It was interesting to see shops in the border towns of south & south east Switzerland buying & selling products from Italy, a relatively cheaper market.
I mean, when I was young we lived in Poland right next to the border with Slovakia and we'd drive over once a week for groceries and to buy fuel because it was just so much cheaper over there. Nowadays it's the reverse since they got the Euro - most Polish shops near the border cater to Slovakian shoppers and even accept Euro for payment.
American here. My experience is that the US dollar seems to be accepted in tons of stores in countries all over in the Americas Europe and Asia. Trade is trade it seems.
Seller sold forward contracts to recoup tariffs at a lower price and passed on the benefits to the consumers already. E.g. For every $1 seller paid as tariffs, seller sold a contract to someone for $0.25 saying if government ever refunds the buyer of the contract can keep it. The $0.25 already passed to consumers as benefits.
> Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)
Not to the specific customer but this benefits will now get passed to future customers as prices will be lowered than usual (lower than pre-tariff prices) due to competition.
Note that consumers who paid more were not necessarily paying the tariffs. Stores like Costco, Walmart increased prices across the board and socialized the impact of tariffs. Even if there was some mechanism to return tariff money to consumer, there is no way you could return it to someone who paid higher due to this socialized nature of price increase.
It is little surprising a lot of smart people somehow miss this simple logic.
Android is massive and extremely popular and I know several people who have been scammed already. It is important that Google makes this harder for scammers.
Google is not doing this to harm developers but to protect their users.
You already get a pretty scary warning when you try to install an app that was downloaded outside the Play Store. If people still install malware, that's the responsibility that comes with freedom. Your line of reasoning can be applied everywhere in life - people should not be able to do their own bank transfers or use a credit card, I know several people that who have been scammed already.
Moreover, there are better ways to protect against malware: 1. educate people; 2. rather than using whitelisting, use blacklisting (similar to XProtect on macOS).
Finally, the argument is not very strong on Google's side, since the Play Store itself has had its history of scams. Which, again is easier to protect against by educating people. No, don't put your banking information in a random app you downloaded from the Play Store (use the app that your bank tells you to). Do not install random keyboards from the Play Store. Etc.
This is "think of the children/grandma" logic. There is a different between maintaining a company store where everything is verified, and forcing everyone to use it.
Google shouldn't be able to hold a vertical monopoly, on what apps can run, what os's are allowed and what hardware can be used on devices that run Android, rest solely on this weak excuse that someone might harm grandma.
Oh, and of course, if grandma gets scammed by a app in the Google store, Google isn't in any way held responsible. Such garbage, two-faced bs.
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