And yes, I do understand how utterly bonkers it is to suggest something this big changing over just 3 years.
The War in Ukraine is dampening trade with Russia. The EU is struggling in their trade relations with the PRC even more than with America right now, and fears them more than they fear us. A trade deal (“Mercosur”) with South America is in the process of potentially blowing up, and if it’s not passed in its current state, Brazil is looking to walk for the remainder of their President’s term in office.
So the EU’s options are limited.
Part of the issue if that as you move up the value chain your list of potential trading partners shrinks, as lower-income partners aren't viable.
Look at GDP per capita (I picked nominal, for export consumption purposes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Europe's options for high-value exports at scale are... who?
Although I would add that what makes good export partners is not GDP directly, but changes in GDP and that mostly comes from changes in the debt levels of these countries. So, ironically the Russian threat, and the EU debt increase in response to it, can probably be expected to raise the GDP of EU countries by 2-3% or so. So EU-US trade should actually increase, tariffs or no tariffs. Besides, tariffs are a tax on the poor, and it's not the poor importing stuff (just ask the poor in the EU how it's been going). US basic needs manufacturers, like farms, are the ones that are going to lose big, and keep losing big, due to tariffs. Oh, and the poor, of course. I'm sure Trump will make some of his typical eloquent remarks about the poor needing to lose weight and spend less on children.
By contrast, the US will need to do it's very best to not reduce public debt or really increase interest rates they're paying in the next year and a half. Not because of Trump's intentions but because of how he scheduled the massive debt increase last time he was in office. The way he was probably actually fucked by Biden, you know what he was screaming about for years, is that he put a $10 trillion dollar refinancing requirement for the US in for 2025-2026-2027 that he expected to fuck up his successor. Then Biden "stole" most of the good part of Trumps debt increase: the decrease in debt repayments for the US government 2016-2020 ... and delivered the refinancing disaster right back ... to Trump.
That was Trump's financial plan: massive debt increase in 2017, scheduled to come due (require refinancing) ... 8 years later. "Apres-nous le deluge" I believe this principle is called. So Trump's plan was 2017-2021: lots of debt repayment paid by massively increasing US debt, including refinancing debt due in 2021-2025. then 2021-2025, spend the extra income, knowing the bill isn't due until 2025-2029. Then, Biden got to spend the 2021-2025 money ... and send the bill to Trump. Like is often said when it comes to Trump's supposed brilliance: "ooops...".
Probably Trump expected to be out of the office at the start of 2025 and just leave his successor with a massive and difficult refinancing ... and Biden and democrats dropped that hot iron right back into Trump's lap.
So Trump introduced a massive new tax, which of course won't cover the sums he needs. He will raise taxes further.
each other. Intracontinental trade has always been a large part of Europe's wealth.
Merz is actually doing a masterclass in beggar thy neighbors policies right now by breaking the debt brake mostly to pay for subsidies in Germany rather than investments. It's pretty surreal to see them somehow stuck to sell side policies when they have no one to actually sell to and refuse the mean to create an actual market in Europe.
You don't really need rivals outside when your core members act this way.
The problem I see is the risks are not under the EU's control. We may face becoming much more insular regardless of what any of us ourselves actually want.
Trump is behaving in a manner not consistent with EU nations retaining indepdendence and sovreignty. And also betting the future of USA on economic development plans (and military plans) that do not seem realistic.
That’s also not a viable option for the EU, or more specifically: the constituent nations of the EU. They’re as dependent on trade as we are, maybe even more so, and so we are stuck in this relationship where we constantly piss each other off in various ways, and believe me when I say it goes both ways.
Trump policies look extreme because tariffs are often seen as crude and outdated but it's very much a continuation of economic hostility rather than a novelty.
I think your main point is valid, but it would be more compelling if you'd taken a few seconds to read it before submitting, to catch this double-negative.
China can already detect and track stealth aircraft using a combination of ground based passive radar and StarLink signal, as well as satellite reconnaissance. Europe could have this capability whenever they're ready to spend and, in the case of a satellite, lift to orbit.
[1] https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/12/24/u-s-hunts-sanctioned-t...
[2] https://www.stripes.com/branches/coast_guard/2024-03-06/coas...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46130106
[4] https://www.gao.gov/military-readiness
[5] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-are-in-the-us-...
[6] https://usafacts.org/articles/is-military-enlistment-down/
[7] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/06/6-facts-a...
Military might has plenty to do with bluffing. That's what politics is all about.
But when the music stops and the ball drops, US and EU aren't going to war with each other any time soon. So measuring military might doesn't really matter.
If Putin decides Poland is propping up Ukraine he might expand the war into Poland because right now it isn’t clear that the US would honor their NATO commitments.
Or it could just end with mutual total nuclear annihilation of course.
Edit: now if they were to attack the eu over a decades long interference campaign with its member state democracies, funding anti eu parties, stoking separatist sentiments, and covertly subverting the fundamental pillars of its liberal democracies, on the other hand…
If EU countries commit to a conflict, Russia has no chance. It makes nuclear escalation a real risk though.
Poland alone has a population comparable to Ukraine, and a significantly larger economy.
Add in other nato countries and we’re cooked.
If anything, the US society is more divided today.
Americans culturally have seen ourselves as the "Good Guys" for the last century or so, and Good Guys imply Bad Guys. If there aren't any credible Bad Guys external to the US, Americans start thinking the Bad Guys are the rich, or the coastal elites, or flyover country, or liberals, or whatever. That's just 'cause there's no one else to be against, though; it'll pass.
Didn't Trump have the army attack democratic cities earlier this year?
The US military cannot be used to perform domestic policing functions (Posse Comitatus Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act ), except in times of insurrection or when state unable or unwilling to suppress violence that threatens citizens' constitutional rights (Enforcement Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_Acts ).
Hence Trump's continual (and false) claims that the cities he's targeting are lawless and dangerous places.
The above applies to federal US military forces. The laws specifically exclude the US Coast Guard. Non-military federal forces (FBI, ICE, etc) are also excluded.
It also, in the more complicated quirk, excludes state military forces (i.e. "National Guard" units). These forces can be activated under a variety of different legal frameworks (see https://www.nationalguard.mil/Portals/31/Resources/Fact%20Sh... ), some of which allow their use for domestic police functions (Title 32 and SAD), because they're still under the command of the state governor (who can use military forces to perform domestic policing functions inside their state or a neighboring state).
There's also a special exclusion for Washington, DC, as technically the president is sort of its governor for many purposes.
Given that background, what actually happened...
- Trump activated National Guard units under Title 10 (aka federal active duty service), because this doesn't require the consent of a state's governor
- Trump then deployed these units to several cities, some with the support of Republican governors and some without the support of Democratic governors
- The administration's legal team realized performing policing functions with the above forces was on extremely shaky ground
- Therefore, they mostly claimed (loudly) that they were deploying "the military", but in actuality used them for extremely limited, non-policing purposes (picking up trash, talking to tourists, guarding federal buildings, guarding other federal agents performing law enforcement functions)
- After state governments sued, the courts generally agreed the deployment was unlawful ( https://www.reuters.com/world/us-supreme-court-rejects-trump... )
The US could have continued to tread water for another 5 years, or another 10 years, or another 15 years, and would have lost even more men and spent even more money, and it would still have faced the same problem: there was no way to win the war. Every day that the war continued just meant more deaths and more money wasted.
What the US needs is to invest right now in fusion technology and learn the damn Math right. Hint: hypercubes and physics.
They have it easy:
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-fourth-dimension-scientists-gl...
https://wt3000.substack.com/p/scientists-just-built-a-fourth...
They don't need a war to feed the industry, they need the balls to evolve themselves as the Chinese did. First from pure Maoism to Deng Xiaoping, and next from coal to clean energy. It's a decades bound plan, but if Beijing becames clean it would be one of the greatest things for China (and the world) ever.
This would mean acknowledging that some sectors are best stated supported, such as healthcare; while others are best company supported/evolved, such as telecos and R+D, but with proper regulations, so net neutrality stays as is and patents get open over few decades so everyone can play the game.
And, no, you don't need to put social credit, social surveillance or any other bullshit such as Chat Control.
Programmers with concepts such as the Hamming distance and nodes in a network are pretty much ready to understand the further reasons of my comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercube_internetwork_topolog...
Hint: rotating/translating objects will be cheaper than moving over time.
But also Europe (besides Ukraine) doesn't have much to gain from fighting Russia. They're happy to assist in air raids in North Africa / Middle East for energy reasons (see Libya) but it's fighting for practical purposes.
The table can also be turned against the US. Despite the endless complaints about Mexico sending drugs & drug dealers into the US it's not like we are doing effective (or drastic).
Much more likely they invade another non-EU, non-NATO country like Moldova.
You’re vastly underestimating how resource rich America, North America and the Western Hemisphere are.
…to where we need to mine or drill Europe?
What is your source for any of this?
If the EU ally’s with Australia, pics up an enemy of an enemy - China, they can withstand a US embargo.
About our increasing consumption, you can read the report here (https://www.unep.org/resources/Global-Resource-Outlook-2024).
We can’t extract our way out of this. We’ll have nothing left. We need space minerals and more rocks that aren’t home. We’re fighting over less and less sand in the sandbox.
We were never debating if Europe could survive an American embargo.
You said “most money won't buy you much resources in a decade.” This was about America surviving a European freeze-out. The simple truth is, there are more resources in America and within its military’s undisputed reach than there are in Europe.
Your UNEP report doesn’t show why America alone couldn’t extract its way out of an embargo. (While it puts its military to use.)
Oh. Sure. Fair. But not relevant in our lifetimes, at least not from the position of the United States. If push came to shove, we'd take those last bits of sand. That's one of the problems with might makes right: it lets those in power put off hard choices.
The EU is a vassal state through and through, they just haven't accepted this yet.
France has nukes, so those aren't a plausible threat. Any kind of land invasion is doomed to fail - the US didn't even manage to beat a bunch of goat herders in one of the poorest countries of the world. A naval blockade is the most likely to succeed - except for the whole "land bridge to Asia/Africa" part. And if the blockade does succeed and the continent starts to starve, there's the whole "France has nukes" part again...
Besides, do you really think China/India won't get involved? And do you really think the US public is going to accept their friends and family dying because some power-hungry politician got the braindead idea to send them against Europe? The reception will be worse than Vietnam!
What on earth are you talking about???
We have accepted that for a long time, and there are no plans to change it.
Why do you think there is zero movement to disentangle from any important US dependencies? Such as software. There is nothing whatsoever happening to be any less dependent on the US, part from defense, and that only after repeated urging and finally some real force-pressure to get the EU moving (even after Trump's first term little to nothing actually happened).
European countries are perfectly fine with where they are, if any less dependency on the US is to happen, it will only be after huge pressure from the US.
That is deliberate, they just don't see value in e.g. trying to recreate the Microsoft and other software ecosystems. After all, it already exists, so why compete at that point? It does not make economic sense. Also, it is not Europe's strength: Every country would, in practice, (have to) develop their own version, while in the US a company can easily scale across the entire nation. For Software, it makes no (economic) sense for Europe to compete in an area where this kind of scale is important.
And that strength argument, only some minor politicians, and some journalists, keep bringing up headlines such as "Can Germany save Europe?", or celebrating "Germany back on the world stage" when there is some minor meeting hosted by Germany (seen recently). The vast majority of people could not care less about being "number one" and "leading (anything, politically)".
Not trying to reinvent the wheel, or many wheels actually, out of some "pride" moment seems pretty foolish to me. If the US is good producing this or that, we get it from there, so what? Everybody, including the US, made even more far-reaching similar decisions with industry moved to China. Compared to that, European reliance on the US is not much, and pretty much unavoidable, unless one gives up lots of wealth.
But the whole point of Nuremberg was to prevent this, the whole idea of international law was meant to prevent this. The judges of Nuremberg warned us about this outcome.
In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged? Have we forgotten the important parts of history, in our urgency to prevent it repeating?
If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
Lots of people realize the importance of this, but if the country who plays world police doesn't want to collaborate on making it reality and they literally still perform violent actions against other sovereign states without repercussions, what is the purpose?
While it will not control the murderer, it can and will influence it (violence going 10% down is better than 0%)
This is also what protection payments look like on paper; surely we can reduce violence much more.
I say: let every country have nukes, or let no country have them. This halfway bullshit is worse than either.
Idealists create worse outcomes than realists and pragmatists.
Violence going down 10% can be worse than it going down 0%, if the difference comes from reducing counter-violence done by the oppressed - and reducing based on the agenda and whims of the big time abusers responsible for a big chunk of the other 90%.
To be nitpicky here, the goal of the ICC isn't to prevent aggressive acts or war in general. They are only punishing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - which is a small subset of potential violent acts a state may commit. The ICC does not have juridsiction over crimes of aggression.
[Yes technically there is an optional thing that countries can sign to give the ICC juridsiction over crimes of aggression, but so few countries have signed it that it may as well not exist]
The ICC could never be anything but what it is -- powerless against those with bigger guns. This is the fundamental nature of law and power. Barring the subjugation of all states to a supranational sovereign capable of universal enforcement, there is, ultimately, no such thing as international law.
Queue’s/line’s in shop are not formally enforced by some authority to my knowledge, but most participants adhere to such order. (I would call it tradition)
That seems a little silly on the face of it when you realize most people complicit during the war in what we would now call war crimes weren't even charged to begin with. Many on the losing side found lucrative jobs with the side that won, and the side that won wasn't even considered for charges.
> In a world where human rights are not respected, why would we think that the Jewish people are anything but disadvantaged?
That also seems a little farcical any way you twist it
> If might makes right, you've already accepted that the world belongs to China.
Actually, I think we're moving towards a world that is more earnestly determined by market forces. Or, these were always the same concepts; we just can't force the world to take our "deals" anymore.
So what, you should just keep your head in the sand instead? Not that I accept that claim anyways (quitter talk).
The whole point of Nuremberg was to put on a show against the defeated, and establish the "good guys" who now run international order.
Acts like Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the rest of allied abuses weren't on trial there or elsewhere.
Better, imagine the ICC ordered the arrest in 1943 of Franklin D. Roosevelt over ... let's say ... the forced relocation of Unangax̂ (Aleut) villagers in the Alaska Aleutian Islands.
The result wouldn't have been better for the ICC than the Gaza warrants.
I don't think you appreciate the way justice becomes irrelevant in fascist and tyrannical countries.
The 'show' of fair justice, dispensed with care and deliberation, is something you seem to take for granted.
In most countries you get put up against a wall, and shot, for saying the wrong things about the right people.
I find your argument uniquely cowardly: Power without justice is a recipe for tyranny. And the position that tyranny should be the norm is something an evil or cowardly person espouses.
Yes, there is plenty of atrocity. Pretending the allied behavior is as atrocious as Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Hitler, is pretentious relativism.
In "The White Man's Burden", Kipling encouraged the American annexation and colonisation of the Philippine Islands, a Pacific Ocean archipelago purchased in the three-month Spanish–American War (1898).[1] As an imperialist poet, Kipling exhorts the American reader and listener to take up the enterprise of empire yet warns about the personal costs faced, endured, and paid in building an empire;[1] nonetheless, American imperialists understood the phrase "the white man's burden" to justify imperial conquest as a civilising mission that is ideologically related to the continental expansion philosophy of manifest destiny of the early 19th century.[2][3][4][5] With a central motif of the poem being the superiority of white men, it has long been criticised as a racist poem
That's not how history works.
There's no end of historical accounts, transcripts of the proceedings, etc to learn about it. Neither being there, nor taped proceedings are needed.
And neither being in the court or watching taped proceedings will give you what that show meant in the larger historical context, and in the context of the geopolitics of the time. The books, actual knowledge of the before and after, and more, might.
>I find your argument uniquely cowardly: Power without justice is a recipe for tyranny.
That's exactly what the goverments who run those trials had for themselves, before, during, and after.
>Yes, there is plenty of atrocity. Pretending the allied behavior is as atrocious as Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Hitler, is pretentious relativism.
Only because it was mostly done to brown people in Africa, or to Asia, or Latin America, so you don't care.
You know why the League of Nations didn't work (supposedly)? Because the US wasn't involved. So with the United Nations, the US is involved. What do you think happens when the US decides to not abide by the United Nations' decisions? Nothing.
The US has vetoed UN resolutions 89 times, and ignored resolutions dozens of times. It voted against Palestinian rights, and its Iraq war and ongoing foreign drone strikes go against the UN charter. Basically, whatever the US wants, goes. If they don't want you to have rights, you won't have them. If they want you to control some piece of land and anyone who lives on it, it's yours. If they don't like your government, they'll take it away and install their own, or call it terrorist and sanction it.
The whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it. There is no justice, there's just the powerful and the powerless.
So have China and Russia. The rules-based international order has been explicitly rejected by the world’s great powers.
> whole thing is a sham and everybody knows it
There was a legitimate attempt. It had flaws. But so does any system of justice. It was ultimately done in by a combination of Russian and Chinese revanchism, American neoconservatism and global nihilism.
You may be mixing up the ICJ, which “settles legal disputes submitted to it by states” and is 80 years old [1] and the ICC, which was created in 2002 [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice
The ICC applies international criminal law, just like nuremburg trials did (a notable difference though is the ICCs lack of juridsiction over crimes of aggression which was a core part of the Nuremburg trials). The ICJ is not a criminal court and does not apply international criminal law. It cannot find individuals guilty. A rough analogy would be that the ICJ is more similar to a civil court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Trump's been doing a lot of "inconceivable" things with the US's international relations.
Trump himself makes this difficult.
He has already done things that a reasonable outsider would expect to be mere bluffs. And also TACO'ed backwards, turning things he's done into, effectively, theatrics.
And OFC Wall Street heading down faster than in 1929. Fucking up your main client would yield a disaster so huge to the US economy than no war would save them. If any, they would be fucked, because the EU might even temporally ally with Russia. Then the shit would hit the fan in Alaska.
Your army it's the best in the world? Say hello to a coallition between Europe-China-Russia. No one would dare to throw any single atomic bomb because the outcome would be MAD for everyone.
The US would attempt then to invade Mexico/Canada. But that would yield to its own people siding up with Canada and Mexico against an obvious corrupt US war-machine-corporate state, up to the point to getting former Mexican territory back to Mexico.
Texas and California might have declared indepent countries themselves to avoid any war. The smart move, you know.
pats head That's nice, Billy, it sure is fun to play pretend. Now you run along and play with your marbles.
I've seen far right regimes in Europe -Spain- siding up with the Communist Cuba because of the common backgrounds over politics.
And the Cuban regime itself under Castro mourning over Franco's death. As crazy as it sounds.
Under an US-invaded European Union Spain would team up with Cuba and Venezuela the first day no matter which party would be ruling, left or even neocon-close right. The Spaniard state's survival would be the top priority. No state, no economy, no Ibex 35. And shit would hit the fan from Latin America too.
Oh, and expect hell with guerrillas spawning here and there from Latin America backed up from Europeans and maybe the Moccromafia and the former Italian Mafia themselves. Spain, France and Italy have contacts over all the Mediterranean and you knows what Mediterranean means. I wouldn't be there if I were an American trying to invade Europe... because once you kick the wasp nest of the Islamic regimes being generously supported from Mafias, you would have both the Jihad and the Narcoguerrillas at home with European army support. Try to stop that. Because something the Southern Europeans know well it's learning to have friends even in Hell "just in case". Spain has the Hispano-spehere, they know how to put a whole political spectra on its side with ease, and the French have the Francophonie. And for sure they have contacts in the Arabic world as I said.
If they don't have a badass archive of ETA contacts with Islamic camps beforehand, and they own the triumph card of Marbella too. You would be nuts trying to invade some sickos there; they know who to call in case of emergencies. The Spanish state already did that against terrorists themselves.
You can. But if Russia is threatening American troops in Europe, irrespective of the local framing, that’s a nuclear proxy war.
The US has the most advanced software and CPU's, the EU has sofisticated and pretty complex industrial hardware not even seen in the US. China, well, it's China, the factory of the world.
The example you gave isn't too surprising if one believes authoritarians attract authoritarians.
Which would be put down before it even could start.
The consequence is that Europe will slowly move its financial and IT systems away from US solutions. It's a very, very slow process because it was believed for almost a century that US wouldn't actually bully Europe. But for example, there will be more pressure to roll out Wero and have the systems completely European. Before Trump, there was decent chance the whole thing would be just Visa/MasterCard with extra steps. Now it's clear that EU needs its own independent payment system.
Most of the US's power is from being a land of opportunity and of high ideals, with military power being secondary backup. As the US lessens opportunity and openly betrays its ideals, that power disappears. The Greenland and Canada threats alone probably require $500B-$1T/year in additional military spending to try to gain through force wha was previously given freely to the US. Add in the huge cost to the US from the tariff idiocy and cutting things like USAID and we could never spend enough militarily to make up for it.
Look at Putin's weakness in Ukraine. He tried to take by force what was not his, and ended up costing himself far more in lost trust than he could ever have gained with the war, and he has gained so little in the war. Putin had a better chance by continuing to try to divide Ukrainian society internally and have the majority of society side with Russia. Much like what is happening in the US right now.... but attack with bombs and the charade disappears. The US is going to discover the same loss of power through its attempts and threat of force.
The USA's might is highly dependent on the world order it fostered after WW2, and especially after the Cold War.
Erode that, and the USA as we've known the past 70 years starts to crumble. If in a couple decades the rest of the world works to decouple from the dollar as the main reserve currency; decouple from the dependency to sell to the USA; and decouple the dependency on American tech you still have a rich country but definitely not the superpower with the might as it exists today.
It's not possible for the USA to be funded with the astronomical deficits it runs to keep its war machine, it's not possible for the US, culturally and politically, to majorly increase taxes to cover this deficit. Slowly there would be cuts to its defence spending, diminishing its might.
Not sure why Americans decided this was a good path, didn't expect to see the era of Pax Americana to be so abruptly shaken during my lifetime but here we are.
I was discussing this with my cousin today and about how here in my country, we have multi party system. Sure, there is still two major parties but there are definitely small parties as well and we were discussing that even India should move towards more decentralization akin to switzerland.
I really hope we have a more decentralized option and where people from all around the world feel that their vote, in fact, does matter.
What interests me about this comment is the statistic that 50% of US consumer spending comes from people in the top 10% of earnings (first google link, probably not the best source: https://www.warc.com/content/feed/top-10-of-wealthy-american...)
So while the US might look like a really juicy market, I start to wonder how much juice is in the lemon?
Why the dependency to sell to the US if 90% of the US population doesn't have the free cash to buy things?
Yes, I know I'm stupid, and look at all the cheap stuff americans buy; I've seen the miles of warehouses from companies like 5 Below. My concern is how long this lasts?
Of course parent's comment is weird anyway. US is a superpower and that's a fact.
It is easy to express opinions about how things should be, but only with power can you make them so. There's of course the fractal complexity of who gets to decide how to spend the power budget of a nation, but that is besides the point. We may decry the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia, China and the United States, but what good are our cries if we have no power to improve the lives of those affected? Am I saying this to whine about how powerless are we? No, I believe this should be the motivation, the call for greater economic development so that we can attain the power we feel like we need to make a positive change in the world. If not, we will be subjects of those who wield more power - and this isn't even advice exclusively for Europeans. You either build power in groups that are inclusive, or you steal power and form exclusive groups. The quality of life that most of the free world has been enjoying stemmed from the former, and it is the latter groups that will put us back into the dark ages.
Is this cynical? If so, I can confidently say I am a cynic.
The expression should not be understood to mean that might makes things morally just. In the weak form it means the strong can do what they want because what are the weak going to do about it? The stronger form of the expression is the idea that strong players set up the rules (legal code, etc) and as such they rig the rules in their favour.
Beautifully explained.
And I want to ask is there anything we can do bottom line about it?
I think like stricter rules against corruption should be in check, but that requires the govt. to do something and I feel like govt.'s themselves are being corrupt
It's this cyclical loop and I don't know if there is rather anything that we can do to break out of it.
We have the rights to vote, but those end up being squandered in most/all countries with corrupt politicians, those right to vote aren't really used mostly to bring real change, maybe a different name perhaps
At the end of the deal, its more so an faith in overall humanity that we can figure out what's right for all of us but we just fight over petty differences sometimes.
Do you guys have faith in overall humanity in aggregate? At times I feel like some instances restore my faith whereas others reduce it so its all just feelings for me perhaps.
Regarding your comment, its very interesting, where have you shifted now if I may ask or more details about it?
I am not really American but I still hear that its startup culture is well although with all of the other downsides we have mentioned, it does become moot.
A lot of people feel like the system is unfair but they want to be on the other side of unfairness rather than making the system fair from what I've observed. And this observation kind of fits globally sometimes imo
If you want to be in startup culture SV is still the place to be. I didn’t like it because of all the trend following, if you want to succeed there it’s best to jump on a trend. I’m more of an applied researcher and had my own ideas I wanted to explore.
As inequality continues to get worse those who initially benefited from it will generally find themselves on the other side of the transition and losing out.
AI is going to increase inequality far more than economic policy, I’m 5x more productive with AI and am able to compete with much larger orgs. What happens when they lose their job, what happens when someone does the same to me. The Pareto distribution of productivity is about to get a hell of a lot steeper.
So I guess India's the best option considering all factors I guess.
but one of the problems especially in India is the saturation of the market for software engineers and the competition to get into college is so cut throat that I can't even start to tell smh
I think perhaps remote jobs from india might make more sense but I clearly am not the only one with this idea so might be hard to differentiate I suppose
> AI is going to increase inequality far more than economic policy, I’m 5x more productive with AI and am able to compete with much larger orgs. What happens when they lose their job, what happens when someone does the same to me. The Pareto distribution of productivity is about to get a hell of a lot steeper.
That's great but I think I have nuanced discussion on AI, I think that we are gonna have much bigger financial issues all around the world because of the AI bubble itself
With enough power people would rather accept bad in-practice results rather than have to confront the fact that they screwed up. So in practice the people in power don't usually care about hypocrisy. But they would be materially better off if they had actually cared about it. It is a bit like the oligarchs in some traditional communist country. Living the lie got them lifestyles of unbelievable wealth and luxury - but the oligarchs in the capitalist countries got lifestyles of even more unbelievable wealth and luxury, and passed on a much more impressive legacy. Not to say they weren't still hypocritical, but the degree of the disconnect from reality matters.
If you keep your eye on the places where hyper-competent people gather and accumulate power they tend to actually be quite honest. Organised groups of talented people tend to have the easiest time securing a social advantage when honesty and straightfowardness are abundant. The people who would naturally be socially weak are the ones who rely on saying one thing and doing the opposite.
I think its also about the moral ambiguity itself and perhaps even the meaning of life in my opinion.
Because like, I really think that world has its flaws but at the end of the day, this is perhaps still the most rarest moments in the whole universe when we think about it
So I'd much rather do work which benefits other humans that I enjoy (although I sometimes think of it from, I would probably want to do something after retirement, maybe I get retire early or not suppose, but if I can already make the thing I want to do as retirement as job [computer related] and they pay really nicely, why not just do them right now)
It's a shame to me that tech right now feels so inhumane. I don't want really a billion trillion dollars. I just want "enough" and I want to perhaps help people once I get that "enough" not this hyper growth-focused almost will sell you snake-oil kind of tech
Perhaps most people don't have that definition of "enough" or they have materialistic desires or fame desires which one wants to get through money but I don't have many of such desires but I don't really know why people want to be so materialistic.
Like take Elon Musk, richest man in the world, Man, his ego is really fragile. Donald Trump feels like having a really fragile ego to me as well.
I really don't understand what's the point of having all these billions of dollars? Yes nobody is offering me a billion dollars but I'd rather just take "enough" and then give others to some projects I want to help smh
Also logically, it doesn't make sense to lie to me that much. To me trust seems the most valuable resource and the easiest way of generating and securing trust for a long time is being honest. And this helps me grow into a better person (who has his flaws) but still honesty mostly helps I guess idk.
I think we all just want our lives to have meaning in one way or another but it would be so much better if the sources of generation of meaning were human and not inhumane stuff as I was saying
Or worse they may need that French aircraft carrier if war breaks out with China.
Just because you try to do something doesn't mean you succeed. The way the world ought to be is not the same as the way the world is.
> Wasn’t the whole justification for the west supporting Ukraine that might shouldn’t make right?
Which involved buying them weapons in order to make them mighty.
And lets be real, there are plenty of other conflicts in the world that nobody gives a shit about (just look at africa). The real reason Ukraine is getting support is that its geographically right next to europe and having them not be controlled by Russia is strategically valuable to western interests. Having Russia wear itself out in Ukraine is also strategically valuable.
It was a superpower, until Trump got back in office. He's been taking an axe to US soft power, and our institutions in general. We're on the edge of losing Global reserve currency status. That's what's driving the re-monetization of Silver and Gold.
This is a tractable problem, except for the lack of political willpower to create a solution.
> The military is irrelevant as long as usd is the reserve currency most countries use.
The USD is rapidly losing this status, though. The current president's policies has turned the US into an extremely unreliable trade partner, so more and more trades are being done in EUR.
At this point, they should do so. With America weakened and behaving erratically, this is a good time for Europe to assert itself and put America in our place.
Every country that works at an international level assumes said risks.
I for one am tired of internal national companies playing pick and choose on the best options and ignoring everything else. If the world wants to go multipolar again it's time for corporations to get kicked in the sack.
I disagree. Tomorrow France can tell Visa/MC/Banks they must service ICC judges or lose the ability to bank in their country and suddenly said providers will be concerned about the predicament they are in.
The EU better pull its head out of its ass about following everything the US does at this point. It's obvious over here in the states things have gone off the rails, and they'll go down with us if they want to remain so tightly coupled.
Absolutely. You get the Visa executives lobbying the American government to stop this madness and it will stop.
You are quite wrong, of course, as any reasonably informed observer will know. Whether you're just ignorant or ill-intentioned: It's so easy to fire off these poisonous comments whose effect is to undermine and deligitimize the norms and institutions that keep things reasonably okay, as imperfect as they are. I hope you will never have to yourself experience the difference that you so easily dismiss.
Would your logic apply to all the people of Gaza, would them resisting qualify as "undermine and deligitimize the norms and institutions that keep things reasonably okay"
Is genocide reasonably ok?
Of course not, and nothing I wrote leads to that conclusion.
Rejecting the notion that "everywhere at every level not only international politics... democracy and human rights are a joke" does not mean that things are non-horrible everywhere, at every level.
Having a way for the public to regularly and non-violently change leadership and lawmakers, having checks and balances between the holders of power, and certain norms we strive towards is the only thing that gives us a chance at preventing authoritarian, absolutist and arbitrary rule - within the constraints where these things have effect.
That they do not work everywhere and do not work perfectly is a sign that we continue to need them. Concluding the opposite, that they're entirely useless, is not only dangerously foolish and fatalistic, but also logically fallacious.
It's an argument often used by those who wish to undermine these norms and institutions. I don't automatically think that this is you, but it might be interesting to examine your line of reasoning and what makes you read things in my previous response that are not there.
In any case, I don't think either is true, formally or for practical purposes. It also does not follow that accepting "might is right" on the international level makes a farce of the ideas of democracy or human rights, whether one regards it as a desirable state of international affairs or as an undesirable fait accomplit, as we both seem to agree. I will not bore us with logical formalities and stay on the practical side of things:
Because, if you allow any group of actors, or the predominant state of things in any place, on any level, to spoil the whole concept simply by them not adhering to it, then indeed you have needlessly given up everything without even trying. Nothing better can exist when you let bad actors doing bad things define the floor and the ceiling of what can be.
Islands of decency exist. They are flawed, and yet they are the best and only real thing we have in this regard. They are under threat, as you say. Undercutting them by pretending that they have no worth or indeed value at all only plays into the hands of their enemies.
You will also find that force and violence has been done in the name of every good idea that ever came about. If you let good ideas get "ruined" whenever someone uses them as a shield for bad ends, you will have none left. Nothing at all. Just because you gave the bad more power than the good. That is not practical at all, to say it mildly.
For now. Once upon a time Russia was one too. These things are not set in stone and the way the United States is behaving it is not entirely out of the realm of the possible that they will stop being one.
And that's assuming they will survive as a nation.
When it really comes down to it, usa is a super power. Might makes right in international politics. The ICC has had quite a lot of successes when it comes to small and even medium sized countries, but at some point pragmatism has to win out. Nobody is going to war with the USA on behalf of the ICC. I highly doubt the ICC is going to push any issue with america unless the evidence against them is extreme. Its simply not powerful enough.