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Comment by lpcvoid | Hacker News Reader

I am willing to give 1% indefinitely (that's how much I currently donate monthly) until Ukraine is a free nation.

Fair enough. I suppose it is your decision to donate 1%.

But would you like your president to make that decision for you? Would it be okay with it you if they asked you to sacrifice like 60% of your pay towards this cause, that too indefinitely?

It's a donation towards the greater good of Europe, so up to a certain amount I am absolutely for it. I have no say in taxation in the first place (well, indirectly through voting, but you know what I mean).

60% is excessive though, and would make it impossible for people to pay bills. That's detrimental for the future of Europe :)

Ok, now let us also take into account that as this conflict continue, the chance of a nuclear escalation goes up, day by day.

Would you still support to fund this and make this conflict go on and on, possibly until someone becomes so desperate that they do something stupid?

Russia won't ever use a nuke, because then India and China are not going to support them again ever. I am not scared a single bit of any nuclear saber rattling. The biggest threat is an uncontested russia.

Half of the sons, daughters, and mistresses of Russian leadership and their plutocratic friends enjoy vacationing or living in western Europe, so they will probably replace Putin with somebody else or let Russia lose and run away with their pockets full of money before letting any nuke fly.

Yes, I would stand up to a bully. Would you?

Here is some "Russian misinformation" for you. Please watch it and come back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOkl2XgZlw0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzgPJeYZaOU

Lemme reuse the same response I give to my antivaxxer and climate change denier friend: If only you would have spent the time watching those videos doing something useful world would be a nicer place.

> But would you like your president to make that decision for you?

Not without a discussion, of course, and I may disagree with the decision after the discussion, but on the whole I have been happy enough with the parliamentary systems where I have lived within Europe that I can say yes to this.

What would upset me and concern me to no end would be if the premiere went rogue and made these decisions unilaterally while ignoring all other branches of the government.

So basically, I think at this point if you support this to go on, then you are really willing to face an all out war that possibly involves your country. So there is a real chance that you won't be able to limit how your pay will be affected. But things could get much worse if some country goes nuclear.

So what I am trying to say is that may be some people are acting from this point of view (which makes a lot of sense to me, if you are realistic), and is actually not unsympathetic to Ukraine.

I'm not able to make sense of what you're saying in this context, I apologise. There's a lot of "this" and "it" with very little clarity regarding what those actually refer to.

"HN discovers the concept of taxes, gets mad about it."

With that kind of argument sewers are also clearly unconscionable, after all they cost money you didn't donate. In that hyperbolic case where the EU throws 60% of it's productivity for the war effort, Ukraine would win in 6 months. That's an absurd amount of equipment, and more importantly with that kind of money you can set up a foreign legion that would vacuum every half-decent soldier without better prospects from Ethiopia to Perú. This will not happen of course, a wartime economy is not necessary to retake the invaded territories. The "WW3 totally gonna happen guys!!!11" is also exasperating, no, nothing is gonna be nuked unless someone attacks Moscow, which also will not happen.

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