Yes, there are advantages of a stable and well functioning systems that don't have disruptors and we indeed benefit of it as having good lives but unfortunately this can't last as those who go hard on progress and tear down everything and rebuilding again will eventually get ahead on everything and won't let us just be as we now see with US billionaires having impact over Europe.
Americans feel more pain but are also rewarded, Europe has no option but to become progressive - otherwise tere will be no more Europe and the Americans and Chinese will make us adopt their ways.
Oh, BTW, America is also struggling. The latest political developments are an attempt to change course - they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots. They say they are anti-regulation anti-discrimination(of whites specifically) but the core MAGA movement is all about putting barriers and preserving old ways for the benefit of a subset of people. Americans are too in soul searching. Their MAGA literally means fixing what is no longer great but their demands are actually quite conservative and they already begin falling off with their accelerations partners.
> unfortunately this can't last as those who go hard on progress and
tear down everything and rebuilding again
A notion of "bare progress" is the elephant in the room. Progress is a
vector. It has magnitude and direction. People talk of moving "forward
or back", but science also has a steering wheel.
> and the Americans and Chinese will make us adopt their ways.
This very notion of "progress" as a totalitarian force is also
dangerous. The boot is on the other foot from 80 years ago. When
Europe was starting a 1000 year technological master-race, more
measured minds had to extinguish that fire. I see many similarities
today - people seeing "progress" simply as dominance.
I liked the brain-dump in TFA, but I think it's over-complex and too
tied to a contemporary interpretation of capital investment.
We've been spooging away our talent for generations here. Look at how
we treated Turing. We mismanage or sell-off everything cool we invent.
What Britain still suffers from is class disloyalty. We still have a
strong but invisible class system which is now international
financiers. Those sorts "float above" the ordinary economy, they are
disconnected from UK interests and don't give a toss about
engineering, science, knowledge, education...
> When Europe was starting a 1000 year technological master-race, more measured minds had to extinguish that fire
A lot of the measured minds were saying eugenics was a good idea. It took the horror of seeing experiments and concentration camps to make it so deeply unfashionable the idea couldn't even survive in academia.
I believe you're right. Edwin Black's "IBM and the Holocaust" and
Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day" both played their part in
revising my naive ideas about simple narratives of WW2.
But look at this post made here a couple of days ago [0]. It's
absolutely back in fashion. I think technofascism really is a thing
now - you can feel certain people getting quite giddy with thoughts of
power.
Power's always in fashion. Academics seem to love socialism, because it (in practice) centralises decision-making nationally to a group of smart people (and the academics might imagine themselves to be these insanely powerful people).
Eugenics was the same. It was a Progressive way of thinking, if I remember correctly.
> Everyone wants to imagine themselves "insanely powerful people" now. It's part of the sell.
I'm not sure this is true. Socialism does have a surprising foothold, but I think that's largely due to the larger number of people flowing through academia.
>Yes, there are advantages of a stable and well functioning systems
Current EU is definitely not a stable and well functioning system. Look at economic conditions, political outcomes, illegal immigration, wealth inequality, societal and political trust, homelessness rates, birth rates, free speech suppression, welfare austerity, etc Everything has been going downhill since the 2008 crash. It's a powder keg.
>they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots.
What are you on about? Europe doesn't have much race based politics, that's a thing America keeps pushing.
That's quite the conservative talk-radio shopping list.
Illegal immigration is a metric of the EUs economic success and social stability compared with North Africa, Eastern European Accession States, and the war-torn middle east. If America shared land borders and direct migration routes with Islamic caliphates and the like, they'd know all about it.
Economic Conditions and Political Outcomes are pretty sane and tolerable for all but a select group of (surprise surprise) US backed agitators like Hungary. You have to remember that the EU is run as a society rather than an economy, and must be judged on this ethos. People are very fond of using the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi in this conversation - forgetting to mention the life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher on the US side.
Societal and Political trust is still quite high - despite much fearmongering, the far-right are not gaining the political capital necessary to instigate significant change outside of Hungary.
Homelessness rates are a factor of illegal migration - and are laughably low compared to the US on a per capita basis; ditto whatever warped contention you have regarding 'welfare austerity'. We just call it social security. During Covid and in the period afterwards it was hugely ramped up across Europe - and not in a giveaway budget with a check personally signed by an Oligarch.
Re 'free speech suppression' I'm really not sure what you're aiming at. The current cultural friction regarding things like gender-identification and pronoun usage are uniquely american exports. On basically all other counts other than venue-shopping defamation cases, it's a moot point for any normal person.
Finally re birth rates - they tend to go down in wealthy and advanced societies outside of select religious groupings (looking at you Salt Lake City) so I'm not sure what your point is there.
It isn't a "conservative talk-radio shopping list". It is reality in quite a few areas in Europe and the UK.
> Economic Conditions and Political Outcomes are pretty sane and tolerable for all but a select group of (surprise surprise) US backed agitators like Hungary. You have to remember that the EU is run as a society rather than an economy, and must be judged on this ethos. People are very fond of using the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi in this conversation - forgetting to mention the life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher on the US side.
This isn't true. I know many people that have moved from Spain to Hungary. Most of these people where politically fairly normal e.g. either centre-left right or centre-left. I speak to people from all over Europe regularly and many of them do not feel the way that you are describing.
> Societal and Political trust is still quite high - despite much fearmongering, the far-right are not gaining the political capital necessary to instigate significant change outside of Hungary.
That isn't true. I know many areas of Europe where the electorate keep on voting for further right parties. The same is happening in the UK. Labour only won because the Conservatives lost and the Reform party did extremely well for what is a relatively new party. I know the same is happening in Belgium (I speak regularly with Belgian nationals). Areas of Spain that are most affected by immigration have voted for further right parties. So I know this isn't true.
> Re 'free speech suppression' I'm really not sure what you're aiming at.
Just look up the hate speech laws enacted throughout Europe and in the UK and some of the cases that have been prosecuted. We do not have a right to the free speech in the UK and the majority of Europe doesn't either.
>>This isn't true. I know many people that have moved from Spain to Hungary. Most of these people where politically fairly normal e.g. either centre-left right or centre-left. I speak to people from all over Europe regularly and many of them do not feel the way that you are describing.
The plural of anecdotes is not data, nor does your select social circle represent a cogent sample group.
Orbans stated position is to pivot Hungary from a democracy into an illiberal state, modeled after Putin's Russia. At the EU summit in mid-December, for example, he refused to agree to the extension of the Russia sanctions that expire at the end of January.
Hungary are on the brink of being kicked out of the Schengen Zone, have about 12 billion in EU funds frozen because of their stupidity, and are now getting loans off China like some sort of tinpot African dictatorship in order to bridge funding gaps.
The next biggest right-wing rise is - surprise surprise - bordering them and the ex-Soviet Bloc in Poland. That waned so quickly with the escalation of War in Ukraine that, even if they joined forces, Konfederacja + PiS could still not form a majority coalition for seat of the Polish Government.
>>That isn't true. I know many areas of Europe where the electorate keep on voting for further right parties. The same is happening in the UK.
You missed my key qualifier 'necessary to instigate significant change'. The Overton window shifts when society is impacted by War and mass refugee immigration, particularly in a period of high-taxes following high social spend (lockdown).
>> Just look up the hate speech laws enacted throughout Europe and in the UK and some of the cases that have been prosecuted.
Citations needed.
>> We do not have a right to the free speech in the UK and the majority of Europe doesn't either.
Well no, not explicitly, as they have a different legal and basis for law as the US - e.g. they don't have a codified constitution either as they came from a common law system based on the French Courts. Instead they hold the same proportional right as a negative right to freedom of expression under the common law.
Its a moot point anyway as since 1998, freedom of expression is guaranteed according to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights across Europe.
Freedom o expression does not guarantee you freedom of consequence in Europe. If you make fun of a politicians they or the state can come back after you for it.
Political satire is one of the oldest and grandest cultural traditions in Europe. Hell, most European countries even have some variant of a political satire show like Spitting Image:
Eva Glawishnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland is a defamation case. Look up venue-shopping in London for American defamation cases if you want a counterpoint. The CJEU later clarified hosting providers’ obligations to remove defamatory content
Despite being acquitted, the Michael Much case was fairly understandable - the public prosecutor said freedom of expression had to be weighed against human dignity...(and) that propaganda does not fall under freedom of expression. No arguments here. 1A Rights aren't going to save you either, unless you call someone a 'pedo-guy'.
The reason I specifically brought up Spitting Image is that I knew you'd cite this case - with this point specifically argued in court.
"Partsch also pointed to popular TV-shows doing, he said, that did the same. If the court found against Much, it would mean a ban on creating political caricatures."
> Police searched Much’s house and removed and confiscated the posters. The public prosecutor imposed a penalty order of €6,000 for “criminal insult to politicians”.
The guy had his house searched by police, a €6000 fine and had to go challenge it in court. The fact that it happened at all is the problem.
NGL, I can't really argue with that. Thankfully it's not the same across Europe - Germany is just a basketcase when it comes to laws. It's like getting fined in Switzerland for falling off your bicycle. They're not even remotely consistent in how or why they're applying them.
"In Hamburg, a man (59) who had called Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (54, Green Party) a “complete idiot” on “X” (formerly Twitter) went unpunished. In Wunsiedel, Bavaria, the district court has now imposed a hefty penalty on someone who called Habeck an “idiot.”
"P. feels he has been treated unfairly and claims: "My Facebook post was meant to be satirical." His role model: the ZDF satire magazine "heute-show" . It regularly awards the "Golden Idiot" prize, for example to Winfried Kretschmann (75, Green Party), Sigmar Gabriel (64, SPD) or Björn Höcke (51, AfD)."
> The plural of anecdotes is not data, nor does your select social circle represent a cogent sample group.
When something isn't easily quantifiable there is no data. OK sure then, but there wouldn't be anyway.
The fact is that people are talking about moving either out of Western Europe / UK to somewhere else and it is a common sentiment amongst many professionals.
> Orbans stated position is to pivot Hungary from a democracy into an illiberal state, modeled after Putin's Russia. At the EU summit in mid-December, for example, he refused to agree to the extension of the Russia sanctions that expire at the end of January.
Can you point me to a translated policy document or a more credible news source from like Hungary that I can translate? I don't take American news sources seriously for European issues as they frequently get basic things incorrect.
> Citations needed.
You can look up the laws yourself and the cases. They can easily be found. They are numerous. The law around speech is quite easy to find on the .gov websites.
> Well no, not explicitly, as they have a different legal and basis for law as the US - e.g. they don't have a codified constitution either as they came from a common law system based on the French Courts. Instead they hold the same proportional right as a negative right to freedom of expression under the common law.
In the UK we literally don't have the right to free speech. I have actually read the law on this issue several years ago. Only in Parliament are you allowed to speak freely. There is nowhere where it says we have these rights, there are no cases that have decided that has ruled we have these rights. This is neither explicitly or implicitly.
> Its a moot point anyway as since 1998, freedom of expression is guaranteed according to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights across Europe.
Freedom of expression != Free speech. They are not the same thing and that is why hate speech laws exist in the majority of EU countries and in the UK. Time and time again people erroneously equate free-speech with free-expression. The UK government have themselves come out and said something to the effect of "You have the right to free expression, but not saying things we don't like" essentially.
You either are being wilfully ignorant or you are horrendously naive. Go and read the law yourself if you don't believe me.
>>The fact is that people are talking about moving either out of Western Europe / UK to somewhere else and it is a common sentiment amongst many professionals.
2022 and 2023 were the highest years on record for net migration into the UK. The only reason 2024 wasn't even higher was due to the new Conservative government's policy stopping international students from bringing dependents to the UK.
Migration to Ireland is at the highest level since 2007. It represents a 3.5 per cent increase in population - which in a given year would be one of the highest ever recorded for a single country.
>>Can you point me to a translated policy document or a more credible news source from like Hungary that I can translate? I don't take American news sources seriously for European issues as they frequently get basic things incorrect.
Wildly bad faith wasting of my time as it's one of the most famous speeches made in a Western Democracy in the 21st Century, but since I have to lead a horse to water... here's a translated transcript from the website of the HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT.
>>You can look up the laws yourself and the cases. They can easily be found. They are numerous. The law around speech is quite easy to find on the .gov websites.
But of course the rules are different for your opponent in debate. Laughable.
>> In the UK we literally don't have the right to free speech...Freedom of expression != Free speech. They are not the same thing and that is why hate speech laws exist in the majority of EU countries and in the UK
I think you're conflating two issues here - Hate Speech and 'Freedom' of Speech.
Hate speech receives substantial protection under the First Amendment and is specifically covered under 1A as per Matal v. Tam (2017). But there are several carve-outs. The most famous is the fighting words doctrine; a well known limitation to freedom of speech under 1A - enshrined in a 9-0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).
More to the point, the First Amendment prohibits defamation actions based on “loose, figurative language that no reasonable person would believe presented facts". Not actions like when Donald Trump defamed E Jean Carroll by denying her allegation of sexual assault to the tune of $80m+ in damages.
That said, this didn't stop ABC News paying $15m (£12m) to US President-elect Donald Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit after its star anchor falsely said he had been found "liable for rape" as opposed to liable for "sexual abuse", which has a specific definition under New York law. This is despite the substantial-truth doctrine which many jurisdictions adopted, which protects a defamation defendant as long as the “gist” of the story is true.
> 2022 and 2023 were the highest years on record for net migration into the UK. The only reason 2024 wasn't even higher was due to the new Conservative government's policy stopping international students from bringing dependents to the UK.
These aren't the same people as the people wanting to migrate away. I am talking about people that were born in their home countries wanting too leave. You are quite well aware of this you are being disingenuous.
Also there is 400,000 going out of the country last time I checked (and that was a good few years ago). Why are those people leaving?
> Migration to Ireland is at the highest level since 2007. It represents a 3.5 per cent increase in population - which in a given year would be one of the highest ever recorded for a single country.
Again this the same thing.
> Wildly bad faith wasting of my time as it's one of the most famous speeches made in a Western Democracy in the 21st Century, but since I have to lead a horse to water... here's a translated transcript from the website of the HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT.
I don't follow Hungarian politics. I also don't trust American news sources. Thank you for the link though.
> But of course the rules are different for your opponent in debate. Laughable.
While they numerous and frequently get buried on major search engines. It been an issue for years now in the UK.
There are literally countless cases now. Last time I checked there were 7 cases a day prosecuted and that was way back in 2018.
> I think you're conflating two issues here - Hate Speech and 'Freedom' of Speech.
Hate speech is a made up term to limit freedom of speech.
I am put in the unenviable position of defending people that I dislike because I think people should have the right to speak their mind.
> The most famous is the fighting words doctrine; a well known limitation to freedom of speech under 1A - enshrined in a 9-0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).
Firstly I am talking about the UK not the US. So why you are talking about the 1A in the US is beyond me.
Also I know Fighting words is not anything like the hate speech laws in the UK. So this is irrelevant.
> More to the point, the First Amendment prohibits defamation actions based on “loose, figurative language that no reasonable person would believe presented facts".
You are now conflating defamation with hate speech. These are not the same thing. Again this isn't irrelevant.
> Something something wilfully ignorant.
Yes you are being wilfully ignorant about UK hate speech laws. There are loads of cases in the UK where people have been prosecuted for Hate Speech, There is also non crime hate incidents which can show up on background checks when you go for a job.
Yeah right, Reform AFD Rassemblement national Fratelli d'Italia and other risings stars have nothing to do with race and even if they do it's Americans behind it.
Everyone knows that Europeans are much more racist than Americans, it's just that we are much less explicit about it and its issues are different than the issues in the USA.
The governments of Europe no longer hold a monopoly of violence. Terror groups and MENAPT groups have brought a diverse range of violent threats to people.
Building a robot army to solve this is one viable solution that is hardware and software based.
The efficient & practical way is to stop renewing residence and work visas, making acquisition of visas harder through complex demands of high language proficiency, and a high amount of money as proof-of-funds, perhaps requiring a local referral too. It's what countries that don't want immigrants but don't want to say it out loud do.
Illegal immigration is a BS term, make immigration legal if you don't want illegal immigrants. It's not like people choose the hard, dangerous and expensive ways instead of buying a Ryanair ticket. When the illegal immigrants BS doesn't hold they all start complaining about legal immigrants as with the UK and their core Brexit reason.
That's a ridiculous way of thinking about it. Anyone who says they don't want illegal immigrants isn't objecting simply because of the legal status, they think the process should be upheld which prevented those people from immigrating legally.
It's the same reason we don't seek to improve crime rates by legalising theft. Sure, there'd be fewer people labelled as "criminal", but the original problem would remain (and in all probability would become worse).
And why the process of immigrating legally is more than buying a ticket and a security check at the border?
Obviously, it is the reason that matters and the reason is not benign.
People want other people to like people in certain way they and then castrate Alan Turing for illegal love. People want to have slaves then they have illegally free slaves problem.
Well no, its not. Specifically in relation to Asylum Seekers contravening the EU Dublin Regulation and tearing up their passports on an intra-EU flight so they can claim Asylum and the associated social welfare in Ireland rather than France or Germany due to our much higher rates.
Basically economic migrants - predominately young men from the middle east - disguising themselves as Refugees and taking social supports away from the families fleeing warzones.
That is one subset of immigration crime that is rightly frown upon and can be completely avoided abolition of the country borders concept that was introduced in the last 100 years or less. Want to help people in need? Instead of confining them into areas and then impose restriction on those and give some of them some money, help those in need. Or don't help, but at least don't pretend that you are bringing justice to the world without addressing the core problems.
In other words, this is actually welfare fraud that happens to have a travel component.
I don't support illegal immigration, I say that people traveling and seeking better lives should not be illegal.
I think we are done here since I don't feel spending time for positions I never claimed. I despise this type of argumentation, its a known fallacy and its useless.
You can count yourself as won an arguments if you feel like that.
I can understand this might make sense if race (or ethnicity) were the only factor in the world to consider, but since it's not, is there value in thinking as though it is?
What makes me think that it's about race(loosely speaking. IMHO it's more about xenophobia and feeling like losing privilege o identity as a nation etc) is that once you make the immigration legal they start complaining about numbers like in Britain.
BTW I don't disagree with the people who don't want everyone be welcome, I just think that their solution ideas and demands are misguided. My observation is that people from various ethnicities can function in cohesion and are about the same when they are from a similar educational background and rarely have ethnical or racial issues among themselves and IMHO all the problems will be resolved if you let people naturally find their appropriate group they belong to instead of having BS like country borders and visas and DEI or race based positive discrimination etc.
Thanks for your reply. I think I agree with at least some of it, but it is still solely talking about race.
The worries people have, especially in somewhere like Britain, is it's a country with a relatively small population compared to the level of immigration, and housing is an enormous problem. One outcome that I think can be to a considerable extent[0] attributed to high net immigration is that housing has become smaller (many houses divided into flats), and housing has become much more expensive. So anyone who already owned a house is sitting fairly pretty, as they get bouyed up by the housing market, but anyone looking to buy for the first time, or buy into a new market for the first time (e.g. moving to near schools for kids) is going to have a massive problem, as the competitive pressure has up-bidded housing and made it worthwhile to subdivide and sell/rent smaller dwellings.
This could be all white people doing it (somewhere like Cornwall in the UK is mostly annoyed because other Brits buy holiday homes there, driving up prices for locals and their kids who are coming up) - it doesn't matter. The housing costs are what matter. And they, a bit like fuel, drive up everything else: NHS workers need higher salaries to just be able to live in many places, which drives up taxes.
This isn't to avoid actual race/ethnicity-related tensions. But there's a giant clump of people who are just fed up with their money going far less far than their parents' and grandparents' money did when it comes to one of the fundamentals of life: housing yourself and your family. And their parents and grandparents are equally upset that their kids/grandkids have in a major sense a harder life than they did.
[0] definitely not fully; there are multiple factors. But if you net import the equivalent of the population of Liverpool each year, and you aren't building a Liverpool each your to house them, it's obvious that prices will start shooting up.
Americans feel more pain but are also rewarded, Europe has no option but to become progressive - otherwise tere will be no more Europe and the Americans and Chinese will make us adopt their ways.
Oh, BTW, America is also struggling. The latest political developments are an attempt to change course - they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots. They say they are anti-regulation anti-discrimination(of whites specifically) but the core MAGA movement is all about putting barriers and preserving old ways for the benefit of a subset of people. Americans are too in soul searching. Their MAGA literally means fixing what is no longer great but their demands are actually quite conservative and they already begin falling off with their accelerations partners.