Germans aren't corrupt so much as psychotically trusting. Basically a country of scam victims who'll listen to anyone who wants them to shut down nuclear plants, buy Russian gas, conquer Europe, etc.
In late 2010 Germany decreed a 12-year delay for their nuclear phase-out plan.
Then in March 2011 the Fukushima nuclear accident happened, and public opinion took notice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Chang...
France, shock-full of nuclear... now leads the european pack of nations buying natural gas from the US and also from Russia.
https://energyandcleanair.org/january-2025-monthly-analysis-...
Yes, plus Merkel was about to lose the election and she caved in.
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29173164
Effects: https://x.com/HannoKlausmeier/status/1784158942823690561
> government forcing it citizens to pay directly doesn't make it any less government funded
Sorry, I'm lost. What is "forcing it citizens to pay directly" referring to?
Your linked post is not an answer at all.
> Sorry, I'm lost. What is "forcing it citizens to pay directly" referring to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARD_ZDF_Deutschlandradio_Beitr...
Essentially the government forces you into a contract that you have no say in that is totally not a tax. Because as a tax it would be illegal, so it can't be one.
A. Merkel was pro-nuclear (she holds a PhD in quantum chemistry). During the 2000's she tried hard to slow down the phase-out process, and extended reactors' life in September 2010.
The public didn't "take notice" on their own, they were manipulated by a scare campaing from the public news broadcastets.
This is not 'manipulation' but raw facts.
They took notice.
Moreover it is quite difficult to envision a solar plant or wind turbine fleet cause such disaster, therefore the "but we NEED to be exposed to such ordeal!" became moot during the 2000's.
2203 is around of the average aviation deaths per year yet we don't stop building planes. As always with Nuclear a lot of the costs are also because of the extra abundance of caution due to irrational fear - properly cleaning up a coal operation (which is what Germany is currently using for reliable baseload) to the same standards would cost just as much.
> This is not 'manipulation' but raw facts.
It's fearmongering.
The number of victims depends entirely on what you count as a victim. And it depends entirely on the chosen response to the incident much more than the incident itself.
> They took notice.
Always using the passive voice as if that would hide that this is something being pushed onto the general population.
> Moreover it is quite difficult to envision a solar plant or wind turbine fleet cause such disaster, therefore the "but we NEED to be exposed to such ordeal!" became moot during the 2000's.
No shit if the energy production is more spread out the incidents will be more spread out as well. And easier to ignore. But not doing less damage in total.
Planes have no equivalent, replacing them would be difficult. Nuclear can be replaced by industrial renewables.
Moreover planes induce a very tiny risk for those who don't use them. Nuclear threatens even distant people (in space and time).
Note: my own brother died during to a jetliner crash (Swissair 111).
> a lot of the costs are also because of the extra abundance of caution due to irrational fear
Those requirements aren't irrational, they are devised after studying incidents and accidents.
> - properly cleaning up a coal
True, but not pertinent as very few (and not me!) suggest deploying coal plants. This is about nuclear vs. renewables.
> The number of victims
This is a truism, in which way is it pertinent?
> this is something being pushed onto the general population.
This is an unsubstantiated opinion.
>> it is quite difficult to envision a solar plant or wind turbine fleet cause such disaster
> No shit if the energy production is more spread out the incidents will be more spread out as well. And easier to ignore. But not doing less damage in total.
Err... In your opinion when a tsunami (or anything else) destroys a solar plant or wind turbine fleet an emergency evacuation is in order (just as during a major nuclear accident, due to the potential release of dangerous material)? Is it a joke?
Americans elected a president who behaves exactly like a Russian asset. And no evidence could make them change their mind about it.
Who are the gullible people again?
Hell, most early Bibles count, or do you think the council of Nicea resulted in something other than what is being described for large swathes of early church writings?
>It also depends on whether book written is deemed illegal.
the discussion may be wider than that comment, but my comment, even if one did not want to give it a charitable reading and was really intent on winning an HN argument today for some reason - which I understand, I been there - would really be most reasonably interpreted as a comment that making books illegal often has the exact opposite of the desired result.
With charity one might also conclude that there is an implied link between quality of the winners in these scenarios, but anyway you seem to have some particular problem and unwillingness to say "huh, well the guy replied to a comment regarding making books illegal and only seems to think that is what is under discussion, I guess no arguing him out of that" so I guess we should just stop rather than you throwing out examples in which books have been changed, under the mistaken assumption that I know nothing about this history (I have read the Apocrypha, the Pseudopigrapha, and the "forgotten books of Eden", so I believe I have a reasonable knowledge regarding your latest sally)
The Council of Nicea - for one example - definitely did NOT make all the alternatives more popular/less dead, right?
Sometimes the streisand effect is real and permanent, sometimes it’s just temporary and the bans/stamping out/destruction work. And unless we’re buried under a mountain of ‘all the others’ which I don’t see, there is a whole lot of it which just goes away through the passage of time because of those effects. Which looks to me like 100x’ish, due to the ‘reverse pyramid’ effect of history.
Or are you making another point i’m missing?
Most recent destroyed content is more likely to be prints of films, in other words things that had a higher cost of reproduction than written content.
The UK with Brexit is a good example. The majority of the voters believed it was a good idea, due to campaigns not really based on facts. Now they're all angry because the results suck for them and the campaigns were mostly lies.
The same is going to happen with the US majority backing Trump's plans. They all believe a lot of lies he keeps telling. And in a few years they're going to be angry because they then face the consequences like high prices for everyday purchases and terrible healthcare for the working class.
It's just that today they don't understand yet what the results of Trump's policies are going to be. And shouting "Canada/Europe/China has been very bad for us" gets them excited, simple human nature, our group vs the other.
And there it is! The info given by the current administration is as bewildering as it is incomplete. Russia, governmental agencies, Medicaid(!), medical researchers (who are shaking in their boots about their futures)...it's a long list with very little reasonable excuses. Musk? I'll stop here.
The point being, we won't know until years from now the damage that's being done to both the states and the world stage.
And I think most people are relieved that for the first time in a hundred years (ever?) somebody is actually doing something to address govt fraud, waste and abuse. Something more than lots of talk followed by no action which is what has always happened previously.
If you’re looking for fraud, waste, and abuse, it’s right there.
And just as a sidenote, the Democrats had 3 times the campaign funds of the Republicans at the last election (Nancy Pelosi herself is worth 100 million..something like that). So if you want to talk about wealthy people, lets talk about the Dems.
And we can also talk about the many people getting very wealthy from the Dem NGOs (USAid was a slush fund basically).
Yet these are not the same things. DOGE has done many things already which upset and discourage people. Come to Canada where the sentiment towards DOGE seems very negative, you will still see a great desire for improved government efficiency.
DOGE is not as well-loved as a poll about government efficiency will make it seem. Almost everyone wants improved efficiency. Many people think their public service needs cuts. Not everyone thinks the way DOGE does it makes sense.
History writing my arse!
You think Trump takes orders from Putin? He's too much an egotist, and he sent the Javalins to Ukreain when lots of the establishment thought it was a bad idea since the experts thought Putin wasn't mad enough to invade again. (Even if he took Kyiv in the time the US took Baghdad, the counterinsurgency to follow would / will break them).
Yeah, IMO Putin does think Trump is incompetent, easily manipulated, corrupt, and easily influenced by actual assets. Elon is similar, but rather than incompetent, he has aligned interests (Russia is a gas station, and Elon sells EVs, both want the price of gas to skyrocket and I suspect both think US global power basically exists to keep gas prices low).
I'm in shock that more people don't realise that Elon / Trump foreign policy is easily explained by Elon wanting higher gas prices, and Trump being easily manipulated.
There's no solid evidence Trump is secretly and knowingly working for Putin, that's just a cooker left-wing conspiracy theory IMO.
Not enough to indict, anyways, but there's a spectrum between insane left-wing conspiracy and a jury conviction. Paul Manafort, Trumps 2016 campaign chairman, was sentenced to 7 years prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy against the United States. His protege Rick Gates did 45 days in a plea bargain deal.
Then there was the time Trump stood up at his campaign podium and directly asked Russian hackers to leak more Clinton emails:
> “Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump said, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
And during his presidency, he went out of his way to take secret meetings with Putin in Hamburg Germany[1], among other places. We have no idea what was discussed, which seemingly checks the "secret" box at least. As for "knowing," well, he directly asked for their help, but who knows how mentally "there" he is. Comes down to "for" I guess, as I'm sure he'd characterize it as "with"?
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump...
Artificially triggering an economic recession is a sure way lower oil prices. So how exactly are they planning to do this?
Besides that.. if this is really musk’s goal he’s going in very roundabout way.
> There's no solid evidence Trump is secretly and knowingly working for Putin
True. He is obviously working for him very publicly and whether he’s conscious of that or not does not even change much
However it should probably be noted that it was official government organizations of the first group that were being gullible whereas the official government organizations of the second group all seem to know exactly what's up, but either seem unable to do anything or are actively participating.
"What is 'inclusive or' Alex?"
Alex: "Yes! And that will.close out the 'boolean operators & avoidable horrors' category for this game."
The best option to actually convict him was in Atlanta for racketeering to win an election. There the democratic attorney general blew it by hiring the prosecutor she was sleeping with.
Treason is strictly defined in the constitution and doesn't apply here because we aren't at war with Russia.
He probably did engage in seditious conspiracy or such things with them, via Roger Stone and Wikileaks, but they successfully obstructed justice enough to get away with it.
Wouldn't their best option be to put up a candidate and policies that voters actually liked?
The only thing they remember is he was president in 2019. They don't reliably know who it was in 2020/2021 though.
(I think the fixed-term strong presidential system is essentially unfixable here. The country needs snap elections.)
I have one german colleague with whom we dicuss sometimes deeper topics. He confirmed what I thought - germans, at least his generation, are/were raised to feel utterly responsible for WWII atrocities of their ancestors. I don't mean having objective information without the push to make them feel morally superior or ignoring inconvenient truths like ie russians always do, no I mean a very heavy guilt burden pushed on all young folks, who then don't have a clue how to process that.
Then they are stunned into any action even when a murderous nation is clearly trying to subvert and destroy their society and does very direct attacks against infrastructure. Anything, literally anything including losing without a fight, apart from actually standing up and fighting back aggressor. And rest of EU goes where germans go, can't ignore that massive influence. 3 years of brutal unprovoked war seems barely enough to move the needle at least a bit as we saw in recent elections.
A common misunderstanding, unfortunately also among Germans themselves. We are raised not to feel responsible for the crimes of the Nazis ourselves, but responsible to make sure the world never forgets what happened and how. It’s not about guilt for the past, but wariness for the future.
I’m not happy with other traits of our People either, but I think the way we handle the holocaust is the right one still.
You're talking about Germans as if a unified group with a single opinion, which could not be farther from the truth. In the recent elections, we saw extremist parties from both left and right, as well as different centrist opinions, gaining similar share of the public vote. That is not a country that's "totally fine" with mass-murdering 6 million people.
I assume you're speaking of Palestine; let me tell you this. The relationship between Germany and Israel is, for—at least I hope—understandable reasons, a complex one. German citizens currently alive are obviously not personally responsible for the Shoah, but the state of Germany, a fictional construct, will carry this responsibility indefinitely. And that implies, to a certain extent, an obligation to stand on Israel's side. If you don't at least try to understand why this is, and why Germany, as an entity, thinks it is morally correct, then you don't get to tell us how to do our foreign policy.
In Germany, you can absolutely spread pro-Palestine opinions, as long as you don't demand violence against Jews. Blaming the Israelian army for war crimes against Palestinian citizens is fine, and a welcome part of public debate. Again: You may not agree with that policy rooted in the origins of the federal republic of Germany, but it is our policy. Accept that, our leave.
Having said all of this, I, personally, am highly critical of the settlements and the way the war on Hamas was carried out. I'm not fine with mass-murder, but I'm also not fine with terrorist attacks on civilians. This issue is more complex than you try to frame it, and picking a side is a step in the wrong direction. I can condemn terrorist and criminal soldiers and politicians at the same time, without pretending Israel is flawless or Hamas doesn't exist.
Germany funds 1/3 of the war. Divide the numbers by three and Germany still comes out worse than Hamas. By the numbers, the west isn't merely "not flawless" - to reiterate, the numbers say the west is behaving worse than Hamas.
Which is probably why they don't put the numbers on the news any more.
And Germany arrests pro-Palestine protestors and shuts down pro-Palestine organizations very regularly. I live there and everyone who thinks the war is bad is scared to say it. It has happened that organizations that simply allowed their halls to be used to host a pro-Palestine lectures had their funding removed and were shut down, so organizations are afraid to do this unless they're about to be shut down anyway. Police just randomly arrest people at demonstrations - even if they can't find something to charge them with, the arrest is enough to deter them. Speaking Arabic is banned. There are some demonstrations but only a small fraction of people feel courageous enough to participate. Speech has been successfully chilled.
Do you also think Italy should foverver be responsible for Roman conquest?
What about the other countries that have now claimed land previously under the control of the Reich? Why do you think the government of someone in Munich has any more responsibility than the government of someone in Gdansk?
This whole idea of holding nations forever responsible for supposed crimes of their forebeares becomes absurd pretty quickly. And absurd is also giving one group of people a special protected class - that means that yes, you have absolutely not learned the correct lession from the past.
> You may not agree with that policy rooted in the origins of the federal republic of Germany, but it is our policy. Accept that, our leave.
You don't get to tell people to leave just because they don't share your opinions.
Give trust to get trust