I’m actually skeptical this shortage affects people too badly, since the stuff lasts forever. Probably enthusiasts have enough in their pantries to last them through a temporary factory downtime?

Even if you already had a factory that could easily be converted to this product, you’d have to factor in the switching cost, opportunity cost, shipping, marketing and regulatory stuff. This likely offsets the consumer’s willingness to pay extra during the shortage, and as soon as the original factory is back, they’re going to price you back out. They’re already operational, as per the article.

Everyone can think of similarly deserving people. They should do it like the coins and just have an abundance of motifs from every country. Since they’re too scared to put english text on them, put a QR code link to some short text in every language. I cringe at the idea of QR codes in general, but what are you going to do.

The buildings are all the same steel and glass bullshit and represent nothing if not the widely despised bureaucratic aspects of the EU. The birds at least look nice, but they’re boring and hyper-harmless.

Guess we both need to redirect our fantasies of civility to Japan or something.

Also the OP specifically fantasizes about unchanged compatibility.

Really there would be no reason not to use this, so it would likely have to be more expensive than the regular spyware/adware version. Thus it couldn’t get away with the name “Lite” and would end up being called “Professional”.