> Vienna is probably not food self sufficient

No, but Austria is. And our farmers enjoy much support through subsidies - from the EU and our own budget - and social protections, often having better and cheaper health care than most other Austrians, since they are insured under their very own social insurance law (BSVG), contrary to other employees (ASVG) and self-employed (GSVG).

Farmers also enjoy very high levels of respect and appreciation here, even in Vienna.

> While enjoying a high paying job in probably a still very unregulated domain (computers/internet related).

Calling Information Technology an 'unregulated domain' in the EU when we're all busy implementing NIS2 regulation and preparing for the Cyber Resilience Act entering into force soon seems disingenuous.

▲

sunshine-o 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> And our farmers enjoy very high levels of subsidies

Yes, thanks. This was my original point "the agriculture sector hold by a string". It is by design unsustainable and if you cut those "high levels of subsidies" it collapses.

> Calling Information Technology an 'unregulated domain' in the EU when we're all busy implementing NIS2 regulation and preparing for the Cyber Resilience Act entering into force soon seems disingenuous.

Yes this is why I said "still"

	▲	rcbdev 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I do not understand what you're trying to communicate with "hold by a string" - we subsidize our farmers because we do not want to completely wreck our local agricultural supply chains just because food from, say Brazil, would be theoretically cheaper today. Another factor is that we actually have the ability to properly enforce quality standards if the food is produced within our jurisdiction. This is no different to subsidizing public transport, because having this infrastructure local and autonomous is just strategically important enough for the tax payer to finance it. Would you say that public transport in EU capitals is "holding on by a string"?