The only question is whether it'll hit the ground before the next US election.
Any emergency 'chute's available?
"Is liberal democracy, then, in terminal decline? The rise of Carney himself offers a glimmer of hope, fuelled as it was by a reaction against Trump. But electoral trends in Europe do not suggest a repeat. A broad-based recovery of the liberal order will probably depend on a turnaround in the underlying trends, and here the signs are less promising. Attempts to soften the impact of worsening demographics are routinely rejected by voters and parties on both left and right. And the most promising source of renewed economic dynamism — AI — is likely to worsen inequality and increase societal instability, further undermining faith in democracy and hastening the slide into a zero-sum world.
Events of the past year have shocked the democratic world out of its daze, but it is these more powerful and slow-moving forces that should be the lasting cause for concern. Trump may fade from view in a few years, but any expectation that the liberal order will snap back flies in the face of the evidence. The old system was one that worked under a particular set of conditions. Those conditions are no longer present."
Though, in the US, there seems to be some focus on what the country wants and does. The following I say more as a joke, but I wouldn't mind being bought by the US all that much (or "invade" as you say). In a way, US is the biggest ally anyway, after being incorporated it's unlikely that Russia would try anything.
Regarding Greenland, it has been Denmark's colony, who has kept the natives in check there. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to go through these injustices and choose a different parent country?
It’s hard to beat the raw power of central control when you need something specific done sharpish at any cost.
See chinas quest for catching up with asml. Asml arose under the western order certainly but I don’t think the western order could will it into existence the way an autocratic government can. And that i think is going to become a big problem as progress speeds up and more of these pivotal junctures come up in quick succession
Edit: Here’s what a federal judge had to say in 2023: "The solution for these deficiencies lies with the legislature, not the executive or judicial branches. Congress, for any number of reasons, has decided not to pass DACA-like legislation ... The Executive Branch cannot usurp the power bestowed on Congress by the Constitution — even to fill a void." https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199428038/federal-judge-agai...
> Also, as an aside, if the bad actors in government who were screeching about DACA's constitutionality put even a fraction of that effort into protecting the Constitution when the First and Fourth Amendments were on the line, that would be great.
This is actual whataboutism
Also, as an aside, if the bad actors in government who were screeching about DACA's constitutionality put even a fraction of that effort into protecting the Constitution when the First and Fourth Amendments were on the line, that would be great.
Almost everywhere has immigration enforcement. Most of those will do the occasional raid on homes or workplaces. Very rarely do you see the kinds of conflict that ICE is (IMO intentionally) causing.
It's not dysfunction, either. It's functioning exactly as intended, by the people who spent years setting it up, and is delivering their goals. Top of which was abortion bans, which required spending years patiently stacking the Supreme Court.
That the goals are stupid and evil and incoherent is a separate problem.
The falsity of how the SCOTUS was captured by the executive branch was ultimately rooted in lies. Trump's three nominees all lied about their position on Roe v. Wade during their confirmations.
As a case in point, consider Justice Brett Kavanaugh who wrote that Roe was "wrongly decided" in a concurring opinion on Dobbs (2022). Yet in his 2018 confirmation hearing he testified that Roe v. Wade was "important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times" and went on to discuss the importance of judicial precedent. Of course the Kavanaugh hearing was an utter circus in every sense, but it was obvious that he had lied during a number of exchanges with senators.
Let's not forget that just a few months ago in a decision, it was Kavanaugh who gave us the 'Kavanaugh stop' which is a law enforcement practice in the United States in which federal agents can stop and detain a person based on their perceived ethnicity, spoken language, and occupation. This doctrine reset what constituted 'reasonable suspicion' for any police stop.
History is written by the victors, so that depends who gets to write the legislation controlling which version of early 20th century history is allowed in universities in 2100.
I don't think that's necessarily to be the case. As far as I understand how my country is supposed to work, Congressman and Judges are only responsible towards their own conscience and maybe the constitution. They are supposed to and do control each other, regardless of which party they are in. Just because people are in the same party doesn't mean they are now agents of the same power. That's not called party, that would be called a cult.
Granted this is not what seems to happen in the USA right now.
The problem was never the system, the problem is always that the electorate actually wants this. The system is there to prevent a king from emerging if the people do not overwhelmingly want a king. Right now, we have a president and congress and judicial system in place that were all put there by people who actually want this stuff. The fact that that electorate is often unsophisticated or don't actually vote is ultimately the problem, and there's a real chance it could lead to civil war.
Obviously this is all terrible, but the American left have spent nearly three generations putting all their faith in the judicial branch to just "take care of it" because passing legislation became "too hard" because they didn't want to get rid of the filibuster. Now those chickens are coming home to roost. We have a judiciary that is saying "we need legislation more than the assumption of rights" and the American left just isn't willing to actually force through legislation when they have power.
What's changed now, compared to the past, it's that the people deciding that what's written there is bogus have started changing things a little bit faster compared to the usual, hence all the brouhaha. Also a reminder that the Slavery System was very much alive and all under this same US Constitution for more than half a century, which goes to show that's it's really just a piece of dead wood.
There's a huge difference between "I disagree with this legal rationale" and "this court is illegitimate." Like it or not, every Justice on the Court is there legitimately. One of them via bare-knuckle hardball politics, to be sure. But according to the rules.
Which is a scenario it seems the Founders didn't really anticipate.
(Thomas was appointed by GHW Bush, pre-dating the first Iraq war)
I think you get the hint. In despotias laws mean nothing really. USA is not there yet, but the process is very gradual, glacial even. But irreversible.
Also lol, this court is turning into heads Trump wins, tails everyone loses.
They ruled that Biden couldn’t forgive student loans but Trump has absolute immunity.
Has it? Last I saw, they had overturned nearly 90% of lower conservative court rulings to be in Trump's favor, and a huge portion of those were on the shadow docket.
They also said it's fine to gift the justices, just not before they make a ruling.
And they gave the President a lot more immunity than he previously had.
If they're not actually corrupt, they look exactly as if they are.
The average American sees the system producing bad results, at some level people still worship the Constitution like a god when it says something they agree with, on an other level the system can feel like an exhausting and dispiriting legalistic hellscape.
How bad the results we are getting is open to debate. People today seem to be really angry about inflation and cost of living issues although the official numbers don't look too terrible. There's the explanation that the numbers are wrong and the explanation that the perception is wrong. There's probably some truth in both, but more fundamentally people don't find centrist politics of any kind emotionally satisfying anywhere anymore but when you get emotionally satisfying politics you wake up with a hangover the next day.
I think a lack of meaning is a part of it. If you're not really sure your citizenship is worth something or that you're part of something you're proud of, it's easy to get worked up about illegal immigration. If you don't have a sense of purpose, what is there to be concerned about than the price of eggs? Purposelessness turns the slightest irritation into an existential threat.
It's that it's the only plausible thing that authorizes our government to exist.
If they aren't following the constitution then they're just a collection of people LARPing in costumes while initiating violence on others.
I have lost 15 pounds in the last month because I have had to change my food habits due to price increases. It's healthy for me so far, but soon it won't be.
People have been promised an immigration fix since Ronald Reagan gave millions of undocumented amnesty in the 1980s. This frustration isn't new, and people in the 1980s under the cold war were pretty avid supporters of the US system.
The Constitution is legitimate in terms of itself, but if you want ask the question of why people don't take threats to our institution seriously the answer is that people don't actually believe in it.
The people who run our institutions reject the idea that output legitimacy matters and they will lose our republic on account of that. ("how could we be held accountable for the results we get, we can't control that" is a Hillary Clinton line that she'll borrow trouble with, Trump will only use that line after it has all fallen apart)
You do by being a citizen. You can renounce your citizenship, if you don't want a constitution to bind you. You can always ask another country whether they want you as a citizen, if you prefer their constitution.
> emotionally satisfying
Democracy is not supposed to be "emotionally satisfying", Democracy is boring. That's what makes it great. If you want "emotionally satisfying", than you have better lack with a monarchy, dictatorship or civil war.
The common denominator on the left and the right is a completely garbled and fragmentary concept of the Constitution. Until recently you would have thought right wingers only cared about the second amendment although in the last ten years they've discovered the first but in the garbled sense that Facebook owes you a megaphone (for "free as in beer") and Twitter is doing a crime if they don't give your posts maximum visiblity with all the other spam and scams.
That is called populism and comes with a huge stigma for a reason.
> The common denominator on the left and the right is a completely garbled and fragmentary concept of the Constitution.
Sure, a disagreement with what people think and what the constitution says is going to cause problems. Ultimately society is based on trust, once you loose that you have already lost some important part. The existence and growth of para-country organizations (e.g. FAANG) has certainly affected if not effected your current issue (and continues to do so for other countries in the world).
It's hard for trust to work beyond the Dunbar limit-- representative democracy is a jerry-rig-- but Swiss sidestep that with (a version of) direct democracy
Update: since there's a false etymology that "jerry" comes from "German", may I suggest we stay below the line
https://magdamiu.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/13.png
https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/16npbs4/...
I think this is the basic issue: politics is about satisfying objective needs, in terms of allocating public goods and coordinating independent actors; it's not about satisfying emotional needs.
The latter is better done by oneself, or at worst through one's kith or karass, and certainly not at the granfalloon levels at which politics operates.
Can you translate these for the not-so-gifted people among as (e.g. me)?
karass: (from "Cat's Cradle", 1963) "a group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner, even when superficial linkages are not evident"
granfalloon: (idem) "a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is 'Hoosiers'. Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common. They really share little more than a name."
Functional pedantry:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...
Satisfies my cognitive dissonance needs (from afar :)
Somewhat in the same reactionary progressivism bracket as PH. I.e. have to occasionally delve into their code to see how it's working out for them so far :)
(American Gen-Z[0] are the new hipsters (middle-middle class formal-education-shunning rebels[1], I hope the HN DAU agrees with me!!)
[0]both geohot and PH's son
[1]James Dean, Marlon Brando, James Franco.. or at the very least their most popular characters
[1] let's not forget "Joe Cool"; but then again maybe he doesn't shun formal education: https://i.pinimg.com/170x/31/59/7d/31597dc97c7c3591ef9e2ac14...
TW Körner on formal education: https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~twk10/Naked.pdf#page=11
> ...since good students mainly educate themselves outside the lecture room, you need not worry that you will influence them too much. Eventually they will outgrow you. The clever ones will make this clear to you but the very clever ones will listen to you as respectfully as ever.
Sorry!! I should have been much more careful with this potentially incendiary stuff.. I'm not saying all gen-Z are hipsters that's dumb. But that the ("anti-elitist") middle middle class is where we might look for the new breed of "hipsters" to replace those Bernie Bros
Where we are: intellectual polarization is nowhere as marked as in suburban America.. (Remember Tocqueville!!)
>I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America
>Among a multitude of men you will find a selfish, mercantile, and trading taste for the discoveries of the mind, which must not be confounded with that disinterested passion which is kindled in the heart of a few.
I wouldn't listen to Koerner on this. He might have had a great time pre-college? Did he go to schools where each teacher taught every subject?? My examples above didn't even make it to college..
(Geohot tried long after he got famous, --on the prodding of kith+kin AIUI--, straight into gradschool(!!) but then dropped out again.. Poole had a similar path. I personally know dozens of technically brilliant boys who struggled K-12)
(I also may be the wrong person to talk with about this, as I have both a 4-year degree and a trade, thanks to Aristippus' advice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristippus#:~:text=It%20is%20r... )
Yeah that's not how consent works. "Leave and pay me $2000+" is the robber's or rapist's version of consent. There is no rational version of consent that requires the counterparty to pay you a large sum of money and travel to an embassy in order to declare an opt-out to consent. Most people here never consented to being a citizen unless they naturalized.
Also, a large problem is the self-reinforcing pattern of corruption and influence peddling.
If a headline asks a yes/no question, the answer is "no".
> "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
> A 2016 study of a sample of academic journals (not news publications) (…) were more often answered "yes" in the body of the article rather than "no".
> A 2018 study of 2,585 articles in four academic journals in the field of ecology (…). Of the yes/no questions, 44 percent were answered "yes", 34 percent "maybe", and only 22 percent were answered "no".
> In 2015, a study of 26,000 articles from 13 news sites on the World Wide Web (…) divided into 20 percent "yes" answers, 17 percent "no" answers and 16 percent whose answers he could not determine.
You misread. Betteridge's law says it can be "no"...
I think though his "law" is referring to clickbait that imply a falsehood to get you to read it.
"New Research asks - Can your baby live entirely off of kelp?!" ... "wow can she? that's nuts! lemme read! oh. no."
Prove it.
That doesn’t make sense. Of course Betteridge didn’t mean “it can be answered with “no”, but also “yes””. The point is that you can answer “no” instead of reading the article.
Either way, I was responding to ultropolis’ assertion—not Betteridge’s—by citing the studies which already suggest it to be false.
Also hilarious how even on this downward trajectory the liberal order's main propaganda entities (like the FT here) run with geeky and nerdy stuff like charts (?!), that will show 'em!! A true sign that they know nothing of the real (ideological world). Just the other day they (the FT, that is) were also running with that mantra of "Trump is invading Greenland only on account of him getting messed up by the Mercator map projection!!", which was straight West Wing [1 ]heavy-liberal territory. Like I've said, they know nothing of the real world.
This leads to constant messaging against whatever the underpinnings of a society happen to be.
So liberal democracy is in decline where it has been healthiest.
I have hope that liberal democracy will rise in regions where it is scarce. The Middle East first, then perhaps China, which we have all written off based on a couple decades (the blink of an eye, in the long run)
Liberalism is rooted in Christian sectarianism.
Granted, Islam is not the same as Middle Eastern, but European and the Middle Eastern cultures have interwoven for millennia. The Middle East is not monolithic, either. They have had their own Christian communities ever since the religion was invented.
Neither is Europe free of Muslim thought. Spain is an obvious example, but there was also trade, which is how algebra came to Europe.
Greeks and Romans traveled throughout the area. To a Roman, a northern Barbarian was more exotic than the peoples South of the Mediterranean.
We are more similar to Middle Easterners than it might seem, though, granted, Islam today is a huge differentiator.
What I mainly disagree with is:
> ie: themselves.
Those were completely different incompatible cultures. "middle eastern" simply isn't a term, that makes sense for that time as a cultural distinction.
> Islam today is a huge differentiator.
On yet another note, some claim Islam to be somewhat of a Christian sect.
Yes, I gather Islam incorporated both Judaism and Christianity.
IIRC, "Christianity" used to be very much tied to monarchy in Europe, as well as feudalism. Then it was used to justify slavery. Then apartheid. And now it's sometimes used to justify stripping minorities of their rights.
There is no Christian ethics, only people justifying there political views by invoking Jesus.
Social media is a poisonous pool of trolls, useful idiots, bots, foreign agents, and people convinced ‘the other side’ is evil.
We should restrict it, or at least demand transparency on who is saying things.
In the early 2000s I was anti-war, anti-intervention, pro free speech, pro freedom of equality, against politicians trying to legislate morality or speech in any way, and thought we should have a strong border but with good immigration opportunities to allow the best to come and make the country even better. I was a fairly text book liberal, perhaps a bit more left than average. I still hold, more or less, these same values - yet somehow in contemporary times that's deemed conservative, if not very conservative.
Why this happened is an interesting question, but it's ultimately irrelevant. It has happened. And so it's predictably going to have long-term consequences for the parties. Basically we keep using the same names for these ideologies, but the values they represent shift, and even flip flop, in dramatic ways over time frames that, in hindsight, seem extremely rapid. Yet paradoxically, it's not like there's any given year or election where you can officially say that issue [x] suddenly flipped.
.. no, I think that sounds pretty capital-L Liberal to me. I think you may have confused the views of a few incredibly online leftists for "contemporary times". Or we get into specific issues and find out what the extreme conservativism actually is.
To you (and maybe me). Applying political terms is very much political in itself, I would expect the majority of people telling you a different opinion to actually believe that to be the case themselves.
This is obviously intended to appeal to traditional liberals, yet in practice it falls apart because the party exploits every single crisis as an opportunity which, over time, causes those exploitations to shift what people, including myself, perceive their "real" ideology and agenda to be. At the bare minimum, this most certainly would not include expansion and support of law enforcement.
And so again I don't think this shift is being driven by social media or whatever. I do not partake in any social media whatsoever, besides this site and a handful of other fringe focus interest things, and my perspective of the parties, and one party in particular, has shifted radically - primarily because of their own actions.
The entire system of democracy, of any flavor, is fundamentally populist. But populism trends towards values that are not what one would consider left-wing by US standards. And so far as I can tell, that is the only real basis for the claim of its supposed adversarial relationship with liberal democracy. It is framing "liberal" as being left-wing and US-centric left wing, and not simply of liberty.
If we try to encourage them to reduce emissions via some form of ongoing compensation then we asking them to impair their development in exchange for accepting putting themselves into an exploitable dependency relationship with us. They will simply never accept this, so at best it will be superficial gestures that have no real chance of having a meaningful impact.
So is the rhetoric around climate change, and politicians/parties running on claims of being able to impact it, populist, in your usage? I'd imagine not. But is there a 'clean' way to explain how this is excluded while maintaining any degree of meaningfulness of the term as you are using it?
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As for 'my' usage, I view populism as appealing to the genuine views of the masses, mostly in contrast to efforts to suppress or reshape them. It can certainly include demagoguery (which is largely what you're describing, but with a peculiar sort of bias built in), but it can also simply include leaders whose worldviews, or at least the worldview they espouse, happening to align largely with that of 'the masses.'
Some other leaders know perfectly well that you can't eat your cake and have it too, and that in reality you need to make compromises between various things you would like to have - but they tell their followers the opposite, because they only care about reaching and then maintaining power. These are the demagogues, but they ally with the people from above and, together, form populist movements.
Then there are leaders who try to find the best compromise between the various things that "the masses" want/care about, and what reality allows to the best of our knowledge. Those are the non-populist, and they exist.
As for 'genuine views' - contemporary politics is full of endless issues that if each person, absent any awareness of where we ended up, were to rank the importance - would end up nowhere remotely near the top. An obvious example is transsexual stuff. It's also comparably full of gaslighting on issues that may benefit the country, but hurt the people. For instance low skill immigration reduces wages of low-skill workers, while simultaneously 'growing the economy.' This is something which has been studied and confirmed endlessly, yet politicians and the media will do things like misrepresent studies or cite localized studies from 46 years ago to try to implicitly, sometimes explicitly, argue that it increases wages. It's complete gaslighting.
I view populism as stepping away from these sort of deceptions. Many if not most great presidents of the US in the past would certainly be derogatively framed as a populist now a days. JFK telling people we can go to the Moon if we truly focus on it, that America's resources can be spent better than trying to meddle in every single country around the world, and that a great country can only stay great if both the country works for the people but the people also work for the country? That certainly seems to fit the typical usage of the term now a days.
For low skill immigration, I fundamentally agree with you, and that's something I personally criticize left wing politicians a lot. I see the stance that Western countries can (and should) accept any amount of immigration as a left-wing form of populism.
Regarding JFK and the Moon, that's the opposite of populism - that's leading and shaping people's ideas and perceptions. How many Americans were thinking about going to the Moon before JFK made that an important issue?
As for JFK - going to the Moon is something that people would somewhat naturally support. If they oppose it, it's going to be on political grounds, perhaps they think the money could be better spent in the current moment, and not because they literally just don't ever want to send people to the Moon. By contrast something like e.g. political correctness is the exact opposite. People are going to naturally oppose it, unless there is a political motivation behind supporting it. I also chose that exact example because of the comment you made about populists promising the Moon - it turns out that sometimes they deliver.
Regarding the Moon, are you sure that you're not equating "populist" with "what I personally like"?
To make a counterexample, what do you think about free universal medical care? Do you think that "the masses" would "naturally" want that, or not?
PS By the way, I'm far from what you would probably define "woke". I actually think that the excesses of wokism were a decisive contributing factor to Trump's win.
However, I am not that concerned about it, also as a family man. There's a finite amount of fossil fuels in the world, they will run out eventually, and become economically unfeasible long before that. So even if we do absolutely nothing, the world will likely be economically forced to start transitioning away, likely on a timeframe that is within our lives. Arguably it's already happening with places in the Mideast aggressively seeking to diversify their economies. In any case CO2 levels when dinos roamed the Earth and the oceans were full of life, were upwards of 1200ppm owing to natural processes. We're not going to hit anywhere near that even if we burn everything - in other words there's no scenario where we become Venus, or anything even remotely like it. Some places will become more hospitable, some will become less, optimal places for growing crops (and/or different types of crops) will shift, and overall there will be a lot more greenery. It's a pretty dumb experiment, but it'll be fine.
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On free healthcare - if we are speaking hypothetically of genuinely free health care at comparable quality then obviously everybody's going to want it. The problem is that those 'political objections' are pretty tough in this case. Obviously it won't be free - it'd be paid through taxes, and the government has already shown itself in a relationship with the healthcare industry where they are, at the minimum, uninterested in reigning in healthcare costs, and government operated systems invariably balloon costs.
Outside of free likely becoming quite expensive, there's also the issue of quality and availability. Countries that have had experience running 'free' healthcare systems for decades are increasingly running into problems in modern times with declining economic growth, declining fertility, increasing health issues (obesity, psychological, etc), and so on. Even Scandiland is seeing increasing trends towards privatization in healthcare, and that's with a vastly more appropriate population for such - much less corruption, healthier, preexisting high taxes, fewer social divisions, fewer people seeking to abuse the systems in place, etc. It is still working for them, but I'm not sure if it's indefinitely sustainable at current fertility/economic trends.
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And yeah, I definitely knew you weren't "woke" since they in general seem completely incapable of having a good old debate/discussion! I think the fear of 'wrongthink' makes people accept things that they wouldn't otherwise rationally accept which makes them unable to competently defend their views when speaking somebody of a different worldview.
* Life on Earth will survive any human-made change, even a full nuclear war. It's our society which won't survive if changes are too quick.
* Publicly ran healthcare systems in Europe and elsewhere are MUCH more cost efficient than the US private system, it's very easy to compare cost/performance, so the "government operated systems invariably balloon costs" is just false in this case. This isn't to say that private enterprises aren't more efficient in most cases, and the issue with private healthcare isn't that they're not efficient in terms of resources used - it’s just that maximizing profits and shareholder value when people’s lives are on the line means that you, as a health care customer, will be gouged for every penny they can get.
In general I agree with you on both fronts - our disagreement is mostly going to be in the details and forecasts. For instance the impacts of climate change are already happening. Sea levels in parts of Florida have already risen more than 8 inches since the 50s. Yet beach front property is still selling for a premium. The point is that I expect it's going to be gradual enough that society will have time to adapt, even if the change over an extended period of time may be quite significant.
And I also completely agree that the healthcare systems pretty much anywhere in the world, government or privately operated, are dramatically more efficient than the US private system. But I don't think you can expect that to change if the government starts operating it. Medicaid's savings requires studies to measure since it's nominally more expensive/person than private healthcare. What savings there are, after a bunch of adjustments and assumptions, seem mostly explained by paying healthcare providers less per service, which is why a sizable chunk of places don't accept it. It doesn't really scream 'yeah, let's make this global and mandated' to me.
That said, I had a Norwegian friend visiting me over here in the other side of the world. He ended up getting an ear infection and went to the most premium local hospital to get it sorted out. Final charge to him = $0, even internationally. Enough to make anybody absolutely jealous, but I'm going to have a hard time believing America might be able to land on this Moon. Cheap and efficient just isn't the American way.
You write about this in a negative tone ("outrageous views"). To go for the extremely low hanging fruit, what about when the establishment media tried to mostly ignore Epstein, and it was only the hard push from social media personalities that brought the topic back into the mainstream? What confidence does that leave in the establishment media, and that they are not bought and paid for by the 'ruling pedophile class'?
When the establishment media refuses to talk about certain topics, it gives up the control over the narrative on that topic. That is their conscious choice. It is obvious that individuals will rise to fill that gap. Why are you writing about it as if it's a bad thing?
Does a liberal democracy even exist without independent media? I think not.
Know that I would rather social media didn't exist, but putting all the blame for our dire political situation on it is very misguided.
Corollary question: should it be? Eg, is "liberal democracy" really the best we can possibly do? My take is that the long-term goal should be a society based on Voluntaryism with no use of force for anything other than self-defense. But if we ever get there, it won't be soon, and in the near-term the collapse of liberal democracy is trending towards the full-on advent of fascism and totalitarianism.
So at least for now, I believe liberal democracy is something worth fighting to protect.
Are the voters a joke to the people who write such articles?
Am I a joke to them?
Is there a browser addon which can mark links on HN as behind paywalls?
Some sub-reddits tag them as such.
Why is it not democratic, you may ask? Because not a single one of us across the world had ever voted for or against any of the laws we must comply with (except for some lucky blokes in Switzerland). Laws were written and approved by a small number of individuals and not people.
The people have discovered they can vote OPM to themselves and their pet causes. ICE now has a budget 4x the size of the marine corps. SS fund is on its way to bankruptcy. Corporations get all kinds of subsidies. Farmers get their own subsidies. And it goes on and on.
Meanwhile the national debt just keeps going up.
As each guy pays more OPM to the next guy he keeps asking more for more OPM for himself to cover the OPM he's losing to others. Eventually the portion of the economy that is one big circle jerk ratchets up and then if it goes on too long the whole thing collapses.
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form...
We have reached not just Dead internet theory, but also Dead Civilization theory. The top feel like they don't need half of civilization, and in fact half of civilization are now a weight/burden on society.
Liberal democracy was able to take power from authority because it was supported by enough people with enough power but that dynamic no longer exists. Authority has finally reached a point where that power has/is being taken back because it no longer needs those people's labor/participation/existence/buy in in society.
2. As for the US Constitution: (a) It's original design limited participation to (i) white (ii) men (iii) who owned land (wealth). I would argue not much has changed in 250 years. How many billionaires can pick up the telephone and speak directly to the President or Senator or Governor that same day? And how many of you can do the same?
(b) The design of the US Constitution did not provide SCOTUS or CONGRESS with any mechanism to control an Executive who appointed officials swearing allegiance to the President ( the man ) as opposed to the President ( the office ).
Once the President successfully appoints heads of every department, especially FBI, DOJ, and military who are loyalists to the MAN, then there is absolutely nothing SCOTUS can do to force the President to comply with its rulings; nor is there anything the Senate can do when the President laughs when the convict the President of Articles of Impeachment.
mstank•2w ago
We are seeing a decline of American hegemony, accelerated by this current regime. And the ascendancy of a non-democratic superpower.
However, the largest chunk of GDP and growth still sits firmly in democratic countries and very consequential American elections are happening this year, and in 2028.
The real question is, will Europe find its spine?
mjanx123•2w ago
kreetx•2w ago
I've observed that it's the messy process of democracy that has put the people in power. Sure, big countries (i.e, mostly Russia) would like to tilt governments their way, but it isn't succeeding. I can tell you though that local Facebook pages for newspapers are full of strange comments, seemingly Russian trolls (but I have no proof).
pyuser583•2w ago
A lot "CIA influence" isn't the CIA at all, but the US Government, usually State or DoD, projecting soft power.
I know this sounds pendantic. But whenever someone starts talking about the CIA like it's responsible for "supporting liberal candidates" - all seriousness leaves the room.
alephnerd•2w ago
From past personal experience, inter-service autonomy over policymaking is tightly guarded, and arguments always end up with the NSA (advisor, not the agency) where the president essentially becomes the tiebreaker.
Under the current administration, this rivalry has gotten much more intense due to the relatively hands-off management style that has been adopted.
pyuser583•2w ago
The CIA and DEA switched positions repeatedly: one day the CIA wanted to support them to fight communism, and the DEA wanted to cut them off to stop the supply of drugs. When communism fell, the CIA saw the group as a liability who knew too much, while the the DEA wanted to pay them to destroy their drug labs and plant licit crops.
The group ended up destroying their drug labs, and focusing on money laundering, ransomware, and crypto-scams, which neither the CIA nor DEA cared about.
But the CIA is very consistent in following state department policies. They jealously guard their ability to delivery intelligence that conflicts with State Department priorities, but they don't have any strong priorities that conflict with those of State.
I'm sure things need to be ironed about by the NSA/NSC. That's normal. But the CIA isn't going fight the State department like they fight the DEA.
I'm open to correction on this. Maybe I'm just not understanding the situation.
alephnerd•2w ago
It's much more gray simply because there are multiple agencies per department that can interpret and conduct intelligence operations.
The current administration also decided to adopt the private sector practice of letting "middle managers" conduct and implement what they want on their own and only disturb "upper management" if there are irreconcilable differences.
This is why policies change on a dime in the current administration.
igleria•2w ago
Nobody likes to admit their vote (or lack of) has consequences outside their little bubble.
1718627440•2w ago
alephnerd•2w ago
Now that Babis is back in power with the backing of SPD and AUTO, it will also revert back into an Illiberal/Flawed Democracy.
Furthermore, all states on the cusp of EU membership (Albania, Montenegro) are also Illiberal/Flawed Democracies.
> largest chunk of GDP and growth still sits firmly in democratic countries
The only Full Democracies in the 10 largest GDPs are Germany, Japan, and the UK. Japan under Takaichi Sanae is pro-Trump and Germany is likely to see the AfD break it's cordon sanitare by 2029.
[0] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu
pydry•2w ago
When they refer to liberalism or democratic values they mean neither. These are bywords for western hegemony, which is what they really care about.
This is what was under threat when they celebrated Romania's democratic first choice of president being denied.
anon291•2w ago
pjc50•2w ago
pydry•2w ago
0 have ever threatened or supported any kind of violence against any person ever.
Social media posts on this topic are treated the same way as holding up a poster in public.
pjc50•2w ago
1718627440•2w ago
pydry•2w ago
They supported a group that spray painted some planes. That was the extent of the "terrorism".
Most of the people who think they deserve to be in prison are racists.
1718627440•2w ago
pydry•2w ago
Im more of the opinion that you are either anti genocide or you are a racist/racist sympathizer. There isnt a moderate middle ground.
inglor_cz•2w ago
Is Greek government really more functional than Polish/Czech one? My personal experience would say "nope".
alephnerd•2w ago
And after having dealt with the experience of opening a large foreign office in Czechia, there absolutely is a democratic deficit (sure it's extremely efficient, but we just needed to keep a handful of decisionmakers and "phone a (now deceased) friend" in a non-democratic manner).
inglor_cz•2w ago
First, this is not my experience, and second, much like you I don't think that this is particularly relevant to the democratic character of the country.
I also would like to hear more about the democratic deficit you describe. Most problems around opening anything are caused by bureaucracy, which is obliged to follow norms produced by the lawmakers. Some of these norms are stupid, but that does not mean that they are undemocratic. Voters have the right to be stupid and to elect stupid representatives who produce stupid norms.
alephnerd•2w ago
The core crux of "democratic character" is providing an even playing field as much as possible institutionally, organizationally, and politically. If functioning is subpar or requires "hacks" or misaligned institutions, it undermines democratic character itself.
Chest-thumping while ignoring the real degradation of institutions in a large portion of Europe is only going to put you back in the same position as the US.
> I also would like to hear more about the democratic deficit you describe
I'd rather not given the incumbent in power and how small the Cybersecurity FDI community in Czechia is. Maybe Vsquare, just not you.
inglor_cz•2w ago
Which of the five numbers that, averaged together, result in the total score, do you expect to lower and why?
alephnerd•2w ago
I also expect the political culture score to start steadily dropping as SPD and AUTO's competition to "own" the far-right leads to the intensification of culture war discourse, and potentially forces ANO to start opportunistically shifting right as well.
I don't expect "functioning of government" scores to shift significantly either, as the same issues that persisted when I helped my former employer enter Czechia still remain.
Our PortCos will still continue to remain in CZ because once you build that network it makes everything so much easier (and because Israeli founders and operators continue to have a soft spot for CZ), but the manner if which we need to operate in Czechia and maintain closeness with the right people isn't that different from emerging markets.
And that I feel is the crux of the issue in Czechia and much of the CEE - once you know the right 20-30 people or their friends or colleagues, you get the red carpet. Otherwise, it's an uneven playing field.
inglor_cz•2w ago
"intensification of culture war discourse" Compared to what? There isn't much space left to increase the heat.
"potentially forces ANO to start opportunistically shifting right as well."
ANO is a pensioner's party and given our fertility rate, this is their goldmine. They don't really have to expand their electorate, it expands on its own.
"once you know the right 20-30 people or their friends or colleagues"
Isn't that why people fight to get into Ivy League universities or Ecole Normale Superieure? I am not sure if there is any single nation on Earth where personal connections are unimportant.
alephnerd•2w ago
Going to Harvard or Yale doesn't mean I have the ability to call a couple people who can pressure someone at the SEC to speed up the review of an S-1 or can pressure a city council to re-zone agricultural land to residential land to build a housing complex, or (using your earlier Eton example) find a SpAd who can put pressure at the SFO to get them off my back.
And more critically, if I find someone to do that, then my competitor will find out and take me to court, and 2-3 years are burnt in negotiating a settlement.
On the other hand, if someone even finds out that I do something like that in CZ, they have no choice but to roll with it because otherwise they will be frozen out from dealflow or ignored when asking for a favor.
And this is why institutions matter, and degradation of institutions are worrisome, becuase they increase the risk profile of opportunities and incentivize zero-sum thinking.
> The model that is being discussed for the public broadcasters is that they will be financed by a certain fixed percentage of the country's GDP
Yet the power of the purse will be removed from the media and given to the state, thus reducing CT and CRo's independence. This disincentivizes the publication of politically controversial statements.
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Just becuase the US is seeing degradation of institutions does not mean much of Europe is not facing similar problems.
Ignore it at your peril.
latexr•2w ago
Let’s hope they are (happening).
tdb7893•2w ago
I would look more for voting place shenanigans, voter ID laws with only a weird subset of IDs allowed, radical gerrymandering, and stuff like that. Some of it will be blatantly partisan but also people are using justifications like "restoring trust in elections" to advocate for things that reduce the general franchise. They don't need to do a lot since a few percent is enough to swing the general balance of things.
AnimalMuppet•2w ago
What there are also going to be are allegations, claims of cheating, lawsuits...
tcb678•2w ago
Republicans currently control ~55% of all state legislative seats nationally and hold governing majorities in most states. In some of these states, they are incredibly partisan and just don't care - they will burn it all down to stay in power (MO, TX, etc.) Congress is required to certify the results of presidential elections, but state and congressional elections are a different matter. Those are certified at the state level, by state officials.
So what happens if Republican led states simply decide to declare, "We certify that the incumbent representative has been reelected," regardless of the actual vote count, or play other games e.g. discarding votes, eligibility, etc? It would be wildly illegal, of course. It would almost certainly trigger lawsuits, protests, and significant political repercussions within each state.
But here's the problem: in many of these jurisdictions, the federal district courts are controlled by Republican-appointed judges. The circuit courts are too. If the state officials certifying the results are Republican, the state courts and legislatures are friendly, and the federal courts that would hear any challenge are also sympathetic, how exactly would anyone stop them? Who enforces the ruling if the courts themselves are part of the alignment? The U.S. DOJ will not take up these cases on anyone's behalf. And in such a circumstance, you're unlikely to find a Congress willing to impeach the officials failing to do that.
More importantly, the National Guard and/or the Army gets activated under the Insurrection Act. So. That's the ballgame.
tdb7893•2w ago
People keep saying "if" the election happens and it's definitely happening, it's just whether it's free and fair (the US has never had incredibly fair elections even in modern times, highly gerrymandered two party elections are really stupid, but substantially less fair than even the somewhat low bar the US traditionally sets for our democracy).
idibiks•2w ago
They'll be the most free and fair elections we've had since 2016, and maybe ever!
burnerzzzzz•2w ago
idibiks•2w ago
idibiks•2w ago
If you want a primer on where we're already moving into, and likely to remain for some time, this wikipedia article is the place to start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_regime
In a decade, the year most scholars of political science will say the US slipped fully into this will likely be either 2025 or 2026.
But yes, we'll probably still have elections. Functionally nobody's talking about what those elections would need to be laser-focused on achieving to turn us from this path, though. Court reform, eliminating much of the post-9/11 security apparatus, revoking a great deal of authority congress has ceded to the president. Even the democrats won't have the votes to get a majority on most of that, even if they didn't have to worry about a veto and if they took a slim majority in both chambers. They won't get more than 90% of their own members on board with any of that, in many cases, probably not even 50%. We're toast. The very best we might get is a little push-back on tariff power and, if we're very lucky, a substantial reduction in ICE funding. No restructuring the absurd and dangerous under-the-executive(?!) immigration courts to fall under the judiciary instead. No court reform. No undoing large parts of the USA PATRIOT Act. No full abolition of our paramilitary domestic police force. We'll relieve a few symptoms, maybe, in the very best case, but not treat any part of the disease. And that's the best plausible outcome.