Either way, there is very little to no path toward "family + place to live + stable job" model.
Where I am I’m alone. Don’t underestimate the value of community.
It's been entirely worth it for me and I cannot imagine my life without kids. But it's a deeply personal choice and I am not buying or selling the idea. I would just say nobody is ever ready and the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational. But not wanting them because of how it might change your own life is a completely valid reason to not have kids.
> the fears around having them probably are more irrational than rational
My $0.02 is that if anything, the fears people have about how much their lives would be transformed are significantly lacking, and a lot of the "it's not so bad" advice is post-hoc rationalization. I mean, it's evolutionarily excellent that we humans choose to have kids, but it's very rational to be afraid and to postpone or even fully reject this on an individual basis. And as an industry and as a society, we should probably do a lot more to support parents of young children.
I found this smbc comic about a "happiness spigot" to be the most poignant metaphor - https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happiness-spigot?utm_sourc...
Looking back, I was essentially railroaded into a dead end career by society, and any attempt to get into software engineering over the years has been blocked by the simple fact I don't possess the right piece of paper. Nor am I willing to spend a shit ton of cash and more importantly time "going back to school" to learn what I already know pretty damn well already, given that I've been programming since I was 8 and it was the strength of my computer skills that got me into the other career in the first place.
My actual accomplishments in the world of computing, sitting here day to day in front of my personal computer, are the stuff of legends. Things like building my own Linux distro completely from scratch, now consisting of over 1,500 packages, cross compiling to multiple platforms. How many people with a Master's degree or Ph.D. ever did this as part of their degree program? Yet I'm looked upon as unemployable detritus compared to some kid fresh out of college with a newly minted BullShit degree.
Over the years the problem has gotten worse and worse. First it was just being filtered out by HR. Now it's all the other craziness also, like going to 7+ interviews only to be told you're rejected, and so on, and that's after putting in hundreds of applications to get one callback. How the hell am I supposed to go through that? I Fucking Refuse.
Thank God I'm OK with living out of the Piggly Wiggly dumpster.
Protip: living out of the Piggly Wiggly dumpster is actually a pretty good alternative to absolute slavery to government/corporations. Your very entitled and spoiled American wife probably won't agree however. Thank God I don't have one of those.
It's small consolation if sitting in a classroom is something you truly hate, but the guys who are programming pros before they go into a CS program are very often the ones who do really well and get the most out of it.
Tinkering is great but (good) school teaches you all the things and not just the things you obviously, and then you don't have any knowledge gaps.
Any fool can probably weld metal but how do you learn to do it properly if you don't learn properly?
I did not need to be held by the hand and instructed by anyone. I'm just the guy who locks himself in a room full of technical manuals and code printouts for six weeks, and emerges an expert. You're the guy who has to be locked in that room (by someone like me) because you don't have the motivation or drive to go in there voluntarily. Right?
How much studying did you do in school? How many notes did you take? I never did any of that shit. I refused to do homework and refused to take notes. Ever. Not even once. I simply listened, thought about what was said, asked questions, then aced every test while failing every homework assignment, graduating with a C average. In other words, I successfully gave as little time or attention as possible to that useless shithole institution. Mission accomplished.
To summarize: you are speaking to a self-educated polymath on the level of Thomas Jefferson or Nikola Tesla. (And don't think that I'm not aware of it.) Who are you again? Some random college graduate? Don't embarrass yourself by pretending that you are in any way above my level simply because you sat like a drone in a classroom for four years. You will never be on my level, period. Get it through your head.
I have here in my notes that you're also a Coincidence Theorist--the worst kind of moron--and that you are heavily in favor of censorship, which makes you a scumbag also. In conclusion, you aren't fit to lick the mud off my boots. Get lost.
>> My actual accomplishments in the world of computing ... are the stuff of legends
We agree on the legends part
Clearly. Let me help you, if that is actually possible.
> someone who freely admits they have been broke & unemployed for 15 years feels they are qualified to provide "advice", make critical judgement calls about others, [...]
It's called a "discussion forum." People share their viewpoints freely. (I note that you and your crowd didn't hesitate to jump in with your two cents.) There are no "qualifications" required here; completely unlike the job market for example, there's no special piece of paper from a prestigious institution required before joining up to any given forum and posting one's opinions on the subject at hand.
Welcome to the Internet. You must be new around here.
When a comment is based on decades of experience--especially when that comment is contrary to whatever nonsense the masses of commoners believe, shared freely by a wise man who keeps himself carefully secluded from the riffraff--it's usually worth listening to.
The point is: despite being "broke and unemployed" (which your type falsely believes is some kind of terrible, horrible, no good state to be in), AT LEAST I'M NOT A SLAVE LIKE YOU, son. That would be far worse.
Far from being "miserable" as one person claimed, I'm doing pretty well despite the circumstances. I'm well fed, living in a nice house with significant acreage in a quiet and peaceful area of the country, where pollution and crime are low. No muggings going on here or people shitting on the sidewalk. I get a full night's sleep every night. I'm always healthy and never sick. I don't spend hours commuting or wasting my life away behind a shitty desk in a shitty office somewhere. I do pretty much what I want, when I want. All this is of course completely unlike you, a powerless slave to some employer's dictates, probably living in a shithole city somewhere. Sounds more like the miserable one is you.
Anyone who has escaped from the rat race knows exactly who and what you are. You're the proverbial rat. You're always chasing that carrot at the end of a stick, which is perpetually just out of reach; always running on that hamster wheel but never getting anywhere. By design. And now the IT sector is wrecked and you're probably unemployed, or fearing to God that you will be soon, and your nails are bitten down to the quick as you panic about what to do now. What a sad and wasted life it is, always living in fear, and lashing out at others who try to point out the reality of your situation.
I am a free man. You hate me simply because I remind you every single day by my very existence that your "way of life" SUCKS ASS. That's the bottom line. I don't even have to open my mouth to speak; you don't hate me, you hate the very concept of me.
You cretins try everything in your power to drag me down and shut me up whenever you can. You downvote my posts and flag them, and you hurl petty insults at me--because THAT IS THE ONLY POWER YOU HAVE IN THE WORLD. It allows you to temporarily feel better about your pathetic lot in life, in which you are really completely powerless and at the mercy of your owners.
I meet your type in real life too sometimes, but oddly enough, you never have anything to say to me there. Presumably you just quietly fume in the corner, useless without that downvote or flag button to lean on. I never have to deal with any of the losers IRL that I frequently encounter online and especially on Reddit/HN (but I repeat myself.)
You do not in fact have any kind of power to shut me up, even with all your pathetic downvotes and flags. My comments still remain in the HN database where they will exist forever, despite your sincere wishes, to be judged by others until eternity. If HN servers fail, that's OK. I have my own offline backup copy of all of this that I will be sure to disseminate far and wide. Whose comments do you think will still be appreciated and respected in a hundred years, and who will vanish into obscurity with the other clueless slaves around him? In the end, I get the last word.
I'm starting a business and I know it will be a success. (Sorry, not sorry if this bold statement seems like "arrogance" to you, the insecure little man with zero self-esteem.) Don't you have another couple hundred employment applications to fill out right now, and a bunch of leetcode to practice? The clock is ticking, son, better get on it.
Go lick your new master's shoes and pray he will hire you to be his servant. Your big expensive mortgage and needy wife with fancy tastes are a strong incentive to take whatever crumbs you're offered--and he knows it, which is the #1 reason why (putting all your egotistical bullshit aside) he would much rather deal with you than me. Free spirits need not apply.
Meanwhile I'm on Season 9 of Shark Tank and loving it. (That feeling when you're binge watching a great show and still have many, many more seasons left.) I also spend a lot of time on Anna's Archive just downloading interesting books and reading them. I can even afford to hang with the hoi polloi on HN now and again, though it is truly a waste of time trying to drag people like you kicking and screaming to freedom, which you wholeheartedly reject and fear.
Finally, since I am "posting too fast" for HN's Cyrix 486 server to keep up with (as a result of all the "bad karma" I've just earned from telling you slaves the truth about yourself), here's my response to your other equally idiotic comment, in a two-for-one package just for you at no extra charge:
> programming since you were 8 and created a HN account 16 days ago... seems legit
I'd say "look me up on Slashdot" but you're probably too young to have ever heard of that site.
Thank you, drive through.
Enjoy your commute.
I suspect the problem is elsewhere and you are unwilling or uncomfortable to discuss it.
You should write a book to share your special wisdom so that others may learn and benefit. As a loving act of charity, maybe consider distributing copies of this invaluable book for free to the miles and miles of homeless camps in your state, the inhabitants of which will surely be fascinated to hear the Good News that their situation is really their own personal fault and has nothing to do with you or anyone else whatsoever.
Their situation certainly isn't society's fault in any way. Perish the thought. No, it's just giant and ever-growing crowds of millions upon millions of people with easily solvable Personal Problems, which could be corrected by the sad wretches if only they had a few precious pearls of your Common Sense wisdom to analyze. Thank God we've got you here to show us the Path. Utopia is just around the corner. What a hero.
(Unfortunately I'm personally too hard headed and stubborn to learn from your incredible advice, so I'll have to miss out on this burgeoning utopia and just remain "miserable" here in my quiet and peaceful cabin in the woods of Alabama.)
Truth is, you were born on third base and think you hit a home run. Nevermind the zillions of other 50 year olds just like you who have been or will soon end up being laid off due to ageism in this corrupt, wicked, and selfish society, when companies get tired of paying those high salaries and prefer to find some idiot college graduate to enslave instead. Those people just didn't make the right choices is all. Not like you. But they'll see the light one day. You'll teach them how wrong they were and how it's really all their fault.
How much do you have saved up for retirement at this point? I mean hard money, not paper or digits in a computer. The average American today regardless of perceived "social status" doesn't have two actual nickels to rub together. Yes, that includes tons of really smart, very well employed college graduates. Hopefully your "success" isn't dependent on the stock or housing market continuing to soar. Amazing how a 50% haircut can turn the biggest winners into the biggest losers, literally overnight. It usually shuts them up too.
When you get hungry enough, remember what I told you about that Piggly Wiggly dumpster. It's one of the few places left that even has an open, unlocked dumpster anymore. Most places today use a sealed trash compactor, which absolutely ensures noone can ever benefit from the giant piles of wealth these Really Smart And Good People throw away on a daily basis.
Enjoy your commute, while it lasts.
Sure, I could have done something like that too! If I had only zigged instead of zagged.
The problem happens when you leave high school and become [$XYZ] instead, do that for a while, realize it's a dead end career, then decide to return to your roots and become a programmer. At the same time you had also taken a year off to relax, only to later realize that "one year of unemployment" in 2010 (just after 2008) translates as "unemployable" to HR.
In general, if you don't make it your #1 top priority to get back into the rat race and stay there permanently, you are treated as an outcast and scorned by all the slaves. You also might, in your frustration, begin doing some research and start to learn what a racket it all really is. You could very easily find yourself slowly drifting apart from the rest of the herd, unable to ever be employed again without an exceptional desire to rejoin the herd. (Which I lack.)
Want to be "self employed" for a while? You know, exercise some self direction in life, which should be considered a good thing by anyone with a brain? Good luck ever getting a job again, lol. You're unemployable.
There is MUCH you still have to learn about life. But fortunately for you, a big learning opportunity is coming up. The current IT malaise is only the beginning of a very big economic crash. Enjoy your commute while it lasts.
This response, along with your OP, it’s so pretentious and condescending. It seems you feel that you’re superior to everyone intellectually. I assume that you hold the same attitude in person and this is not helping your situation.
The irony is that I’ve done exactly this. I tried to start a business in my early 20’s and failed dramatically. I stopped developing altogether for a decade while I did minimum wage jobs and struggled to find a career. I started developing again in my early 30’s and half a decade later I’m running a software business.
You may well be intelligent but severely lacking in other necessary areas. It seems it is you who has much to learn.
It's simply a fact. Why do you and "Hacker News" hate facts?
Let me guess: you think you already have learned everything you think you need to know about life, and I can't possibly teach you anything, right?
> It seems you feel that you’re superior to everyone intellectually.
On HN/Reddit (but I repeat myself)? Yes, that is correct. This place is a cesspool.
> I assume
Found the problem.
> that you hold the same attitude in person and this is not helping your situation.
Wrong. My situation does not need to be "helped." This is what you keep missing. I'm doing just fine without you or your corrupt "society." You bring negative value to the world. I do far better the less I interact with you pretentious, obnoxious douchebags.
Look at my post history, and notice how 90% of the posts I made here were completely innocuous, but got downvoted, flagged, and disappeared anyway. This site is full of whiny, useless FAGS. It's a toxic shithole. A giant circle jerk. You're all corrupt, down to the last man or dude pretending to be a chick.
> The irony is that I’ve done exactly this. I tried to start a business in my early 20’s and failed dramatically. I stopped developing altogether for a decade while I did minimum wage jobs and struggled to find a career. I started developing again in my early 30’s and half a decade later I’m running a software business.
This is cool (legitimately), but I'm not sure what this has to do with me.
> You may well be intelligent but severely lacking in other necessary areas. It seems it is you who has much to learn.
You're projecting.
There is a reason God has kept me alive this long. I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.
It paid off for me, but who knows if I would have taken that leap later in life.
At this point I’ve realized I need to cast all other ambitions aside and work on getting some out of the way land that I own.
I need about 4.5 years until basic financial independence, I wonder how does it feel to be at that point.
Will people still buy and sell houses?
Will house prices go down because no one can afford them?
Will house prices go up because so few will sell their assets?
I would like to buy a small farm today without debt and cheap energy (upfront investment in solar and storage) but I need a few years more.
Does the world can really change that fast? I don't know but the progress in AI is fast, very fast.
Unless you're a plumber.
It's fine to have that opinion, but please frame as an opinion or else give me the lotto numbers for next week if you can predict the future that accurately.
Why are you certain of this?
They are promising CEOs they can eliminate their workforce to increase profits. For people working for a wage it’s all downside, no upside.
You can have hope even if a positive outcome isn't guaranteed. In fact that is when hope is the most valuable (and maybe also difficult to find).
The prices will adapt, but the equilibrium will always be elite-oriented economy where accommodation of the masses is a second-tier goal.
(eventually properties collapse, but if they keep the values inflated this way, that won't matter to them)
If you want to know more, look into RCMP reports on high property prices in Vancouver BC/Canada circa 2010s+, for example.
Skills like Legacy Code Anthropology and Reverse Engineering will grow into higher demand. Like the worst legacy apps built by junior developers and non-developers (Access/Excel VBA and VB6 alone had a lot of "low code" legacy by non-developers), LLMs are great at "documenting" What was built, but almost never Why or How, so skills like "Past Developer Mind Reading" and "Code Seances" will also be in high demand.
There will be plenty of work still to do "when" everything is vibe coded. It's going to resemble a lot more the dark matter work a lot of software engineering is in big enterprise: fixing other people's mistakes and trying to figure out the best way you can why they made those mistakes so you can in theory prevent the next mistake.
It's a very dark, cursed hope to believe that the future of software engineering is the darkest parts of its present/past. As a software developer who has spent too large of an amount of my career in the VB6 IDE and who often joked that my "retirement plan" was probably going to be falling into an overly-highly-paid COBOL Consultancy somewhere down the line, I'm more depressed that there will be a lot more legacy work than ever, not that there won't be enough work to go around, and it will be some of the ugliest, most boring, least fun parts of my career, forever, and will have even less "cushiness" to make up for it. (That "dream" of a highly paid COBOL Consultancy disappears when good Legacy Code becomes too common and thus the commodity job. Hard to demand slicker, higher salaries when supply is tainted and full.)
Maybe eventually you'll want to trust your corporate credit card to the LLMs too, but that's gonna be one of the last things where humans get taken out of the loop. And once the AI is that general what even is the CEO, salesperson, or entrepreneur's role either?
That "programmer/archeologist" idea of Vernor Vinge's books is likely to grow as the piles of generated code get bigger and the feasibility of tossing increasingly-large piles into a single context window at once might not keep up (or probably won't be the best or most cost-effective).
We've had 50+ years of deteriotating worker conditions and a massive concentration of wealth to like 10,000 people. The 1980s crushed the labor movement, to all of our detriment.
The GFC destroyed the career prospects of many millenials who discovered their entry-level positions no longer existed so we created a generation that we're loaded with student debt, working as baristas.
A lot of people on HN ignored this because the 2010s were good for tech people but many of us didn't realize this post-GFC wave would eventually come for us. And that's what's happening now.
So on top of the millenaisl we now have Gen Z who have correctly realized they'll never have security, never buy a house and will never retire. They'll live paycheck to paycheck, barely surviving until they die. Why? All so Jeff Bezos can have $205 billion instead of $200 billion.
I'm reminded of the quote "only nine meals separates mankind from anarchy".
I believe we've passed the point where we can solve this problem with electoral politics. Western democracies are being overtaken by fascists because of increasing desperation and the total destruction of any kind of leftism since WW2. At this point, it ends violently and sooner than many think.
I guess the next turning of the wheel will be similar too.
Or maybe we all just have poor imaginations.
i would say that we firmly live in the American Empire with techno-feudalistic tendencies, but a historical event of such magnitude as the complete dissolution of the American state will probably see a reversal to a more traditional feudal system. Think Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates buying up and becoming the Dukes of the PNW.
personally though i don't think we are at this stage yet or even close to it. until the federal government becomes COMPLETELY inept and the average citizen cannot buy food, this won't happen. yes market conditions are currently not the best but we are nowhere near starvation.
Europe created the Russia-Ukraine problem by giving their energy security to Russia. Interestingly, this is a (super) rare win for the first Trump administration: forcing Europe to build an LNG port in 2018 [1] and warning against the dangers of dependence on Russian natural gas. This warning has been completely vindicated.
Europe has stagnant wages, a declining social safety net (eg raising the retirement age in France), a housing affordability crisis in most places (notably exlucding Vienna and there needs to more attention on why this is), inflation problems and skyrocketing energy costs. It's the same 1930s economic conditions that gave rise to fascism last time.
Europe has the same rising anti-immigrant rise in response to declining material conditions that the US hass. In Europe's case it's against Syrians and North Africans. In the UK this also included Polish people.
France is really a perfect example here. Despite all the economic problems you have Macro siding with Le Pen to keep Melenchon and the left out of power.
All of this is neoliberalism run amok and it comes from decisions in WW1, WW2 and post-WW2, most notably that Europe (and the US) decided the biggest threat was socialism and communism. And who's really good at killing communists? Nazis. Just look at the resume of Adolf Heusinger, an early NATO chair [2].
Europe has also outsourced their security to the US via NATO. And NATO is on the verge of collapse. There's a lot of thinking that Congress won't allow Trump to withdraw from NATO, as many in his administration want to do, but NATO could well splinter if Trump takes Greenland.
What happens to Europe with an expansionist Russia and no US security guarantee?
Oh and speaking of worker protections, what happens when the price of bailing out European energy or security issues is the privatizing of your otherwise universal healthcare? It was rumored that parts of the administration wanted the UK to privatize the NHS as part of a post-Brexit trade deal. 15 years of austerity has primed the population to accept this kind of thing.
Many Europeans (rightly) look down on the insanity that's currently going on in the US but at the same time they don't realize just how dire the situation is in Europe.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/germany-to-build-ln...
I wonder how that is supposed to work when the Executive branch has proven they can do whatever they want regardless of the other two branches. The rules are worthless if there are no consequences for breaking them.
> At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich.
And NATO [2]:
> The most senior officers of the latter group were Hans Speidel and Adolf Heusinger, who on Oct. 10 and Nov. 12, 1955, respectively, were sworn in as the Bundeswehr’s first two lieutenant generals... Heusinger, a POW until 1948, ...
> That spring Heusinger succeeded Speidel as chief of Combined Forces when the latter was appointed commander in chief of Allied Land Forces in Central Europe becoming the first German officer to hold a NATO commander in chief position
And it goes on.
Nazi links are well-established to Operation Paperclip [3] under Werner von braun.
And there are many others [4].
I didn't say all the non-communists were Nazi. I said the neoliberal and imperialist projects of the US and Western Europe post-WW2 sided with and gave haven to Nazis to fight communism, which is true.
Fascism in the US didn't begin with the Nazis however. You can trace back the roots to the white supremacy the US was founded on, the slave trade, the Civil War, Reconstruction and even the Business Plot [5] that sought to overthrow FDR in 1933, probably labelling him a communist.
But the Nazis were very popular in the US, culminating with the German American Bund rally in Madison Square Gardens in 1939 [6].
Oh and let's not forget Henry Ford's contribution to all this, notably The International Jew [7], so much so that Hitler praised him in Mein Kampf.
Personally, I'm of the view that a lot of this can be traced back to simply not stringing up all the former slave owners after the Civil War.
[2]: https://www.historynet.com/these-nato-generals-had-unusual-b...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
[4]: https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na...
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ...
[7]: https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita...
While European military strength isn't in its prime right now, their capabilities without the US are often way underestimated. Not that most of the other issues aren't applicable - everyone appears to be more or less fucked in multiple ways - but losing a conventional war to Russia isn't on the table, barring unthinkable mismanagement or a world-changing event (preemptive use of nukes, etc). Russia has stalemated a war against a singular country that has a fraction of Russia's wealth, loads of antiquated equipment and a small sample of Western tech. The Russian economy has a massive hole in it largely thanks to said war, and is only propped up by existing savings - they're not in danger right now, they're rapidly approaching that point with no way of stopping. Even if the war never happened, they'd still be far weaker than the whole of Europe and likely some individual European countries.
> This warning has been completely vindicated.
That's funny. The US warned Europe of dependence on Russia all the while promoting policies that antagonized Russia in Europe (e.g. NATO expansion). It's almost like the US wanted to push Europe and Russia against each other, so that it could sell its way more expensive natural gas in Europe!? Perhaps they did not anticipate the Russians would be bold enough to go to war on that, but they were certainly willing to accept the risk.
> It's the same 1930s economic conditions that gave rise to fascism last time.
Please. Europe may have some issues , but it's not nearly as bleak as you try to make it... I live here, I go around a lot. Europe is as affluent as ever. People are having a good time, in general. In the 1930's some countries had hyperinflation... you're comparing that to 5% yearly inflation these days?
> Europe has also outsourced their security to the US via NATO.
On that we agree. It was a really bad decision, but understandable given how much the US soft power after WWII was absorbed by Europeans. Some Europeans act like European countries are US states. They take to the streets to join movements that are 100% American, like BLM. It's bizarre.
> What happens to Europe with an expansionist Russia and no US security guarantee?
It shocks me that people like you think Russia is a serious threat to all of Europe, rather than just Ukraine (and maybe Moldova and Georgia if you push it). How can you justify that view? Russia has not drawn any red lines about anything related to the rest of Europe like it had with Ukraine and Georgia (which was thoroughly ignored by Europe, with the strong support and should I say it, advice of the USA), it has not said anything as threatening as Trump saying Greenland will be part of America the nice way or the hard way, yet you believe the US is not a threat, but Russia is. There's some serious dissonance in this line of thought.
> Oh and speaking of worker protections, what happens when the price of bailing out European energy or security issues is the privatizing of your otherwise universal healthcare?
Americans have been saying this for 50 years... they just can't accept that the system has been working well in Europe for workers for all this time (though not as much for companies, as you can clearly notice it's much harder to make behemoths like FAANG in Europe, no doubt because without exploiting workers you can't really do that).
I think there's a certain amount of historical revisionism going on with this. It is complicated however.
You can point to George W. Bush opening the door to NATO membership in 2006 [1] as a turning point but NATO had been gobbling up former Communist bloc countries for more than a decade.
Another noteworthy event is the 2014 revolution that ousted Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych as the president of Ukraine, culminating in the Minsk Agreement (and Minsk II) to settle disputes in the Dombas and elsewhere.
Russia does have legitimate security concerns int he region such as access to the Black Sea and not having NATO on their border. And by "legitimate" here I simply mean that Europe and the EU do the exact same thing, most notably when the US almost started World War 3 over Soviet influence in Cuba (which itself was a response to the US installing nuclear MRBMs in Turkey). Also, in terms of the threat of a conventional land war, Ukraine is basically a massive highway into Russia, previously used by both Hitler and Napoleon. Not that it worked out well for either.
Whatever the case, having another Belarus in Ukraine was ideal for Russia and I think their designs on this long predated any talk of Ukraine joining NATO, which was DOA anyway. Germany, in particular, were always going to veto expanding NATO to share a border with Russia.
My point here is I'm not convinced that any promises of neutrality by Ukraine would've saved Ukraine from Russian designs.
> Europe is as affluent as ever
Based on what? Personal anecdotes? The EU acknowledges a housing crisis [2].
> It shocks me that people like you think Russia is a serious threat to all of Europe,
It is a serious threat. Not in the conventional land-war a la WW2 sense but we're dealing with the world's other nuclear superpower (China doesn't have the nuclear arsenal Russia does, by choice). But Putin's playbook is oddly reminiscent to Hitler's playbook leading up to the war. That is, Hitler argued he was unifying Germans in Austria, the Sudetenland, etc. Similarly, Putin is using ethnically Russian populations in a similar way: as an excuse to intervene and take territory.
There is a significant Russian population in Latvia who are stateless. IIRC it's estimated there are more than 200,000 of them.
American security and energy guarantees are really the only things holding Europe together right now. If NATO splinters, what's to stop Russia from seizing parts of Latvia?
This situation is precarious.
> they just can't accept that the system has been working well in Europe for workers for all this time
No, they don't care that it works. In fact, they've been doing everything they can to make it not work. We now have a generation of people in many European countries (and I include the UK here) who have never not known austerity and constant government cutbacks. Satisfaction with the NHS deteriorates as it's been deliberately starved for 15+ years.
This is a well-worn and successful playbook called starving the beast [3]. It's laying the groundwork for a push for privatization. It'll be partial privatization to start with and just creep from there.
I'm not sure you truly appreciate just how much US foreign policy is designed to advance the interests of American corporations.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/01/nato.georgia
[2]: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/housing-crisis/
The 1990's Russia was a hugely struggling nation that could barely feed its population, but even then they opposed NATO expansion strongly!
> The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990.
Source: (Gorbachev in interview from 2014) https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbac...
> Based on what? Personal anecdotes? The EU acknowledges a housing crisis [2].
The housing crisis is mostly limited to inflated prices in large cities and is itself evidence that people have a good purchasing power, since it's not being driven by foreign capital (at least where I live, in the Nordics).
Which statistics show the EU is NOT affluent?? If we look at GDP (+1.35% yearly in the last 10 years [1], not too bad for developed economies) and unemployment (currently around 6% for the whole EU [2]), it's not bad, especially if you consider the huge number of recent immigrants (unemployment among the native population is much lower than the total figures show, in Sweden, for example, native Swedes have near full employment).
But yeah, I think personal anedoctes are also helpful to establish whether a country looks like it's going down... and everywhere I go, I see only good signs: shops expanding, lots of new buildings, full bars and restaurants, people are driving the latest electric cars... what I don't see is things like businesses closing down, struggling local shops etc. which are normally very visible (I know, I've seen that) in economies that are in dire straits.
> There is a significant Russian population in Latvia who are stateless. IIRC it's estimated there are more than 200,000 of them.
Yes, I've been to Latvia and Russian is clearly spoken by a large percentage of the population (to my surprise, including the young generation). As long as they are not suppressed from speaking their language (as is happening in Ukraine right now and even before the war, and in some areas in the Baltic countries) and they're not made second-class citizens (as is happening in Estonia, where they can no long vote [3]), Putin will not have any excuse to do that, and those countries would be wise to not provide such excuses! Anyway, I think that regardless of that, NATO will survive even without the USA (as something else, perhaps, but the union between European states is extremely important to maintain) and I really belive Article 5 will exist even if NATO evolves into a Europe-only alliance.
> I'm not sure you truly appreciate just how much US foreign policy is designed to advance the interests of American corporations.
Not sure what you're referring to... I think I do appreciate it. The interview [4] Trump had with the American oil companies after the partial "annexation" of Venezuela couldn't be a better example of that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union#...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union#...
[3] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/russia/article/2025/03/26/estonia-...
It wasn't "given", Russia did it on purpose. There are SO MANY cases of politicians advocating for Russian natural gas or oil as an energy source who were later revealed to be 100% paid for with Russian money.
This is, in a twisted way, an expression of hope. The expectation of a grand collapse is one that's shared by many, but can you explain what gives you that complete certainty that it's near or that it's coming at all?
The far bleaker possibility that I think is totally realistic is that things continue getting worse, but they never cross over the final line. Things are mismanaged, everyone is worse off, but that nine-meal gap is never allowed to happen, and any real threats are squashed at the roots. There's no singular collapse, instead of one definitive societal stab wound that's followed by long hospital recovery, we're inflicted with a thousand minor cuts to near-death.
The people who benefit from all this have been refining their knowledge and growing their power and influence. They're near-gods at this point. They may make a mistake, but what if they don't and the current situation is maintained for decades to come?
The only way to prevent this is to guarantee that people without jobs will still have a roof over their heads and enough calories and micronutrients every day to survive - and some entertainment.
I feel for the mid-career people with families to support. Can't imagine how stressful that would be
Of course labor jobs will always exist, and a 25 year old would (on average) be much more physically able for that than someone older, so it goes both ways.
A mortgage: if you were assuming a strong income that would continue, you very likely could be forced to sell your house and take a huge loss
A family, kids: people relying on you
Time: at this point you have retirement plans and financial deadlines you need to hit if it's to ever become a reality
God forbid you have any health issues that cost $$$ which tend to come as you age. Can you afford to lose health insurance?
If you think about re-skilling and starting off at entry level.. people don't really want to hire older beginners.
Of course that's absolute worst case scenario, but I guarantee there are a lot of people there.
I'd 100% choose living out of my car for a while. In your 20s you can upend everything and completely reinvent yourself. Time, minimal responsibilities and energy are priceless
> could pivot to business and people-oriented roles by leveraging what they have now
There's a reason that's really vague, right? Because who knows if it'll be available
I don't think AI is gunna reach this point but who knows. It's not off the table
Honestly? It does and I feel completely hopeless. I'm very, very angry with the world/life at this point to put it mildly.
This hits harder depending on how much money, social capital, or debt you accumulated before this volatility began. If you’ve paid off your debts, bought a house, and stabilized your family life, you’re gambling with how comfortable the coming years will be. If you’re a fresh grad with student debt, no house, and no social network, you’re more or less gambling with your life.