and paternity leave, education, child care, social security so that everyone has a fair chance and are taken care of.

I suspect this kind of mentality only works in a fairly homogeneous society, where everyone enjoys the collective benefits fairly uniformly.

Yeah, I'm from western EU and share that same idea. I don't mind paying the taxes because they are put to good (imo) use.

Which is interesting - my wife has a quite different background (North America) and sees the socialism as a waste of money, as it mostly helps the poor and disadvantages the 'less poor'.

Personally, my view is that right now my family has it well, but it might not be like that forever and _maybe_ the system will repay itself and maybe it won't, but I'm happy knowing that it's there just in case.

(On a related note, she also thinks it's silly that over here we have a lot of insurances)

I use the mullvad VPN service for wireguard. They currently have 44 wireguard servers active around the world.

I second this. I remember reading an interview with one of the mullvad staff saying "y dream openVPN config would be [insert more or less verbatim the wireguard spec], but due to the nature of openVPN that either won't happen or will take a long time". They were quick at adopting wireguard :)

They are very knowledgeable and spend a lot of effort in securing their VPN. I contacted them about what I thought was a bug, and got a very thorough answer about why mullvad behaved like that, what kind of threat it mitigated, and how I got the behaviour I wanted together with things I could do to keep safe (which was to update the kernel). Within 6 hours.

I am a very happy customer.

My local recycling company clearly states that I should recycle used pizza boxes in the "paper packaging" box when searching on their webpage. So I guess it depends on the recycling process.

But there is value for him as he would have quick access to medicine if he ever gets AIDS. Of course someone who as AIDS values the medicine more but saying there is no value for him seems very short sighted.

The point is, everyone cannot be working on creating AIDS medicine. Someone has to be working on things that, say, cheer up the person working on aids medicine when she hits a wall.

Sure but these all have values then. His point was to show that AIDS medicine has no value for him, but it actually does. He can't use that argument to prove that value is subjective considering that it actually does have value for everyone.