Not so easy anymore, with all the biometrics and cryptographically secure data on a microchip embedded in today's passports.
From raising awareness, convincing governments, running for office, donating money and/or labor...just volunteering on a crisis line is a huge help.
My guess - and it is a guess - is rather than signing an online petition, forwarding a meme, or attending a demo, in the past direct action, civil disobedience, underground networks and activism was more often used. I suspect that in today's world many of those would be viewed as terrorism or at the very least imprisonable.
I’m involved in local politics. The problem is a low give-a-shit factor. Older Americans will reliably show up to vote, stop to sign petitions (real ones, not online ones), donate to candidates and show up for town halls and protests. Young, well-educated, technically-savvy urbanites are a predictably anodyne bunch. (To be fair, I’m those things.)
The risk isn’t higher. The cost just is. When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, it’s a tougher sell.
Brunch and instagram aren't the problem.
Working two jobs to barely afford rent is.
That crap sucks up the attention so much that when issues that have real impact show up they get lost in the noise.
There are still a couple semi trailers parked in fields with big "Stop Eminent Domain Abuse" signs painted on them though. So I guess at least the farmers whose land it cut through cared locally.
Even then it was only because I was trying to bootstrap a startup and setting my own hours.
Also, "When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, " -
good points, but remember also that those old people largely could have one person working (and actually getting of at 5 with no bullshit emails/slack/other crap to follow them home) and the other doing childcare/household work/civic things, instead of 2 people working 8-6:00, rushing to childcare, and getting home tired as dogs.
But have to live/work at places where the costs of living are enormous.
My partner and I are, in fact, a single income household. I make somewhere around the 95th percentile of incomes in my country and I work fully remote, meaning even more effective wealth (we bought a house in a low COL area - one without a housing cartel.)
But I am extremely fortunate.
I am involved with the Manhattan community board that oversees, amongst other areas, Times Square. Meetings are at 6 or 7 on Thursdays. Public input is sought and listened to—on accession, meetings are shifted to the weekend.
No difference in the make-up of the turnout. A lot of the population self-selects out of the political process.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-migrants-greece-mar...
Of course you can argue that the laws violated are stupid or inhumane. But in a democratic country like Greece you’ll have a hard time. The laws are generally a result of balancing different interests, here refugees fleeing from a very unpleasant life in Turkey and there EU tax payers having to pay for their integration for the next few years.
You can disagree and if caught happily pay the price (after all, why not go to jail for some time to save a few humans).
Matching up people with jobs is hard enough with paid work. Doing a better job at matching people with volunteer opportunities that suit them would be a huge win.
Figuring out where best to donate money is relatively easy in comparison; GiveWell does a good job of that.
There's a disturbing trend of governments applying technology to bureaucracy to better track and control people. For example, there's no document you can easily forge to get past the face recognition and fingerprint reader at the US border.
Under a tyrannical government, these technologies could kill millions of people, but under a normal regime they provide minimal benefit to society, like maybe they catch people overstaying their visa or whatever.
Strange times.
Countries that lack strong bilateral cooperation with their only land neighbour have to use other methods, like exit controls.
Edit: I see wikipedia mentions the move to electronic record keeping instead of adding it to your passport: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_I-94#Automation_at_sea_an...
It only works for foreigners, I believe, as U.S. residents don't need I-94 forms (the old cardboard slips). I'm also not sure if it works for Canadians, as Canadians can also travel to the U.S. more easily.
From what I can tell, if you are a republican corporatist, you are sometimes called a neocon. If you are democratic, then the term is neoliberal.
I might be missing some subtle distinction between the terms, but I think these definitions are basically accurate.
Neoliberalism is focused on economics, not military policy, and advocates free movement of goods, capital, and (sometimes) labour to build a global interconnected capitalism. It's probably the 'consensus' position amongst policy elites in most Western countries, though is suffering blowback from varying groups including economic nationalists (who dislike its open, cosmopolitan, nature and lack of concern for the nation) from the left (who dislike its promotion of the interests of capital over the needs of workers) and from localists (who dislike its homogenising qualities and dismissal of the value of 'place').
I think most people just mean by corporatists 'beholden to corporate interests' rather than specifically 'corporate fascists'; in either case they probably don't mean the original meaning of corporatism, which was control of the economy via negotiation between organised interest groups representing sectors of the people (farmers, businesspeople, industrial workers, etc.) This was prominent in Italian fascism in the 30s and had echoes in various other parts of the 20th Century such as the institutionalisation of trades union bargaining in some social democratic countries from the forties onwards.
For those who think gun control provides a large benefit, consider that murder has already become a minor problem in the US -- around 1/20 of what it was during colonial america. Suicide is much more common (and not easily reduced with gun control). Gun control is usually badly written (e.g. restricting rifles, which account for a tiny fraction of murders) and clumsily implemented and poorly enforced, and surely won't bring murders to zero.
Compare to a situation like Venezuela, where the military is literally blocking food aid from hungry people. I wonder how long that would last with civilian gun ownership?
Also, the details matter a lot. What percentage of civilians? Absolute numbers? Pistols or rifles? How are loyalty lines drawn geographically?
There are also all kinds of other political games the people in power play other than direct military confrontation. Leaving you unprotected (e.g. strict gun control and long police response times) amongst criminals is one way to make your rights useless.