I agree, but this only works if one is willing to accept a changing racial profile/culture. It appears that many people do not accept this idea. Not just in the USA, but look at Japan or South Korea, for example.
To me, the really interesting question is how to stop what appears to have been inevitable for the last 40+ years: when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what could help here involves all kinds of non-market solutions which are hard to solve, and very not cool at the moment.
The reason that I find this important is that even though I personally have no problem with race/culture mixing, in-fact I love Korean BBQ tacos... eventually with the immigration solution, there is an end state where all societies and countries are economically advanced, and have negative birth rates. What then? As a Star Trek fan, I have ideas about post-scarcity.
> when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what could help here involves all kinds of non-market solutions which are hard to solve, and very not cool at the moment.
There is a huge factor in this which is well-documented to reduce the fertility rate: The first generation to become affluent enough to own property does so and then lobbies for policies that increase home prices. These policies create housing scarcity both for homes and rental units.
That saddles later generations with unreasonably high housing costs and makes them unable to afford to start a family, so the fertility rate drops. If you want more kids, build more housing.
As mentioned in this other comment [0], I find this to be one of the most interesting problems of our time.
> There is a huge factor in this which is well-documented to reduce the fertility rate:
If you have a moment, would you mind pointing me to this documentation? It sounds very correct to me, but I would love to have the receipts when I quote you in the future.
My crank idea to fix both of the issues you mention is mandatory national service.
This would provide everyone a common ground, similar to how widespread military service in wwii did. It would promote civic virtue by exposing everyone to how they personally can make the government useful. And it could be made such that we have our national service corp just build useful things, like houses. Additionally we could provide similar benefits to folks that go through national service as the military - healthcare, payment for college, etc.
one possible answer is removing property taxes and replacing them with land value taxes. property taxes dicensentivize development while land value taxes incentive it.
The US was very good for a very long time at integrating immigrants. It should continue that tradition and work even harder at it.
I believe it was some Republican president who said something to the effect of “if you move to Germany you may be a citizen but you are not a German… But if you move to America and become a citizen you are an American”.
It’s worth noting that not all advanced societies have fared as badly as Korea and Japan. Scandinavia for instance is below replacement but not nearly as catastrophically as Korea. It’s possible that a bit more policy tweaking and more productivity=>leisure time could get them back to a replacement rate.
The US was historically rather hostile towards new waves of immigrants in practice, treating them very much like second class citizens (Irish, Italians, Latinos etc), effectively pressuring them to assimilate by becoming "more American than Americans" to avoid such attitudes. One can argue that the system kinda sorta worked in the long run, but I don't think it makes it worthy of emulation.
I think you need to consider history if you think this is a new thing. People literally paid for indentured servants, even outside of the slave trade.
Importing cheap labor has been a constant throughout the countries history, look at camps of people building the railroads you’ll see lots of Chinese people etc.
But if we zoom out, there is an end to this. We run out of poor people to be migrants eventually, right? I don't just mean as the USA, or any country, but as the Earth.
How do we solve the issue of the end state, where all economies have reached our current level of advancement?
I assume we solve it, or we go extinct, and that would be an odd reason to do so after millions of years, wouldn't it?
Why does less then replacement rate equal extinction?
It just requires a reimagination of the economy it's not an extinction level threat. That's just scare mongering.
Countries are just arbitrary here. What happens long term is there’s massive selective pressure because children of people that reproduce in wealthy economies are the only people to be around in 200+ years.
The USA as a whole has 1.7 births per woman which is really close to the ~2.1 needed. However that isn’t evenly distributed ethic Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander’s living in the US actually sit just above replacement rate. Give it 200 years and that may very well increase.
Really 3 kids needs to be seen as normal long term because some people just aren’t going to have any.
My most controversial take, even though it is 100% true:
The entire planet is minority "white." I put that in scare quotes because even as the lightest skinned person in the land, I know that "white" is a made up in/out group term. As a Slav, I was not "white" according to US immigration law as recently as the 1950s. There is technically no such thing as being white, there is only passing for white. The definition of white entirety depends on the day, and who you ask. Slavs, Irish, Italians, Greeks, were not "white" until very recently. It's a silly word that really means nothing.
If one wants to slow down "white" people becoming the minority more and more due to their economic advancement, clearly the solution is carpet bombing poor countries with e-readers preloaded with Wikipedia. That is the only moral way to even things out!
I assume if it reaches dire levels the government will just mandate that you raise children. I dont see anything wrong with that, personally. Raising kids is a duty like paying taxes or registering for the draft. Previously, it was just assumed that people would do it on their own, but it seems like the government needs to add "sticks" to get people to do it.
This is such a cool topic. Homo sapiens are exactly evolved to reproduce. This is instruction #1, or else we wouldn't be here to discuss it. We might call this the super-not-weak anthropic principle?
We produce multiple hormones which control our behavior to reproduce, and then different ones to raise those kids. It's been nice for millions of years. Parents think that creating their children is the best thing they ever did, generally speaking.
Yet... we have recently created what is otherwise a really cool economic system, which somehow overrides all of that!
Aside from "are we alone in the universe," this is one of the most interesting problems in my mind.
It is hilarious what does, and does not, get flagged on this website in 2025.
The other day on /active, there was a story about a French politician being banned from running for office, due to being convicted of outright fraud for the second time. Absolutely nothing to do with technology or business, nothing to do with the USA. Pure politics in a foreign country. Not flagged.
There was a story directly below which involved the USA, technology and business, but had an uncomfortable narrative for some users. Flagged.
As someone who still likes this site a lot, this just makes me laugh at this point. I don't know how else to react.
There's always a ton of randomness with these things. People tend to underestimate how that affects nearly every aspect of HN. That is, they misinterpret a random outcome as some sort of meaningful thing and then attribute a meaning to it.
If you assume that rhyme or reason is involved, then of course the results seem bizarrely inconsistent and the only models that fit will be Rube Goldberg ones. Simply understand that randomness plays the largest role, and the mystery goes away. (But I know that's less internet fun.)
In terms of all these political stories getting flagged: it's a simple consequence of there being a huge influx of intense political stories while HN's capacity remains "30 slots on the frontpage" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If these stories mostly didn't get flagged or otherwise moderator, HN would turn overnight into a current affairs site, which it is not and never has been.
That still leaves room for some stories with political overlap, though not nearly as many as the politically passionate would prefer. Btw, this is a special case of a more general principle: there are not nearly as many stories on any topic X as the X-passionate would desire. The front page, in that sense, satisfies no one!
But back to the politics thing—here are some links to past explanations about how we deal with that:
Thanks Dan, I never mean to point fingers at moderation here. I always assume it's users. Not sure if that's the correct assumption, but it's one I stick with.
(Also, if anyone is weary of my inveterate self-linking: sorry, I am too. It's just somehow the only semi-efficient way I've found to give enough background information on various points of HN.)
Follow-up: I should add that in 2025, deleting stories with a tinge of US politics is highly detrimental to the HN user base’s understanding of what is happening in the business world.
Case in-point: a US-based family member employed at a FAANG just told me that his Canadian coworkers now reset their phones prior to entering the USA, then restore from backup. This is somewhat similar to what happens when they go to China.
This is terrible for business. This kind of information should not be ignored.
These stories aren't being deleted—there was quite a large thread (in fact maybe two large threads?) about precisely that, within the last couple weeks. I'll see if I can dig up the links, or maybe someone else remembers?
The problem isn't that the major stories are deleted; it's that even if a story spends hours on the front page, the set of users who actually see it still has measure zero [1]. Then inevitably a few of the rest assume that they didn't see it because it was sinisterly suppressed, whether by mods or user flags.
Where this ends up getting us is the 'nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded' theory of HN threads! [2] It's always been like this—it's baked into the fundamentals of how HN works (the limited frontpage space, the dynamics of the internet, the fact that most people don't use HN Search). It's just showing up more intensely these days because the times are more intense and we've been in a tsunami phase for a few months now.
I meant "deleted" from by being flagged, which is a deletion from the lurkers. And yes.. absolutely I have seen some of these stories get through the gauntlet.
I am really not complaining about moderation, just attempting to appeal to the users who I have assumed are doing the flagging, in general.
They're probably doing some of the flagging because they disagree (I think correctly) with a characterization of HN in which HN can be "highly detrimental to the HN user base’s understanding of what is happening". HN has newsy stuff but its purpose is not really news - there are much better sites for that. The 'News' in 'Hacker News' is more like the 'News' in Huey Lewis & The News.
The problem is capture. How many platforms for news and discussing news are not completely captured by people with an agenda of personal power?
You are funding and dang is running a forum for curiosity while the basis for curiosity is under attack.
Your dilemma is to support free inquiry and a platform for curiosity resulting in you being an enemy of the administration or to obey their wishes in order to protect yourself and your assets. What happens when everyone in every position of power rationally protects themselves in the short term by selling out their values in the long term, when they bury their head in the sand and stay in denial, or they run away to another safer country?
How many of your peers have any form of integrity? How many of them wouldn't sell out their mother for a dollar? How many of them fund and participate in building a world anyone would want to live in instead of a world where they are the supreme rulers of the ruins. Concentration camps were built by business men excited by cheap labor.
You cannot have curiosity without solidarity against forces that would submit reason to power. You cannot have curiosity without a consent based society. Curiosity fundamentally challenges power, because it elevates reason above authority. Curiosity presumes that reason is the ultimate form of legitimacy.
Hacker news has a goal of staving off Eternal September, when new students, people uninitiated to academic rigor or professional social conventions, would flood Usenet every September when they received credentials from their academic institutions. Those very same universities which helped build the type of culture you hold in high regard are under direct attack.
Curious environments won't survive neutrality. Curious environments won't survive lack of solidarity with other institutions that inspire curiosity. Systems, like authoritarianism, that demand obedience rather than reason are the default, and they require active maintenance to prevent. Neutrality under these conditions is neglect of curiosity.
You've got me confused with someone else cause I ain't funding anything beside my burrito habit.
As to the rest of this stuff... I don't find it terribly persuasive, personally. We do all have all sorts of moral responsibilities, individual and collective ones and it behooves us to meet them. We do not have a responsibility to turn every single facet and corner of our lives into some instrument of political power and expression - those are important individual (and group) choices and there's a name for disregarding them and imposing them on others - totalitarianism.
I can assure you that it has not been the standard corporate advice when I had to regularly travel from Canada to US for business meetings on a regular basis 15 years ago while working at a big tech company. Nor do I recall anyone else who was traveling doing that on their own. If it is the standard procedure now, then yes, that is definitely a reason to be concerned.
The question is why was this prompted by DOGE? What DOGE action has caused a Canadian citizen employed by a US company to suddenly feel the need to protect their smart device?
That is... other than sensationalism, which appears to be the story here.
> What shouldn't be ignored? Some small subset of foreign workers decided to take security seriously?
That FAANG employed Canadians are suddenly taking these precautions when entering the USA, as standard practice, when coming to a meeting. Nobody can gaslight me into believing that this is a not a new thing.
Some people, who happen to be employed at a FAANG corp, have recently decided to protect their smart device during a border crossing, and this is cause for alarm?
What exactly is on their smart device they are afraid CBP might be interested in? Why did they not protect their device before? Why now? Are there occurrences of FAANG employees having their devices taken during border crossings? For what purpose?
Unless you have something definitive, this sounds like some alarmist individuals deciding to take their own personal security to the level that was already recommended of them.
The trust signals being sent out by the USA are currently making everyone outside the USA "alarmist."
As an example, as a European, price a round trip ticket from Prague to Seattle, for around 2 weeks from now. The price is currently <60% of normal. It's ~$420.
What does a ticket price have to do with wiping your phone at a border?
I did some fact checking on your ticket prices - you are quoting ultra-budget carriers that are normally in that price range. Normal tickets are $1200+, as you would expect.
There's plenty going on right now that you don't need to make stuff up to back up your narrative. Use something real...
> What exactly is on their smart device they are afraid CBP might be interested in? Why did they not protect their device before? Why now? Are there occurrences of FAANG employees having their devices taken during border crossings? For what purpose?
Do you wonder why Canada has been issuing travel warnings for people travelling to the US? Or why they've been treating the US as a hostile power given that the current admin has threatened to invade Canada and make it the 51st state? All of which are leading to a massive drop in tourism to the US?
> Some people, who happen to be employed at a FAANG corp, have recently decided to protect their smart device during a border crossing, and this is cause for alarm?
Of course this is fucking cause for alarm. You are either cluelessly naive, or gaslighting.
I mean, there were Tesla earnings calls this year flagged, which would be front page news even a year ago. Tech earnings calls are almost never flagged otherwise.
I'm mostly convinced a lot of stuff is flagged and the mods work overtime to pick and choose what to unflag. On what metric? No clue, if I'm being honest.
Several users have stated in political threads that they spend the day flagging political stories. I don't think there's any reason to believe a bot is doing it.
Fair. It doesn't have to be a bot to look like one. Is certainly a hive mind behavior that is not any less heavy handed than "see a word, click flag button."
Because, naturally, people on here want to harm you. We can't say it out loud, but that's where the U.S. climate is right now. HN is not immune from it, and is likely more susceptible to it given the demographic. They flag to keep people from saying it.
"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."
- Peter Thiel
"We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it."
- Elon Musk
"Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades – against technology and against life – under varying names like “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”, “de-growth”, “the limits of growth”."
- Marc Andreessen
"Democracy is to power as a lottery is to money. It is a social mechanism that allows a large number of hominids to feel as if their individual views affect the world, even when the chance of such an effect is negligible."
Many forums (including this one) have bans on "politics" or topics that are "inflammatory". 95% of the time what constitutes either is simply "things I disagree with".
For US politics in particular, as much as the right-wing cries about being censored, social media in particular bends over backwards not to silence such views whereas anything critical of those right-wing positions gets flagged or downranked as being "political" (eg [1]).
Typically this process isn't direct. ML systems will find certain features in submissions that get them marked as "inflammatory" or "low quality" but only on one end of the spectrum. For sites such as HN, reddit and Tiktok, right-wing views have successfully weaponized user safety systems by brigading posts and flagging them. That might then go to a human to review and their own biases come into play.
As for France vs the US, I'm sorry but France is irrelevant. As we've seen in the last 2 weeks, what the US does impacts the entire world. All the big social media sites are American (barring Tiktok) so American politics impacts what can and can't be said on those platforms.
Twitter has become 4chan, a hotbed for neo-Nazis, racists and homephobes.
And which French politican are we talking about? Marine Le Pen? If so, the relevance is the rise of fascism in Europe between National Front in France, Reform in the UK, AfD in Germany and, of course, Hungary.
It's the opposite, actually. This place has always been owned and operated by a musk crony. Musk only got his paws on reddit recently, and has barely had any success besides getting the admins to shut down r/cyberstuck.
Here on HN anti-musk/regime posts get deleted automatically, TERF and other bigoted posters are allowed to post through spam filters from freshly made accounts, and everything else that isn't clearly delineated as 'liberal media' but negative for the regime just gets flagged or deranked from listing.
Rules made in the late 2000s might not necessarily hold on HN in 2025.
HN has shifted into a lagging Reddit, and preemptively shutting down any discourse about the falling quality of discourse on HN is ludicrous and plain annoying.
HN has changed, and A LOT of Reddit does leak onto HN, and this absolutely deserves conversation.
This is a paper which echoes your experience, in general. I really wish that when papers like this one were created, someone took the methodology and kept running with it for every model:
> For instance, the NoLiMa benchmark revealed that models like GPT-4o experienced a significant drop from a 99.3% performance rate at 1,000 tokens to 69.7% at 32,000 tokens. Similarly, Llama 3.3 70B's effectiveness decreased from 97.3% at 1,000 tokens to 42.7% at 32,000 tokens, highlighting the challenges LLMs face with longer contexts.
I recently read someone's comment here stating that "trust is efficient."
What we are witnessing is the devolution of the USA from a high-trust to low-trust business environment. "Low-trust business environment" is the euphemism we have used to describe other countries, where corruption is rampant. This is so sad to watch.
Not just sad to watch. Would a country with a low-trust business environment be allowed to have such a huge mountain of government debt, and continue to have its currency be the world's reserve currency? A lot of sadness hinges on those considerations.
it's the other way round, the military maintains the world order, the currency is used as reserve, and they get to provide services that nobody else can provide while they're top dog. they are not on a trajectory to remain top dog for very long.
Trust was its own reason. It's useful for the whole world to have a currency and business environment that operates by rules, even when the rules aren't perfect or fair.
That environment isn't being outcompeted by better, more fair rules - it's just getting vandalized for a few people's gain, and creating risk for everyone else .
But things can change no? Like the country whose currency we use becoming untrustworthy. Do you think the world watched the first trump presidency and thought to do nothing?
It was US policy to actively work against that and it was an acceptable deal for us given that we've been friends and allies forever. Now Trump has turned the US into our heroin-addict sibling we can no longer rely on them.
Those particular aspects are only good for Americans though. That those two things are ending is good for basically everybody else, from Brazilians, Chinese and Canadians to Frenchmen.
The speed with which things are ending are most important I think. For decades there has been a slow decline in US power. Today we have the BRICS trade block representing more than half of the world's population. And countries hold a basket of reserve currencies, where the dollar is still a large percentage, but not nearly as large as it used to be. If all these pillars of American empire are carelessly self-destructed, crashing the world order, it will be hugely disruptive. It forces other powers to act and move to occupy the power vacuum, while lacking the economic weapons may force US'es hand to engage with military force, to reestablish itself.
>Today we have the BRICS trade block representing more than half of the world's population.
As far as I understand, the BRICS block does not actually exist. I mean, being member of it does not mean anything serious. There are no obligations, no agreements, no roadmaps. We might as well talk about a alliance of countries whose names begin with the letter "S"
I really don't agree. Rather, the 2015-2024 period has seen a huge increase in US GDP relative to the EU, which is probably largely driven by the US ability to spend, due to these particular things.
Of course, countries like China are catching up anyway-- they're more than a billion people and very able, and of course, people are working hard to get out of this arrangement. I agree that it will be disruptive, but I think the crash has been in the making for years.
When US interest rates went from 1% to 4.5-5% without a drop in stock prices or a corresponding increasing in dividends I could only interpret that as pure irrationality, and even now companies like Tesla still have P/E ratios of 133.54 whereas excellent firms in the same business-- Volkswagen and Toyota have P/E ratios 3.24 and 6.21 respectively. I'm surprised it still hasn't gone through the floor. The traders by trading at these prices are implicitly assuming interest rates will go back to <1% without any drop in earnings, and that won't happen.
> When US interest rates went from 1% to 4.5-5% without a drop in stock prices
The Dow crashed from ~36k to ~28k in less than a year, and that decrease in value doesn't account for inflation. Adjusting for inflation I don't think the markets have actually fully reached their late 2021 peak.
Not sure that's true. America's military keeps peace for trade to happen in a lot of the world... Not always successfully but it's there. That works because they have the reserve currency and can therefore print money for free. Which benefits the US greatly in all sorts of ways. But everyone else also sees some good. If that goes away its going to have impacts on everyone else as well as America. Maybe not as much of an impact on the rest of the world but this is not good for anyone.
I can get the anger at the way the US acts, particularly over the last couple of weeks, but that doesn't mean that them doing badly helps the rest of us
France and Britain alone used to be able to defend trade routes. I don't think it's a huge expense. It really is good for essentially everyone aside from the US itself, once the disruption is over. Obviously we'll have some kind of crash though, but I think that was inevitable with or without this.
>> France and Britain alone used to be able to defend trade routes. I don't think it's a huge expense.
That was a different world. France and Britain today have nowhere the kind of force projection the USA does, via its military bases and aircraft carriers.
Yes, but the US basically had to intervene and tell them to stop using it. If that hadn't happened they wouldn't have.
The US probably wasn't in preventing an invasion of Egypt, but if not restrained I'm sure that Britain and France could have realised their objectives, and if they had had a continuous need to realise different changing objectives they would have retained more capability.
> France and Britain alone used to be able to defend trade routes. I don't think it's a huge expense
France and Britain used to be two of the world's largest imperial powers, and at any time you could plausibly claim France and Britain alone could defend global trade routes, Britain, at least, still was.
You really aren't making a case for it being an easy, cheap job.
Yes, but I think they can basically still do it. If they hadn't been buying F-35s they'd presumably have pushed their stealth fighter projects to be finished by now, and what more is really required?
I think these trade routes etc. will stop mattering rather soon. Batteries are coming and once that's here the oil trade's gone, and then you have no need to export things to get something to trade for it, so in a decade or so none of this will matter.
International trade will go from being mandatory to optional, and thus become much less important.
I don't think that's completely true. Wasn't the US Navy founded (by a Scotsman of course) because the US at the time lacked the funds to pay off the pirates? European countries did pay them off, hence didn't need as large navies.
I agree. I would argue that Pax Americana has been pretty great for even the USA's supposed "arch enemies." My gut feeling is that everyone loved that stability, whether friend or foe, and the fact that it's now gone will mess everyone up.
I am biased here, but I look forward to the next century of Pax Europa. This is the only way forward.
Europe isn't playing aggressively enough or really doing enough to innovate. China is in a position to reap a huge windfall from Trump putting the US in the dumpster. China will bring Europe into the fold with the promise of gradual reforms, and they'll win the global south with soft power and trade agreements.
My fear is that Trump sees America's position eroding quickly relative to China before his eyes and decides to do something an order of magnitude dumber than anything he's done before.
I know I’ll be downvoted but, since we’re going straight for scorched land, I prefer to voice it.
I think most voters think like me “I still prefer Trump to a leftist government”:
- Was there any need to be so extreme in terms of wokeness on the left? I am directly threatened by their program. Was there really any need to go for such a degree of revolution, ensuring everyone sensical would vote Trump? Could the left imagine being a little more democratic and making a few more concessions towards… omg, white males? Is it such a bane? It’s concessions for white males, or we vote for Trump, so did the left win anything with their scorched earth policy?
- It is true that savings needed to be done. The left refused to do any, and went to raise the public programs, reaching a few trillion debt per semester. At one point this has to stop, and the left ain’t gonna stop by itself, so the left provokes the people into voting for the only one who will stop public spending and, yes, he comes in, and has the bad role of taking the US to the cleaners. You will say “It doesn’t even save money” and whatsnot, but would the left have saved the money by themselves? No. Never. So someone else came in and saved for them.
This entire movement is a reactionary movement to the left. The left makes no concessions. So both sides go for a scorched earth policy.
What have we learned? What have we won, on either sides?
Do we agree that, staying closed-minded as they are, the left will resume public spendings by the trillions the moment they step into power? Do we agree that the left is a direct threat to meritocracy, stability of government, men in marriage, men at work, a direct threat to men’s financial stability, and that no-one on the left cares even a little what others-than-them feel?
> I am directly threatened by their program. […] Could the left imagine being a little more democratic and making a few more concessions towards… omg, white males?
I am not from the US, I am originally from Latin America. I am considered a “white male” there. I am now living in Europe as I am a dual citizen. This kind of position is interesting to me. What is so bad about being a white male in the USA at the moment?
I’d like to elaborate further, but I want to engage in an honest conversation so I would like to hear your opinion.
As a white male from northern europe, I learned during the most left recent years that I’m responsible for all the world’s injustices and ethnic/gender/sexual preference defines a human. I can see why so many gave a protest vote when the current system was trying to paint their existence as non-desirable. We went decades backward and this all just brought the focus back to our insignificant external factors like skin color.
I don’t support extreme right or their hate but it looked a lot like categorical hate against my “kind” that I didn’t have part in choosing.
What got me writing is that is debt actually so bad or is it like leveraged investment? If US would have chosen a bit more professional leader capable to at least maintain the position in world economy, the debt wouldn’t likely ever have to be paid off.
> I’m responsible for all the world’s injustices and ethnic/gender/sexual preference defines a human.
Rest assured you are not. But this could turn out to be true, maybe in a very minor way, the moment your resentment towards this straw man becomes the main driver of your political views.
This is what the US "left" got wrong though. Reality or not, there is a strong perception that what these guys are saying is true. I could not fault someone looking at any media whether social or traditional from coming to this conclusion. I think Andrew Tate is a direct symptom of this. He simply filled a void in confused young men's lives. You can point to data saying that there is still inequality all you like, but you need to deal with the current sentiment too. The left is as responsible for Trump as the ultra right.
Americans literally thought that this extremely easy to bribe, criminal, serial adulterer, whose is most likely trying to undermine your constitution (I expect all you 2nd amendment supporters to stop touting that) was a reasonable choice.
I know this is not an accurate portrayal of your point, but this sounds very much like the “the left needs its own Joe Rogan” argument to me.
The problem with it is that we delegate the duties towards our fellow citizens to the talking heads on TV or in our algorithmic feeds and wash our hands on it—I say “we” because it has been happening in basically every country at this point.
If democracy has failed, as some people love to say, it was not because it was supposed to fail, but because politicians have successfully managed to replace it by the current series of popularity contests we have in place.
No, sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I said that I disagree with that take. Maybe you are not familiar with it, which is something that was raised by some people (maybe jokingly, I don’t know, but it made the rounds in left-wing social media).
I agree that the left should address young men’s struggles, namely the working class, but maybe not in the same sense you are implying. They are as responsible for their own political choices as anyone else.
[P.S.: Am I not from the US. How could I be a Democrat?]
Damn, as another nordic male, why did nobody tell me?
I noticed that someone in America said so, but the US had been extreme, in all ways, for many years and no sane person takes the stuff coming from there as gospel.
I am not responsible for 'all the world’s injustices', and nobody had tried to make me. Maybe if I spend some time on YouTube I can find someone at an American college thinking so, or a right-wing podcast saying that people think so about me. But that is not the mainstream here.
There's no "leftist" party in the USA, there's a Conservative Party called the Democrats, and there's an Ultraconservative Party that's now hellbound to become a Fascist Party called the Republican Party.
Do you also post on the /r/conservative subreddit? Because you should if you do not, you will find many likeminded people who are completely down the rabbit hole.
They're not saving money so far, they have been spending more money than the government spent in 2024. And in those cases where they will spend less they also did enormous damage, e.g. cancelling clinical trials midway through. This is pure destruction, not efficiency.
And your woke argument is a pure strawman. What were those extreme positions by Kamala Harris?
The “Trump is doing the opposite of his program” yields no constructive argument. Because voting for the opposite movement wouldn’t have made the left suddenly implement meritocratic capitalism.
I’ll candidly assume that this is not a rhetorical question aimed at making me pass as a spoiled child, as is frequent with leftism:
- AOC, known as “the squad” (!), has claimed the Congress has too many white males. President Macron said the same about the US tech sector, and he’s not even part of the extremists, so this issue permeates society. Basically everyone says white men should be fewer of them. This is a direct threat.
- Feminism was supposed to give women more place at work and give family a better representation of both genders at home. What happened: Men can’t apply for some jobs anymore; while men are assumed to not merit to see the children by default at home. This has been going on since the 1980 in every developed country, moreso in France and US, a little less in Sweden. Judges and lawyer family courts are often 100%-women (80.2% in the profession).
- We helped women when they were 38% of the university students. But they crossed the 50% in 1990. Men now represent 39% of university students. Do we help them? No, we drop help programs. And Sweden also dropped equality programs the moment men were in need.
This is what various groups have been militanting for years, but they were harassed into submission by the left (from Facebook’s pro-left censorship at the time, to directly burning their cars or killing their dogs, and of course cancelling conference centers for men support groups which they presented as extremists - which is true, men are angry).
How is Trump helping?
- His program basis is based on a meritocratic econonic theory (that does not favour women, which is all the left complains about), but, granted, elected presidents generally implement another program, and Trump isn’t helping much,
- Men thrive in both meritocracies and in the wilderness/lawlessness, because they work more. To this, Trump has choosen the latter. The more economic crisis there is is, the weaker the government, and the more women will need men. Given the left’s program is “let’s take men’s/white’s people money”, the scorched earth is the best situation.
Granted, it would be nicer if leftists didn’t hate white men’s guts so much that they could listen to them when they make reasonable demands such as equity in family courts or meritocracy at the workplace. Barring being sensible…
If you are eating too many carbs and you go to the doctor and he says "you should be eating way less carbs", he is not necessarily telling you to quit all carbs from your diet cold turkey.
It is safe to say that men are ~50% of any country's demographics. If you find any position of power and prestige where they are over-represented, it is safe to assume that there is an imbalance. People will come up with excuses for such imbalance, but one cannot deny that there is such an imbalance there.
this is called Identity Politics.. basing your judgement of other adults by their demographic classifications.. Replacing skills-based and merit-based promotion with "balancing" is racist and sexist in a polar opposite way from the historical trajectory. This parent statement is part of the unrepentant position of many in the USA. This position lost at multiple levels in a massive open election in the USA.
It is actually the opposite. I assume there is no inherent reason why people from other demographics with the required skills and merit cannot be found. Otherwise, there must be a reason why they can’t, and people who think that the current imbalance is perfectly good must have a pretty reasonable explanation to that. Do you have any?
So will the government mandate that 50% of stay at home parents be men?
Because as the other poster pointed out, if you push men out of the workplace and out of family life (by favoring custody for women) you just end up with a bunch of unemployed idle men, which is a recipe for revolution.
And if 50/50 is the goal, where is the government push for more men in places where they're underrepresented, like university students, nurses, teachers?
I can’t reply to your other comment for some reason.
You got me, I did not express myself well. I should have said “working people”. I framed it as a women’s issue since you said that the solution to that would be forcing men to trade places with them.
Re: the fact that bringing up men’s issues is kind of taboo to the left, it seems more of a language problem. If you frame it as a “war on men”, that will turn people off. If you say: “look, there are many bright young guys who could be on college that are otherwise deciding to look for work because the economy is not so great”… Maybe people will listen.
Edit: maybe they will reply “EKSUSE MEE??? WHY NOT WOMEN???”. That is obnoxious, I get it. But do they have a point? If you think so, concede. If you do n’t think so, I would like to know more about it. That is what politics is about.
About 40% of male domestic violence victims who seek help are accused of being the abuser.
Completely coincidentally I'm sure, the federal law on domestic violence is called the "Violence Against Women Act", which furthers the bias that men can't be victims.
How would you improve the situation for male victims without making people on the left hate you?
The same people who say that "firemen" is sexist, will hypocritically say that the naming of the law isn't sexist.
Well, certainly not by threatening to cut funding of humanities research grants. Otherwise they won't be able to conduct research such as this one... But I digress.
The "Violence Against Women Act" is from 1994. Most statistics of that time pointed to a disproportionate amount of women being victims of domestic violence in comparison to men. I tried to find more recent statistics, but this is a very serious topic, so it deserves to be treated with more caution. Also, this is one of the reasons why I think it should not be used as a "war on men" talking point. Do we want to solve the darn problem or use it as a weapon against political opponents?
Well most serious work injuries happen to men, but if we had a "Work Safety For Men" act I bet you'd call that sexist. A law that fails to protect male victims of violence is equally sexist.
The double standard is very visible. Maybe you should just admit that the left is blatantly the "party of women's interests" and give up on gaining men's votes.
This policy was very effective, in the first place. I could eyeball a 70% reduction in the period between 1972 and 2019.
Can it be reduced it even further? Probably.
Would I find it off-puting if any piece of legislation is eventually passed that addresses a hypothetical issue that is disproportionally faced by men and helps reduce it even further? Certainly not.
(I, for one, would approve of the "No More Balls Stuck in the Cogs Act".)
The left believes that any metric where women are worse off needs urgent attention, and any intervention must prioritize women.
But any metric where men are worse off can either be ignored, or fixed with an intervention that is either gender neutral, or preferably, prioritizes women again.
Yes, that sounds like the perfect conversation starter.
If that doesn't work, which I believe is highly unlikely, maybe try incorporating elements of speech as those found in this right-wing publication, the World Socialist Web Site: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/27/hefl-f27.html
Oh, my bad. I thought that the names and pictures of the deceased 66-year-old man and 16-year-old boy would be enough.
I guess we can brush this one under the carpet, right? Nothing to see here. Workplace fatalities are a serious issue, but not so serious to you that it is worth bridging that gap. Maybe I’m wrong. Feel free to correct me if that is the case.
On the other hand, I acknowledge that men are disproportionately affected by this issue and that it deserves serious attention from both left and right. I would wholeheartedly support their demand of better working conditions from their employers and representatives, and advise them to contact the media so that the general public can be informed of that and, who knows, maybe support unionization if their demands are not met. Do you think this is a reasonable stance, or do you see any problems with that?
Also, are you available to organize so that we could bring some consciousness to the public about how men are disproportionately affected by workplace fatalities in developed countries? The condition being that we first agree on the causes leading to it.
We could start with the resources we have already found on the Internet. I can pay for the domain if you are interested.
> So will the government mandate that 50% of stay at home parents be men?
Well, obviously not. But there is always the caveat that suggesting government providing adequate child care to working women is communism of whatever. Is it feasible to have some compromise here?
> And if 50/50 is the goal, where is the government push for more men in places where they're underrepresented, like university students, nurses, teachers?
This sounds like a perfectly legitimate ask if young men do really care about it. Why not contact your local representative and explain the issue in an articulate manner?
> government providing adequate child care to working women
You see this is the bias on the left, that everything must be framed as "for women". If the childcare is only for "working women", will a single dad not be able to access it?
Why not government providing adequate child care to working people?
> Why not contact your local representative and explain the issue in an articulate manner?
I do, but your have to admit there is a chilling effect in left wing spaces where openly supporting men's issues makes you very unpopular.
> The more economic crisis there is is, the weaker the government, and the more women will need men
So, to put a finer point on it - you decided that aiming to destroy the United States, and the Pax Americana underlying western civilization, was an appropriate response because AOC and Macron (who represent "everyone", in your apparent media diet) hurt your feelings. As a fellow man, this is just pathetic and entitled.
There have always been groups in society you cannot criticize. There has always been groupthink bullshit that you just smile and nod, and then later share your real thoughts with your trusted close friends. The growing prevalence of talking about men's rights issues was the painstaking path to them getting better - there are some pretty harsh biological reasons why custody courts are slanted towards women, right? If you really wanted to phrase this in terms of "men", then maybe you needed to listen to your fellow wiser men telling you to hold your nose and vote conservative/democrat instead of lashing out with histrionic destruction. Alas.
You’re forgetting that the previous government was losing at least 2 wars (in Ukraine and against Houties) and destroying the United States - trying to jail political opponents, subverting elections, destroying the country’s borders, erasing meritocracy, instituting censorship and ignoring Supreme Court rulings.
Those topics weren't in the scope of the original discussion and I'm not really interested in litigating partisan entertainment propaganda based around taking shreds of truth (at best) and blowing them out of proportion.
The large scale facts are that under the previous administration we had working relationships with our allies, mostly functional executive agencies (aka law enforcement), and the US (ie USD) was seen as a source of stability. Meanwhile the current administration's actions are indistinguishable from a foreign power doing its best to destroy our country - we are now isolated from our allies (and even seen as hostile!), the ideal of rule of law has been replaced by brazenly corrupt rule by law, and we're staring down dedollarization.
It wasn't rethorical and I appreciate your extensive answer. Being male myself, I can relate to some of the points you made. But I don't feel threatened. I guess there is a wide range of the meaning of this word, but I would describe it as perceiving a danger to ones life, livelihood, happiness or something. I did not experience any more disadvantages from being male than being young or old, short, brown-eyed, not too smart, overweight etc.
And your reasonable demands...are you seriously at a workplace where meritocracy is lived? Ever? Out of the many different non-meritocratic factors that come into play in a workplace, being male certainly was never in the top 10 for me. If anything it was an advantage. I'm sorry if you had different experiences. It's not true, where I live, that men can't apply for certain jobs, and I doubt that is the reality for you. The usual term is "everything else equal, a female candidate will be preferred", which is just an encouragement to women to apply. If you want the male candidate, you always find a reason that he is not equal to the female applicant. So if you have the feeling that you didn't get a job because you are male - perhaps it was because the female candidate was better.
And those recurring "leftist", "leftism" references make your statements a bit biased. The time to put everything in left and right categories is somewhat last century. It's all more complicated than that. Nobody hates you because your male and white. But it sure sounds a bit whiny what you are complaining about - imagine you'd be black and female, you really think you would be in a better position, you would have an advantage then? Come on.
The left’s arguments are unfortunately a collection of your argument: Refuting entirely-developed speeches because of a single sentence missing one word.
Trump and meritocracy? You are insane. Oh, Hegseth the wife-(and alcohol-)abusing TV-presenter should be in charge the world's most powerful military? Brett Kavanaugh, who in the balance of probability did assault that woman, should be forced into the supreme court (even blocking the FBI investigation)? You're just going to excuse these flaws away, aren't you?
To be honest, this thread has shown what weak fragile egos some white men have. So your kind has had it easy for centuries. Yeah, probably the rhetoric that's made you "the enemy" is really dumb (hey it poisoned the mind of the richest man in the world, for one), but what do you expect, mollycoddling?
Hah, maybe the whole (white) world should have a truth-and-reconciliation committee, where men are invited to discuss their privilege, and what can be changed to make an equal world. (Actually not just white, men all over the world have had this tyranny. Then again maybe it's just the animal/biological nature that we shouldn't just suppress). But even with "committee", there'll be weak egos screaming about the tyranny against them. A bit like states wanting to hide away the civil war from their education, or not even allowing discussion about systemic racism or "critical race theory" (uh oh sorry if that triggers you, if I were mocking you I'd call you a snowflake now).
My wife likes to tell me that she'll know when feminism has succeeded when the US Supreme Court is all women. I tell her that I'll know when feminism has succeeded when the military is all women.
I do admit the existence of insanely moronic arguments that are sometimes made. "As a woman you have to vote for Hillary because she's a woman.". What a dumb argument, that's still identity politics. If the choice was between someone like female Sarah Palin that wants government control of women's bodies, because she thinks the Bible should trump the constitution vs. a man who would respect the separation of church and state (e.g. the catholic Biden who nevertheless supported Roe v. Wade), would a woman have to still be obliged to vote for Palin?
The power is right there, ready to be taken. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to wait for the “white man” to grant you more power. But, to do so, you will need to risk more than your online reputation.
Huh, let's just forget that women had to e.g. fight for the right to vote, or the whole civil rights movement... OK, fine, it's 2025, and let's see, is the discrimination that's in people's heads about "what's normal" totally gone? I can admit that if you ask me to imagine a CEO, I'd imagine a middle-aged white man, am I the only one? And what does this image of normality do to the idea of who will be picked for a particular job, by a group of people?
Yeah if I'm looking for a caretaker for my child, a male candidate would also make me go "Huh, interesting". Women have the advantage for this job, and men have it for the CEO job, I wonder which job is more powerful in the world (if we don't pull out a philosophical idea of "powerful"...).
The reason that military forces tend to be composed mostly of men is for two very practical reasons:
1. Men are on average physically stronger than women, and at their peak are physically stronger than is possible for any woman. This is more useful in a combat situation.
2. Women's bodies are specialized for pregnancy and childbirth. Without women providing this essential function, the next generation of humanity would not exist. By contrast, men are more disposable because all they do is provide the sperm.
A society where almost all women have been killed in battle cannot effectively repopulate, as there is a bottleneck of pregnancy: it is a long process that - excluding relatively rare cases of multiple births - requires one woman per newborn to conduct. A society where almost all men have been killed can repopulate much more rapidly, as it only takes a small number of men to fulfil the male reproductive role of providing sperm.
In fact the existence of sperm banks makes the widespread obliteration of males even less of a risk to the survival of humanity. Plus there is a promising subfield of stem cell research on growing viable sperm from female cells, which would remove the reliance upon males entirely.
What left are you talking about? The Democratic Party in the USA would be seen as neo-liberals too from outside the US. Calling it "the left" just shows how delusional the society in the USA seems to have become...
I agree, but I would also like to add that the Republican Party is not a conservative party, either. Trump brags about raising taxes on so many imports. And the current administration never saw a Chesterton’s fence they didn’t want to tear down. The party as a whole seems to be pretty happy with it.
So that’s America, no options if you want to vote for a liberal party or a conservative party.
> The Democratic Party in the USA would be seen as neo-liberals too from outside the US
Incorrect: This is an old argument from the left to pretend that US leftism isn’t very left.
Truth: The US government is in debt of 6 trillion per year, which makes it the most powerful government of the world. The right’s “Atlas Shrugged” vision is to have a very lean government, as in, weak and powerless as possible.
Conclusion: The American left wing proposes to build a government bigger than any socialist country in the world.
Correlation: Ironically, the leftists are often anti-war and they’d be much better defended if they supported defunding the US government to the point they couldn’t wage war outside their borders. The left should support Elon Musk ;) </s>
OP should have said that "The Democratic Party in the USA IS seen as neo-liberals too from outside the US".
There is obviously multiple axises you can place the left/right on. If you want to define anyone who accepts debt as 'left', and thus the USA is leftish then... ok whatever floats your boat. Just be aware that the rest of the world sees concepts like universal healtcare and education as more important than how much debt you accept. Using debt to pay for a huge military and unsustainable low taxes is not a typical leftish view.
> The right’s “Atlas Shrugged” vision is to have a very lean government, as in, weak and powerless as possible.
This is objectively not true of the right's actions. If you read Project 2025 or just look at the legislation/EOs passed, the right is currently trying to expand the power of the president to unprecedented levels. In addition, they're trying to undermine the checks and balances of the courts such that the government can make greater decisions faster.
This isn't a small government, it's teetering on fascism. The fascism analogs only grow greater when you here Trump speak of an enemy within, who must be eliminated. When he speaks as if he is the One True answer to every problem facing the US. Trump-ism is become more akin to a cult than a political platform, many people just following Trump because they view him a God. It's a bit spooky. It's very difficult to not draw parallels to fascist leaders of the past.
> Conclusion: The American left wing proposes to build a government bigger than any socialist country in the world.
Delusional, sorry. If you think the democrats, the ultra-capitalist right-leaning party, want to create a socialist country you are just delusional. I don't know how to help you there because it's just not in touch with reality.
There's, like, 2 representatives in all of the Democratic party who could maybe kind of be consider democratic-socialists. And there's a better chance of hell freezing over than those 2 convincing the other hundreds to go their way.
After a certain point, we have to come back down to Earth and acknowledge what is actually going on, instead of whatever we have allowed our minds to concoct.
> making a few more concessions towards… omg, white males?
I'm a white man. We already HAVE all the concessions. There's nothing left to give us. I mean, we're not gonna implement anti-racist stuff against white men because there does not exist any racism against white men. Ergo, that policy is defacto implemented.
White men also don't need DEI because we actually already have DEI. Studies show upwards of 50% increase in likelihood of being hired if you're white.
I mean, look at Trump's cabinet and admin. Full of white men... because they are white men. A lot of them are very unqualified.
> It is true that savings needed to be done.
This administration will only raise the deficit.
Also, the left at least admitted that taxes on the ultra-wealthy need to be raised. The Trump administration is continuing to raise YOUR taxes while cutting theirs. So, to recap: higher taxes for you, a greater deficit, and the programs will be cut. Wow, it's a lose-lose-lose! Almost impressive how shit conservative policy is.
> This entire movement is a reactionary movement to the left.
I applaud your honesty in admitting the reactionary nature of American conservatives.
However, you're incorrect in saying they're reacting to the left. They're not. They're reacting to a made-up version of the left. One formed and imagined through decades of conservative propaganda. One where the left are communists, baby eaters, and reptilians - not the reality, where the democratic party is a right-leaning ultra-capitalist party.
> Do we agree that, staying closed-minded as they are, the left will resume public spendings by the trillions the moment they step into power? Do we agree that the left is a direct threat to meritocracy, stability of government, men in marriage, men at work, a direct threat to men’s financial stability, and that no-one on the left cares even a little what others-than-them feel?
There is no need to get left/right political here. There are two political parties in the USA, and they both hit the feedback loop of $crack. One might have led to low-trust faster than the other, but they are both $crack addicts in the end.
Just to be clear as to what this means in politics on the ground... left or right, if you have a political position which disagrees with the biggest money, they will primary you. So, left or right, generally speaking, you only see politicians finally standing up for their morals when they are no longer up for election. The most obvious recent example of this is Mitch McConnell.
at some point you hit saturation on most anything, doesn't stop the fact that hundreds of millions were spent on both sides. Kamala lost because she was a female of color, not because of policies, no one will ever convince me otherwise. There are just too many misogynists and racists in the USA currently to have both of those working against you unless you're bordering on messianic in charisma
You mean a single day fundraiser beat Trump’s single day fundraising by 2-3x, that would be correct. If you think her 90 day campaign fundraising managed to beat Trump’s 8 year fundraising campaign that would be wildly incorrect.
Yup. I know. Elections have consequences. When we elect an anti-science president because we are single issue voters aka we think he will lower our taxes or be draconian on the border this is what we get.
What would be great is if the EU took some Russian money to fund all these lost projects. Include KSA in these projects so they don't complain about the confiscation of funds. Suddenly we don't lose 20 to 30 years of scientific advancement.
(Then send the rest to Ukraine, if that's cool, please)
> I realized my GitHub repository was public, which was not my intention at all before launching the project.
I'm sorry, but aren't GitHub repos private by default?
edit: see down-thread, but they are private by default in GitHub Desktop, which is what I have used to create new repos for years. However, they are public by default on github.com.
Personal repositories are public by default, and for organizations you can change the default visibility (default one might be private, not sure about that).
Oh wow, I just tested this and found the source of my confusion.
I'm know it's not cool, but I have used GitHub Desktop all the time, for years. In the GitHub Desktop app, my new personal repos are private by default.
However, on the github.com, they are public by default.
That seems a bit weird, and a dangerous place for inconsistency. I certainly prefer the private by default behavior. I would love to know the PM lore about this difference.
My main concern is that de-globalizing trade will remove a large barrier for real kinetic war. Bombing your economic partner is generally a dumb move, and that has been pretty nice for humanity in the last ~50 years.
Its definitely de-globalizing USA's trade but I don't think it will de-globalize the rest of the world's trade. One method for countries to combat US's tariffs is to reduce trade barriers between themselves thus reducing the barriers to sell their goods to other countries instead of US. EU and China just had an initial conversation regarding just this.
I don’t see that happening since the US has historically been the least protectionist of nations.
The EU loves protectionism. The single market is totally dysfunctional with a recent study saying it was equivalent to a 45% tariff between member states for manufacturing, a 110% for services.
If this is the cohort you expect to save the world economy with free trade I certainly wouldn’t be betting real money on it.
Historically, the United States of America pursued a protectionist policy from the beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century.
Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world. After 1942, the U.S. began to promote worldwide free trade.
Within the EU single market, there are no tariffs or customs duties between member states for manufactured goods, services, capital, and people, fostering free movement and trade.
The report(?) you a paraphrasing badly talked about within Europe (not the EU) and referred to figures between, say, Germany and Russia.
\? At a guess (thanks for not citing the report) you meant the IMF Regional Economic Outlook report titled “Europe: A Recovery Short of Europe’s Full Potential” (October 2024) ?
> Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world. After 1942, the U.S. began to promote worldwide free trade.
The US did this because of the free trade treaties between west European states after WW2. This eventually led to the EU. The US, not wanting to be isolated, pushed for their own treaties.
> I would have thought Japan and China hated each other more than they hated Trump but it seems otherwise.
I believe they still hate each other much more than Trump, but under the given circumstances even archenemies can reach temporary (likely unstable) pragmatic agreements as long as these agreements are clearly advantageous to all of the involved archenemies involved.
That's an extremely good point, which hits really close to home.
I wonder if Putin would have still invaded Ukraine, knowing the extent of sanctions that would hit them. He might have been lulled into thinking that the EU would not care, given the existence of people like Gerhard Schröder and his ilk.
edit: I am not sure that the reason for the Russian-German energy alliance was an attempt at pacification. It seems more likely to me that it was simply in the economic interest of Germany. Countries which are East of Germany certainly complained about it, for strategic reasons.
German Ostpolitik (eastern politics) goes back before independent Russia back to the 1960s attempt to cooperate and have peace with Eastern Germany and the Soviet Union. And peace with Russia (maybe even its transformation into a regular democraric state) was the primary stated motivator in recent years. Economics and even bribes helpwd grease the wheels but peace is what formed the national strategy in the first place and what entrenched it
kraut made some intresting videos on this topic recently. both the start of ostpolitik and their failure in recent hears compared with Polish politics towards Russia
Before WWI there was a similar belief in Europe, that the growing economic interdependence would prevent wars from breaking out. Instead once there was a spark, those relationships kept pulling more and more countries into the conflict and turned it into the "Great War".
> Instead once there was a spark, those relationships kept pulling more and more countries into the conflict
This is a bad take on the cause of alliances. large wartime coalitions had been a thing since the consolidation of power into monarchies in Europe: the 7-year war had involved all of Europe's significant actors, as did the napoleonic wars, the war for the spanish succession, the 30-year war, etc. This was much earlier than the development of cross-border trade.
In an imperialist era, diplomacy was the way to coordinate European nations' colonial efforts without repeating that kind of conflict. It was only temporary, though, since expansionist policies can't last forever peacefully.
The reason WW1 felt so different from previous wars was technological development. That aspect was already present in earlier wars, WW1 was just the first major European conflict in a long time.
Were they economic interdependencies or high-level political alliances?
The E.U. is clearly an example of the economic interdependency theory. It evolved in post-WW2 Europe from the European Coal and Steel Community. Mineral richness is why the Saarland was given to France after WW2. The idea is that economic integration will lead to political integration from the ground up.
My understanding of the pre-WW1 alliances is that they were deals made between a lot of people with “Habsburg” in their names.
The Habsburg dynasty technically became extinct in 1780. After that they were the house of Habsburg-Lorraine and they didn’t have much direct influence outside of Austria-Hungary.
Dynastic politics were by and large dead in the 1800s with few exceptions (but generally kings/queens were just pawns in the hand of the politicians unlike in the preceding centuries).
I disagree the EU is peaceful because of democratic peace theory and because of the political union not because of trade. If it was just economic and some of those countries were authoritarian I could easily border conflicts turning into wars
The last dictatorship was in the 1970s? The last World War the 40s? The US might have had a civil war but it went in and came out the other side with the same borders, government, and constitution. Still going strong since the 18th century.
The person you are responding to was talking about the EU. It did not exist in the 40s and Spain wasn't a part of it til the 80s. You are really bringing the level of discourse down.
> The relationship would benefit both sides: Germany would supply the machines and high-quality industrial goods; Russia would provide the raw material to fuel German industry. High-pressure pipelines and their supporting infrastructure hold the potential to bind countries together, since they require trust, cooperation and mutual dependence. But this was not just a commercial deal, as the presence at the hotel of the German economic minister Karl Schiller showed. For the advocates of Ostpolitik – the new “eastern policy” of rapprochement towards the Soviet Union and its allies including East Germany, launched the previous year under chancellor Willy Brandt – this was a moment of supreme political consequence. Schiller, an economist by training, was to describe it as part of an effort at “political and human normalisation with our Eastern neighbours”.
Its prussian restorationism, it oozes out of berlin since the reunification and with it and its disciples (AFD) comes that idea that you can ignore the small countries if you are a big country. There are people not falling for it, but real-imperialists like Steinmeier, Schröder or Gauland are ready to send other smaller nations to the slaughter for their own benefits .
"Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?"
Those in power right now have no personal disincentive to real kinetic war. It doesn't affect them personally, or so they think up until the moment it does.
I wouldn't put it past Teddy Roosevelt. When he was undersecretary of the navy that helped start the Spanish American war he resigned (despite his superiors asking him not to) to fight in the war. He also asked to fight in WW1 despite being old.
For all his positive attributes former senator McCain was known as a hawk. There have always been men who after fighting come away with a firm belief in military power. If you made service a requirement you wouldn't necessarily get fewer hawks just ones you can't criticize for not participating in war themseu
They've got to finish their one-for-you-two-for-me "audit". But don't worry I'm sure we'll be hearing any day now how JOEBIDEN was simultaneously sleepy and also a mastermind that stole all the gold, and how they now need to purchase a bunch of shitcoins to replace it.
I think it won't change much because frankly the peace trade theory has not worked out very well. I think it was first formulated around WW1 and didn't stop it or WW2.
Most modern wars don't make financial sense when accounting for everything but they are still fought. Often over stupid reasons.
For example Russia invaded Ukraine despite trade partnership with Ukraine and EU.
I don't think so: for example the Weimar Republic is a counterexample. Or a modern example is the current war between Ukraine and Russia (both are democracies even though in Russia some particular president and party has a lot of influence). Both of these examples show that even in a democratic country under specific circumstances it can happen that a particular group or party can gain lots of power.
--
If you want to see another interesting "peace theory", consider the madman theory:
It basically says that if a country has access to atomic weapons, and the president or person in power radiates the image that he is sufficiently "mad" that in case of an aggression against the country they are willing to use them and escalate the conflict into a global nuclear holocaust, other stakeholders will strongly attempt not to upset this country, i.e. seek more peaceful and diplomatic solutions with this country.
This theory explains well why the USA have not yet invaded North Korea and are hesitant to invade Iran.
I wouldn't consider Putins Russia a democracy especially in 2014 after the Medvedev shuffle.
Putins dislike and lack of understanding of democracy and how it lead Ukraine in a different path towards the EU was probably a major factor in his decision to invade
This is a pretty old idea that goes back to debates over David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage in the early 1800s.
> “Free trade is God’s diplomacy. There is no other certain way of uniting people in the bonds of peace than by the bonds of interest.”
- Richard Cobden
People thought that international trade would prevent war before WW1[1]. The concept doesn't really account for how political leaders often care about things other than money, business, or the material welfare of their plebs.
The deglobalization is happening anyway if you believe Peter Ziehan. Biden implemented policies to start the deglobalization despite trumpers claiming he was a globalist.
To me, the really interesting question is how to stop what appears to have been inevitable for the last 40+ years: when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what could help here involves all kinds of non-market solutions which are hard to solve, and very not cool at the moment.
The reason that I find this important is that even though I personally have no problem with race/culture mixing, in-fact I love Korean BBQ tacos... eventually with the immigration solution, there is an end state where all societies and countries are economically advanced, and have negative birth rates. What then? As a Star Trek fan, I have ideas about post-scarcity.
reply