Sure, give everybody something that people will work for for free. Let's create a whole new class of appliance welfare, and then see some of those "unforeseen consequences" come out of the woodwork:
1) Belgium's computer resellers/manufacturers will not be able to sell anything to anyone in the home market, thereby swiftly putting them out of business. [Maybe the EU should complain about this minister to the WTO for her unfair, pro-U.S. trade sanctions.]
2. Not only will this destroy Belgium's hardware industry, but place its viable software industry at the mercy of MS for the foreseeable future. With such a homogenous home market, businesses will have strong incentives to write software for that market, as well as standardize on MS systems because the large local pool of potential employees "skilled" in MS technologies.
3) Then some professional spender-of-other-people's-money, (i.e. socialist), will pester the "Minister of Equality" and her successors for upgrades every few years, which will of course require new licenses, (unless you can evision MS idly standing by while Compaq shifts blank harddrives). -or-
if upgrades aren't forthcoming, they will end up like France, and have a totally outdated computer (ordinator) network based on government sponsored technology. And what will replace these outdated systems? Nothing local, because that industry will have been driven into extinction faster than you can say: "European competitors of Aerobus". [That's right, there are no European competitors of Aerobus, ever wonder why?]
4. Having had its entire computer hardware reseller/manufacturing market desicated by a feelgood government welfare scheme, Belgium will have to resort to making other appliances, like electric belgium waffle irons. Unfortunately, they will have stiff competition from shitty little third world country's whose people are desperate enough to take lower wages than last year's assemble-it-here-because-well-work-for-pennies fad. Belgium will slide into bankruptcy and social unrest will follow when the EU proposes bailing their stupid socialist asses out.
5. A new "right to modern appliances" will have been created, and people will get very upset that they don't have a new belgium waffle oven and scream how it was just like the Selma Busrides. [Ok I'm joking, but isn't unintended effects 1-4 bad enough?]
Slashdot Mirror
1) Belgium's computer resellers/manufacturers will not be able to sell anything to anyone in the home market, thereby swiftly putting them out of business. [Maybe the EU should complain about this minister to the WTO for her unfair, pro-U.S. trade sanctions.]
2. Not only will this destroy Belgium's hardware industry, but place its viable software industry at the mercy of MS for the foreseeable future. With such a homogenous home market, businesses will have strong incentives to write software for that market, as well as standardize on MS systems because the large local pool of potential employees "skilled" in MS technologies.
3) Then some professional spender-of-other-people's-money, (i.e. socialist), will pester the "Minister of Equality" and her successors for upgrades every few years, which will of course require new licenses, (unless you can evision MS idly standing by while Compaq shifts blank harddrives).
-or-
if upgrades aren't forthcoming, they will end up like France, and have a totally outdated computer (ordinator) network based on government sponsored technology. And what will replace these outdated systems? Nothing local, because that industry will have been driven into extinction faster than you can say: "European competitors of Aerobus". [That's right, there are no European competitors of Aerobus, ever wonder why?]
4. Having had its entire computer hardware reseller/manufacturing market desicated by a feelgood government welfare scheme, Belgium will have to resort to making other appliances, like electric belgium waffle irons. Unfortunately, they will have stiff competition from shitty little third world country's whose people are desperate enough to take lower wages than last year's assemble-it-here-because-well-work-for-pennies fad. Belgium will slide into bankruptcy and social unrest will follow when the EU proposes bailing their stupid socialist asses out.
5. A new "right to modern appliances" will have been created, and people will get very upset that they don't have a new belgium waffle oven and scream how it was just like the Selma Busrides. [Ok I'm joking, but isn't unintended effects 1-4 bad enough?]