Once I have that arranged, I can think about giving again.
I think it’s a 5% chance over the next 100 years.
I’m not giving it a second thought personally.
If it happens it will be so bad that I’ll almost certainly die as a result (due to chronic illness) so I should just keep on living as-is and not worry about it.
On average, governments last 250 years — which means we have a 0.4% chance per year. Using that figure, 100 years has a 33% chance of collapse — as our background.
Or roughly 4% per decade.
People wave off that risk because there’s not a lot that can be done: we don’t know how to make perfect governments and we’ve never discovered a good way to, eg, eliminate the ratcheting tax burdens that destabilize society.
I'm not too crazy about this as an anarchist, mind you, I think there are better stable equilibria we could get to. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I guess.
Our market.
I know it's a controversial doctrine, but power projection does have a hand in keeping the peace.
Beyond the hoses and water what do we need the fire trucks for?
And the sanitation.
That's a very US-centric POV. It's not like half the world would suddenly cease existing if the US collapsed.
people would lose access to Teams and Office
but who cares, there's plenty of substitutes
Without consulting wikipedia, I can only think of about 17 off the top of my head.
What % chance do you think there is that the US collapses in over the next 10, 25, 50, and 100 years?
You know, schools used to teach this type of stuff.
Does not bode well for the future of informed populi
* The US economy nearly requires a degree for economic success
* US demographics cliff results in a heavy short fall of student enrollments
* US Federal government deeply cuts funding for universities
* US higher education offers remote learning to attract students and reduce costs, much of which deeply lowers the standard of education
* LLMs are deeply integrated into social products including snapchat and twitter
* LLMs are capable of completing a significant amount of curriculum
* The US Department of Education is removed, including teams responsible for tracking academic success on a national and state level
Words like collapse are I think not the right word. But the long term institutional harm of this sequence of events may hit the country very hard. Bringing back factory jobs ain't gonna fix it, if tariffs are even capable of doing that.
Percentage of people with a college degree: 37.7%
The majority of the country never needed college to obtain the success that they have had. I do concede that it is a positive economic indicator though.
Millenial generation is the largest generation in US history, big generations typically produce big generations. The US currently has a pretty good population pyramid: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...
Right now Gen Z is coming into adulthood, they are one of the smallest generations. After that is Gen Alpha the kids of millenials, University funding might change to reflect that.
As it turns out, the part of me that cared about those things just had a stunted development and was behind. Certain subjects like language and history have an emotional and cultural significance that cannot be appreciated through only math. I highly doubt anyone could have explained this to me because I had thought that I was the sole decider of everything ever in my brain. I honestly probably still do think that way.
Anecdote: I grew up on N64 and an era where software was a lot more difficult to come by. As a kid, I'd look forward to buying a floppy disk packaged in a plastic bag held up on a cork board at my local computer shop.
When I got a game on the N64, I would be laser focused on completing it.
I recently purchased a N64 for my niece and nephew who are 8 and 10 respectively. When I was 10 I got Ocarina of time at the beginning of the school year and spent an entire year laser focused on solving every puzzle and completing the game.
Despite my niece and nephew doing reasonably well in school (and being kids to freakin PHD academics) they just cannot sit down and focus on any one game for longer than 15 mins. There seems to be a lack of "perseverance" which worries me.
They must try "every new app", see every new thing on Netflix/Hulu/whatever. Maybe i'm just exhibiting old man syndrome but it really shocked me. I clearly remember being that kid yesterday and doing my best to beat the game. I guess the fact that the N64 only ever had about ~380 games in its entire lifespan made a difference. Each title was a special event. Today there is just so much software for the kids to play with.
Have you considered that they might just not find games interesting? Even if they like playing some games, they might not enjoy the game the particular game that captivated you for so long.
Even in your own generation, there were many kids who would have got bored of sitting in front of any computer game for 10 minutes. There's absolutely no reason to extrapolate your experience with your nephews out to an entire generation.
I wanted to provide some more missing context since you brought this up and maybe this can spur some interesting discussion. I have been finding that they prefer simpler games like Mike Tysons punch out which really surprised me since I consider the mechanics of that game pretty basic. I got them Super smash brothers, Zelda, Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing, super mario 64 and most recently Starfox 64 which they don't even want to take the time to go through the training properly, they get frustrated when they can't move the ship properly and have to press the C buttons to speed up or slow down. They love the easy wins and spectacle of super smash brothers though which is the game they play the most as in every other day. It kinda worries me because it would be one thing if they were striving to excel at smash, that would be cool but they aren't even doing that, just messing around until someone wins. Maybe you are right?
I do have very fond memories of certain 8-bit games, but apart from Elite and the Freescape games like Driller and Total Eclipse, they're mostly platformers. I liked some of the classics on the Amiga, e.g. Dynablasters, Monkey Island, etc, but again I far preferred platformers.
However, that was just for that period of time - when I went to uni, I got interested in "real computers" and especially distributed computing, and I missed out on a whole generation of games. Even now, I've still never played any of the Zelda games even though the top-down 2D games would have interested me when I was younger. Even more surprising to me is back in the late 90s, I thought I'd buy Myst on the PC because it seemed like I'd enjoy it because I liked Monkey Island on the Amiga. I never managed to play it for more than about half an hour, it just wasn't interesting to me at that point of time.
Ironically, professionally I'm actually a games developer even though I still don't play a lot of games any more. I'm in that industry because I love programming and experimenting with rendering techniques, and working in that discipline always keeps me on the cutting edge of the current technology. But modern games? Mostly meh, IMHO.
I still do play some modern games, but mostly if they're story based or appeal to my retro side. Things like the Drake and Last of Us series on PS3 that have a great story, or VVVVVV or Super Meat Boy which tap into the retro feelings even though they're much newer. But it's more about an original mechanic for me now - so things like Portal, and I even remember sinking over 80 hours into PixelJunk Eden (a really obscure PS3 game that barely anyone has heard of) which was maybe 10% of my total playtime on all the PS3 games I owned.
Anyway, I agree there might be a problem with your niece and nephew if they are just mindlessly doomscrolling and doing nothing else with their lives. But as long as they also have some hobbies they enjoy, it doesn't really matter if they intersect with yours. Maybe ask your grandparents what games they spent their childhoods playing and see if that's something you'd have wanted to do as a child... I'd guess it probably isn't, or else you wouldn't have spent all your times playing these games.
Aha, I had briefly considered whether that was your intent when you made your original claim, but had mistakenly assumed earnestness:
> The entire world has too much riding on the US not collapsing.
Because, obviously, there's no such thing as a self-assessed 'too important' as some kind of safety net when a nation state is being actively sabotaged from within and without.
The lazy argument is that China will take over everything, that they think in 100 year increments. However they have terrible demographics, have serious risks like food security, and have mucked up their economy through their real estate collapse.
We all know of the US's issues and there is no other country that is really challenging these two....so how about everyone fails and we are all poor and destitute together?
Also, leading countries in Asia and Africa into debt traps and dependence on them through the BRI is not very different from taking over.
And like, idk if you know this, but the world bank and the IMF are the ones offering the predatory loans. Countries choose to work with China instead exactly because the terms of their loans are better than the western alternatives.
According to Rudyard Lynch, China has invaded Vietnam 27 times.
If the world collapse happens, it’ll be a result of pandemic, meteor, solar storm, nuclear war, or something like that and not some country “taking over everything.”
Looking back, it really felt like a waste of time. I should have taken a hint when I saw mostly old people there, and early 20 something political science majors. Two groups that have a lot of free time on their hands or have a personal reason to be there.
I have lost a lot of faith in these people over the last few years. It was hard work to get AOC into office and a lot of her original hard fighting crew have been pushed out post election. While AOC is making waves on Twitter, I haven't seen any tangible positive changes that have been a result of her being there. We could talk about pieces of the GND being in the IRA but still thats a stretch.
What I dont understand is why you believe these people are talking about a 'collapse'? I haven't heard this too much from the progressive left.
Thats more the right wing e/acc folks that want to push the country to collapse faster because then they can rebuild faster or something like that.
I've been appropriately humbled by the experience. Worst bet of my career
But think about someone who has been foreclosed in the last financial crisis, people who have no perspective of ever retiring, who a are a paycheck away from becoming homeless. Do you think those people will see our institutions in the same sacred light as we do?
We should get rid of our condescending attitudes and really try to see things from other's perspective. And on the other side, unless I am talking to an anonymous Peter Thiel, Musk ou Zuckerberg, it is not like we are truly part of the same elite the downtroden see with some much contempt.
If it were a matter of people with nothing to lose not caring about American institutions, wouldn't we expect to see lower income voters heavily leaning one way?
Am I close?
https://manifold.markets/ianminds/will-manifold-implement-lo...
Those cultural ties will take tens, perhaps over 100 years, to weaken enough to cause a civil war.
Unless it decides to go down fighting and gets something important blown up it could easily remain a nice place to live for centuries. Nobody threatens the US, it is hard to see how it'll ever be in anyone's interest to threaten them, they can re-learn how to be an industrial powerhouse if they have to. Almost all its real problems are ill-advised domestic policies that can be changed pretty quickly if people decide the situation is hairy enough to be honest in politics.
It might be in everyone's interests for the US to dissolve but it won't be as bad as the USSR dissolution was. It'd probably be a good outcome if they went back to the constitution as intended, depowered the federal government and became a collection of powerful states. A lot of the political tension is because whoever wins the fight over controlling the central government ends up with far too much power.
We’ve offshored manufacturing, cut funding for education, have failed to invest in infrastructure.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...
Education funding per pupil has steadily increased year after year. Maybe we should spend even more, but our problems with bad educational outcomes are mostly due to other factors rather than a lack of money.
https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...
https://www.axios.com/2021/06/17/automation-ai-income-inequa...
Even if we bring back all the manufacturing jobs we've lost, they represent fewer positions and automation will continue to be a downward force on wages.
[0] https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/global-robot-density...
This period looks wild, in no small part because 90% of even the fringe-y media don't like Trump, but I doubt much of his shenanigans will hold up once court cases happen. People will get bench-slapped (the only lawyering pun I know, but it's a good one).
As to "which countries don't seem like they'll collapse with over 1 in 10 odds within 10 years"... Most of them? I guess if you thought this risk was exceptionally high the EU's visa free travel would be the best hedge you could get right now.
Nuclear option is not likely to be used for some "minor" conflict like that, because it would go both ways quickly.
Given the preponderance of artillery of the Russians, I really doubt the current numbers from the delusional british about their losses in Ukrain, but supposing Russia would incur 250 deaths year to subdue Estonia is beyond the realms of the most fantastic political sciences major military fantasy.
The United States fought for 20 years in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban regime with the Taliban at the cost of more than 2 trillion dollars. Even nominal success like Desert Storm were not the military triumph it seems as besides Saddam's army being a poor excuse of a military force, widespread bribing was used to guarantee several Iraq's military units would not fight.
Hitler employed 111 divisions on the Barbarossa plan, with the known results. The US has currently 5 divisions equivalent in state of readiness plus some other ten that would take take time. Any serious american operation against Russia in Eastern Europe would thus necessitate a draft in far bigger proportions than the Vietnam's era Draft, in a population that is way less jingoistic than the boomers eager to prove they were up to the heroic acts of the silent generation that overcome the Axis in the battlefield. A lot of american industrial production has been downsized and sizable parts of it depend on global supply chains.
While american weaponry are technologically impressive, most of it was designed by the most byzantine and politicized proccess you could imagine with the goal of guaranteeing politicians votes in their turfs and to maximize returns for the Military Industry shareholders. American weaponry is maintainance intensive, have low availability and depend on optimal conditions to be operated and mantained. They also depend on robust ISR. All things that a smart enemy with hypersonic weapons and space capabilities would make sure to deny on the first day.
The idea that the United States could prevail in a direct lan war against Russia or a naval conflict against China is a fantasy.
As for Russia, their internal economy is very weak and they have far less industrial capacity than the old USSR. The only way they are able to financially sustain the invasion of Ukraine is through huge fossil fuel exports. Those exports pass through a limited set of choke points including pipelines, refineries, tank farms, and ports which are impossible to defend and can be wrecked with stand-off weapons. Some of your criticisms of overly complex US weapons systems are valid, but our cruise missiles are proven to work reliably.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-colla...
I bear no ill will towards Russian people but while the current malign leadership remains in power we should use all means short of war to contain, undermine, impoverish, and generally humiliate the country. Grind them into the dust until they can no longer present a credible threat. But that's just my opinion.
But Russia is not taking people off the streets to war by force currently. Most of those who fight for Russia really believe that they are right. And almost everyone who wanted to could leave Russia. Currently it's not like in WW2 and Hitler. Russian soldiers do not kill civilians on purpose(maybe with the exception of single crimes that are being investigated), it has no point, (although it is possible that by mistakes, this is a war, unfortunately) and in Russia there is not even the death penalty, although in the US there is.
Russia always proposes some kind of settlement so that there is no war. Sometimes they are not so terrible, for example, simply not to make Russian-speaking citizens second-class citizens, not to forbid them anything. Sometimes the demands are of course not entirely adequate, but this is not always the case. And other side can offer some middle ground.
I believe that an invasion in any Baltic country is possible only in one case, if they completely cut off the food supplies of Kaliningrad, and if the sea route is completely blocked, and the people in Kaliningrad will suffer without food.
I didn't support Putin in the last elections, for example, especially because of the change in the constitution. And I don't really understand why he didn't find an adequate successor, for example. I'm saying this just so you don't think that I think Russia is always right. Yes, you may think differently. And I may be wrong.
Aside from all the rest of the nonsense and foolishness you've written about Russia and the supposedly lovely ideals of the USSR's bloody, genocidal history, this particular nugget stood out.
Russia has no formal death penalty, sure. Instead it's government illegally murders opponents domestically and internationally, frequently and in sizable numbers while lying about having done so. Aside from the U.S death penalty laws being completely different in nature to such a mafia practice by the Russian government and its agents, at least the U.S, formally and through due process, executes its criminals without concealing what it does.
Well, that's exactly the problem. Several countries in Europe have more Russians in their population than the Kherson oblast (<14%), which Russia officially annexed.
Estonia has over a quarter of its population as Russian speakers.[1]
They don’t want to have Russians take back over.
1. https://migrant-integration.ec.europa.eu/library-document/fe...
There was a real danger of people colliding in Ukraine at that time. If everything had been completely peaceful, no seizures would have happened. After all, there really were supporters of the old government and opponents of it. Or even if NATO had signed an agreement that would definitely not accept Ukraine, perhaps for at least 50 years or some rather long period.
Unfortunately, many people no longer trust the West and NATO, they have failed to fulfill the role of an impartial leader who sets an example for others. They have committed too much deception for their own benefit.
In short, and very very roughly, I'm probably a proponent of a kind of balance. Which side is weaker (the whole NATO is clearly stronger when compared than Russia) that side is currently "right", and we need to look for something like a middle ground. If Ukraine had not received huge assistance from NATO countries and the government had not sought to join it, it would have been a different story. Yes, there is some deception on the other side, too, of course.
If you think about it well, then everything in life is not so simple.
People sometimes fail to understand the real world meaning of having a trade deficit of more than one trillion dollars.
If there is a conflict with China then I doubt that other NATO members will play much of a role since they have no critical national interests in the Indo-Pacific region. It will mainly just be the USA with perhaps some assistance from a loose coalition of Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Vietnam, Philippines, and/or India.
Beijing did not want the trillions of US dollars it owns: it does not have some master plan the implementation of which requires $trillions. These trillions are an unwanted side-effect of Beijing's policy over the decades of keeping the dollar strong relative to the yuan to makes Chinese good cheap in dollars to encourage owners of dollars to buy Chinese goods (which, again, it does to try to avoid social chaos).
And also, like other commenters have mentioned, China needs to import food, fertilizer and liquid fossil fuels to prevent its people from starving whereas the US is self-sufficient in liquid fossil fuels and food (though I don't know about fertilizer).
The reason it is prioritizing electric vehicles is because right now, if China stops being able to import enough liquid fossil fuels on tanker ships (e.g., from the Gulf and from Russia's European ports), it loses the ability to deliver food to its people. If they manage to make their electric-vehicle infrastructure robust enough, then in some future year, they'll be able to run their delivery trucks on electricity generated from coal, which it has enough of without having it import it.
Beijing is currently in a weaker position than Washington economically and militarily and the difference is quite significant. If Beijing ever launches an attack on Taiwan, that is a strong sign that the leaders in Beijing think the gulf between China and the US is widening (i.e., China is falling ever further behind) because if they thought that the gulf were narrowing, they would conclude that they can afford to wait and snap up Taiwan in the future.
https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/02/tariff-threats-and...
However, in my opinion the United States is not going to collapse, worst case it will be replaced like the British Empire, leaving an advanced Western country (i.e. UK) behind it, minus the entire managing the world part
Also you should read about The Decline of the West, and its influence on Nazi ideology, not every prophecy is correct, and not every prophecy is beneficial to follow
Didn't something similar happen to the Roman Empire? It just kinda ... slowly broke apart?
Protests itself are legal and fine. As much as you hate pushing for rights of non-whites or palestinians or women, none of it counts as "violent coup". Likewise, calling vandalism against Teslas "terrorism" is a stretch.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/world/europe/german-touri... [2] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/british-tourist-detained-ice_... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44303556 [4] https://apnews.com/article/us-immigration-detention-guantana... [5] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/11/us/mahmoud-khalil-columbi... [6] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Germany [7] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024... [8] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_S...
But as a descendent of Nazi slaves whose entire families were murdered, I fail to see the similarities between a movement that had established concentration camps and declared its intention of genocide from day one, and the present day rule of idiots that is the United States
I think the fact that comparisons are thrown too easily to the point of cliche only make up for this sense of historical determinism that often makes things worse
Trump is an idiot, yes. But he’s a useful idiot. Vance isn’t a moron, nor are the Project 2025 think tanks. I think the fact that people are willing to dismiss all this as things not actually getting worse, is what allows it to get this bad in the first place. Again, I’m not saying it’s as bad as 1941 yet. But the optimism that it simply can’t happen in 2025 in America is entirely misguided.
> With regard to general populations, the overall consensus amongst historians appears to be that many were aware of a hatred towards the Jewry, but not insofar that a significant comprehension of the Nazis' genocidal policies was reached. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_of_the_Holocaust_i...
The same is happening in America today.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/17/us/lynchings-racism-new-e... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_... https://msmagazine.com/2024/07/02/anti-abortion-pro-life-cam... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rise-abortion-abolition...
Wikipedia is often hardly a good source for anything even slightly more controversial than the plot for a Pokémon episode
However the paragraph you are quoting regards the knowledge of the general population in german occupied europe, not in Germany
By 1939 more than half of the Jewish population had fled Germany, so they might have been on to something
I really think you are severely underestimating what life in Nazi Germany looked like, and overestimating the current brand of populist republican politics, which has exact replicas in the democratic party as well
That was not because of holocaust, that was because of general restrictions of their legal rights. And also, Germany had policy of trying to make those people leave.
Jews in Germany were largely immigrants living mainly in cities. Frequently refugees from Eastern Europe and their descendants.
> overestimating the current brand of populist republican politics, which has exact replicas in the democratic party as well
You started this thread with claim that Europe has far right problem now. Republican and consequently America politics is massively closer to it that European one ... or democrats.
However, I was giving it as an example of problems in Europe that might cause worries when choosing a country to live in, especially someone who is worried where Trump is taking the US. This worry translated to the US applies in my opinion to both extremities of the political system (Trump admin included)
However, I don't think what we see from Trump right now or in the future is in any shape or form close to the thirties, and I also want to believe that the far-right european parties will also be preoccupied with other (stupid) ideological goals
Nazi were idiots too in a lot of ways. Being idiot in some sense does not make you not dangerous.
All of these are, a bit far from any action Trump has accomplished in the 4+ years he has been in office
which makes these comparison in my opinion be, both in extremely bad taste and dangerous as they trivialize history
And talk about annexing foreign countries. And openly admire Russia while hating on democratic countries. And started their current rule by targeting opposition, removing protections from Fauci and other hated members, targeting law enforcement and regulators that investigated their crimes.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/14/why-was-mahm...
I'm not happy with the rise of populism and radical parties, but just to put some nuance, I'd argue the "radical" right in Western Europe isn't even comparable to Trumpism. To give an idea, Marine Le Pen in France voted to put the right to abortion in the constitution. On many social issues, they are closer to Bernie Sanders than Trump.
the UK was a rare exception here, it is certainly not the norm
the dutch story is more complicated and closer, with napoleon being involved (again)
Spain, Portugal, France and the Netherlands lost their superpower status before the start of the 20th century
if you're in the year 2300, maybe the state Spain and Portugal ended up several hundred years after the loss of their superpower status is of interest
but today, the question we are interested is in "what happens at the point the US loses dominance over the world?"
will the US will handover the reigns to China in the way Britain did to the US?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine had a negative impact on international markets, but if you were from either country you would have been better off living abroad when it happened.
Similarly, you would be better off almost anywhere outside of Europe from 1933 to 1947.
When you are pessimistic any country has a dark future, while judging from history, historical events do not look inevitable before they actually happen, and are hardly expected.
For example, recently half of the world, including many in the west, believed in the inevitable prophecy of socialist utopia, where there will be no private property and everyone will be free of the oppression of capitalism. Millions of lives later and oops
There are factors at play in historical development which make the development predictable.
The Chinese would have to go through half a dozen hostile countries to reach New Zealand. These countries have a combined population of around 300,000,000. Even if the Americans abandon the region, there is no feasible scenario in which the Chinese can afford to invade and occupy New Zealand.
You may also overestimate the relevance of banking for the countries finances.
Also without bank, a lot of people will find themself without any properties and will likely get more violent. Again, in part of the world where people own real objects and not number in a computer in a datacenter, this won't happend.
If you want to live there is different question for a number of reasons, but I do think it is probably your best bet avoid the impact of a US collapse (which I think is very unlikely).
In no sense has the current administration expressed that “women” are enemies.
Feminists, like myself, need to quit it on the arguing “anyone who is anti-feminism is anti woman”.
It’s the exact same rhetorical flourish as “anyone who is anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic”.
In this era of Trump’s statements bearing no relationship to truth, we can’t sink to the same lows. Or the bullshitters have already won.
The US is a terrible ally, for all the reasons you cite, but unless they somehow become a democracy, China would be worse in every way.
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-3134,0...
IMO the simplest and most realistic way to reconcile "democracies don't invade each other" and "the US might do invasions now" is that the US is not a democracy within this model.
It certainly still is in a technical sense that is sometimes useful. But by other metrics, like "can the president start an unpopular war with a steadfast former ally" uhhhhh. If the military refuses an elected president's order to invade is it still a democracy?
Yes, because the military can't follow an illegal order, which is what a declaration of war without the approval of Congress would be. The military also can't spend money Congress hasn't authorized, even if the president tells them to.
Congress hasn't actually declared a war since World War 2. The President sends troops wherever he likes, whenever he likes, for whatever purpose he likes and Congress rubber-stamps their approval after the fact, and they call it something other than a war.
You're correct that the military can't follow illegal orders, but what you're describing as an example of an illegal order is just the way the US military industrial complex works.
I don't think this argument is landing that strongly.
When the people want a king, what's written in the rule book doesn't matter anymore.
When was it ever?
I am no longer considering the US as a democracy. From a west perspective, China doesn't want to annex Canada or Greenland.
By what metric?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_indices
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index
* https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...
Because they have elections?
I always thought that when Americans say they’re a democracy they mean that in sort of propagandist way. Like, installing democracy as justification for military aggression.
But it seems that now some people really believe it? The bi-partisan system sponsored by corporations, where candidates are vetted through the systems - it reminds me of the Chinese communism with two parties instead.
Just compare it to Swiss democracy.
When was the last time an candidate from an independent political party became a president in the USA?
Lack of direct threats to sovereignty, reliability (in the sense of honoring commitments) and basic diplomacy are characteristics that trump ideological compatibility in domestic functioning. The EU is not gonna buy the chinese equivalent of the F-35, no one thinks they are "friendly" but a turn to China is inevitable. It doesn't help that your democratic institutions are closer in the spectrum to a Putin "election" than a Swiss one.
This is even more true for weak and small countries, Trump's Panama obsession has caused irreparable damage to an already frayed positive perception. Paraphrasing an interview with then Chilean president Ricardo Lagos when he explained to Bush his decision to not vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq in the security council:
How did you approach that moment of saying no to the United States?
I mean, I think there are two important elements here. The first is to understand that Chile is a small country. The international role we play is not very big. But precisely because we are small we demand rules in the international arena. Because if there are no rules, the big ones will mistreat us. Consequently, I explained this to President Bush on several occasions: We need rules because we are a small country. Bush found it difficult to understand the point about rules.
Despite the current administration being in power explicitly because it genuinely won a recent election in which the incumbents would have preferred to win instead. Trump's frequent shittiness and feces throwing aside, he got his second term through the long-established and very stable American democratic process.
That you would then go from this to claim China as somehow better, a country in which authoritarian one-party rule is absolute and in which nobody can throw an incumbent out of office, is just.... really absurd.
Tibet doesn’t count either, it’s been a part of China for centuries and it was the serfs and slaves that sought reunification to escape the monks’ brutal rule.
Supposedly Hiram Maxim was prompted to invent the machine gun when an acquaintance told him:
"Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility."
if that hadn't happened you'd likely be facing the same situation, i.e. having 30 neighbours instead of 2
it's quite significantly larger
now, imagine if today that 80% wasn't part of the US, and was instead controlled by the indigenous population (likely tens of sovereign states)
would there have been large scale wars in the 19th and 20th century? it's quite obvious the answer would have been "yes"
See: the Trail of Tears, the actual, literal death march of natives out of their ancestrial lands because "manifest destiny"
- A large portion of the population is incarcerated
- The population is weaponized
- Many people are dying because they don't have proper access to health care
- The economy leave a lot of people on the side of the road producing highly anxious people
- School shoot / police violence
- ...
The problem of the US is indeed with high incarceration rates, long sentences, bad prisons where more hardened criminals educate the newcomers to be more efficient criminals; this whole system is screwed, and needs to be replaced.
Lack of access to health care, while increasing mortality and decreasing morale, is not violence; rather, it's a lack of mercy, and lack of resources. That same lack of resources limits access to (quality) health care in EU, but in different ways: long wait times, limited prescription of expensive but efficacious drugs, etc.
is this a typo? I'm autistic and can't see how autism has anything to do with weapons or being weaponized. in fact, I usually see the opposite (sheer numbers being weaponized against autism), but I'm probably the most biased possible source for that.
A good example is Paramount's decision to delay the first Sonic movie in response to internet backlash about Sonic's design. (Google old sonic movie design vs new).
Many people who participate in these things clearly do not have autism, but are spending a lot of time and attention on something broadly considered frivolous by society.
I'm saying this as a father of a girl diagnosed with autism; she's lovely, brilliant in some aspects, and... difficult in some other aspects. Life is harder for her.
The US values democracy and free speech more than any other country. The EU only somewhat shares these values, which we can see from the normalization of censorship in its regulations, frequent calls to ban political parties, and the cancellation of election results in Romania. Europe has a vast history of expansionism, which we saw in brutal colonization across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Greenland itself is a result of expansionism.
China is also a country that is pro censorship and doesn’t value democracy. It annexed Tibet and Xinjiang and will do the same to Taiwan. The CCP has caused tens of millions in deaths, not just in the annexed areas but even among its own people.
I can see Europeans practicing some of those same authoritarian tactics China does. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at this statement of viewing China as a better partner. But it still seems odd to see people here admitting that they prefer an authoritarian dictatorship as their friend. In my opinion it says more about Europe than America.
Trump is destroying democracy and free speech (notably press freedom).
Regarding freedom, I don't buy the US vision. The US culture values individual freedom at the expense of the many. From my point of view, freedom is not possible without equality between people. Otherwise, some people impose their will (their freedom) on others. In this sense, regulation is an instrument of freedom.
Can you name specifics? What freedom does the press not have that they had a few months ago? How is there any less democracy now than before? Nothing has changed about the rights of people to vote or publish - if anything these things are getting better by removing wasteful spending propping up one side of the press, stopping illegal immigration, etc.
> The US culture values individual freedom at the expense of the many. From my point of view, freedom is not possible without equality between people.
It’s an interesting point that I need to think more about. Personally, I still think individual freedom is the only real freedom. The US law is well thought out in limiting individual “rights” in minor ways (like not being able to harm others) while preserving most of it. Those choices let everyone live freely and more equally than any other system.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/10/nx-s1-5323166/arrest-green-ca...
Generally citizenship can only be revoked from a naturalized US citizen if the government proves some sort of fraud on their application.
Also no one has their citizenship revoked. People who are immigrants but not yet citizens are getting booted for breaking the law in numerous ways, including supporting sanctioned terrorist groups. It goes well beyond legally protected speech, even for America.
Denaturalization means stripping a citizen of their citizenship, not revoking a visa or green card.
Denaturalization means taking away someone's citizenship. Nobody's citizenship was taken away in this specific case.
I think most would agree that "taking away someone's permanent residency card" is not on the same level of outrageous as "taking away someone's citizenship." I agree that both are drastic measures, but one is way more outrageous.
Whether it was justified in this specific case or not, and to which degree, is an entirely separate story.
If you mixed it up with some other case and manage to locate it, please reply with a link, because I am genuinely curious too (not trying to be snarky, I mean it). So far, I was not able to find a single case of a US citizen getting denaturalized recently, except this one[0]. But this one kind of makes sense, since he lied on documents during the naturalization process about his involvement in extra-judicial killings in El Salvador back in the day (which would have almost definitely prevented him from becoming a US citizen, in the first place, if he was truthful):
> Arnoldo Antonio Vasquez, a native of El Salvador, is alleged to have concealed and misrepresented his involvement in the extra-judicial killing of 10 civilians in San Sebastian, El Salvador, in September 1988, when he was an officer in the Salvadoran military. Vasquez was previously identified by then-Vice President Dan Quayle in a list of Salvadoran soldiers responsible for these killings. Vasquez concealed his involvement in the San Sebastian killings throughout his immigration and naturalization proceedings. Vasquez was naturalized as a U.S. citizen Jan. 13, 2005.
0. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/denaturalization-lawsuit-f...
Every week, Trump is threatening the free press that criticizes him. He suspended the Associated Press from acceding to the Oval Office just because they speak about "Gulf of Mexico". He said that that negative cover of his actions should be illegal.
> How is there any less democracy now than before?
A free press is an important pillar of democracy. By repeatedly threatening or even attacking it, you are attacking the very fabric of democracy. Democracy is not just voting, you have to be informed otherwise you are blind. You must also be educated to make decisions in your own best interest. A true democracy requires that anyone has access to education.
Democracy also needs time to make decisions, and to make decisions collectively (at least in a parliamentary way). Trump decides unilaterally by issuing decrees. This is closer to a dictatorship than a democracy. Moreover, he decides so quickly that the DOJ cannot ensure that the Constitution and Human rights are respected. Some of Trump's allies even claim that the USA will need him in 2029: they are ambiguously threatening the very existence of an election.
Trump is attacking free speech by banning the use of some terms in emails, attacking schools (e.g. Columbia) and threatening companies with DEI programs.
I could go on.
> if anything these things are getting better by removing wasteful spending
Even if it was true, you need time to change something. Otherwise you break lives and companies.
> By repeatedly threatening or even attacking it, you are attacking the very fabric of democracy.
You’re suggesting that the press is above criticism, and I disagree. I think the press does need to be held accountable when they are biased or spread misinformation or do bad work to chase clicks, for example. But this is different from their rights being infringed. Just like the press can say what they want, with only some exceptions, so can the administration. That seems balanced to me.
> Trump decides unilaterally by issuing decrees. This is closer to a dictatorship than a democracy.
Why is it that executive orders are executive orders under one administration but “decrees” under another?
> Moreover, he decides so quickly that the DOJ cannot ensure that the Constitution and Human rights are respected.
This isn’t the DOJ’s job. If someone thinks their legal rights are violated by an executive order, they can file a lawsuit and fight it in the courts. There is also no such thing as “ensuring human rights” in American law - there’s just enforcement of the laws passed by Congress and upholding the constitution (which may include ensuring human rights but it might mean something different from what you intend).
This is a tangent, but I want to point out that the previous administration was the one who repeatedly violated the constitution - for example when Biden and his appointees would yell at tech companies to pressure them into censoring the public (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mark-zuckerbe...). That’s literally a violation of the most important right in the US constitution.
> Democracy also needs time to make decisions, and to make decisions collectively (at least in a parliamentary way).
Democracy did make a decision - to elect Trump. I don’t think democracy requires every single daily decision of the administration to be reviewed - that’s just impractical, and no country does that. The executive branch has the right to do its job.
> Trump is attacking free speech by banning the use of some terms in emails, attacking schools (e.g. Columbia) and threatening companies with DEI programs.
You’re mixing a few different things here. A president banning things like DEI in their own agencies is legal. A president removing funding for schools who break the law or enable criminals, as was the case in Columbia, is legal. There’s no unlimited right for any school to get free taxpayer money. And as for companies with DEI programs - given that many of those companies break the law by discriminating based on race and gender as part of their DEI programs, they deserve punishment under the law. You framed this as “threatening” them, but I view it as simply holding them accountable.
The AP is the nation's premier news source, it's relied upon by nearly every other news source for coverage. Banning the AP from the White House for not hewing to the WH's ideological garbage is an attack on the free press, even if it is not (and I think it likely is) a violation of the First Amendment.
Then we have the attacks on Perkins Coie and other law firms for their legal work, revoking their credentials - another violation of the First Amendment, which protects not just speech but action.
The Secretary of State revoking a green card for protected speech? Again an assault on the First Amendment.
Meanwhile over at the FCC, Brendan Carr is launching investigations into social media organizations over their moderation processes (https://reason.com/2025/02/05/how-the-fccs-warrior-for-free-...), gone over 60 Minutes over a baseless claim about how an interview was edited, and threatening to revoke broadcast licenses for not being nice to Trump: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/trumps-fcc-chair....
Trump repeatedly sues media organizations, several of which have folded in a way to basically pay a bribe.
Revoking funding to Columbia, a private university, for not being draconian enough against people protesting a genocide in Gaza? Also a free speech violation.
And as for the Biden admin pressuring social media companies on Covid and election misinfo? The administration was simply requesting that the companies review content that was against the guidelines - stuff like Alex Berenson's disinfo on vaccines and illegal tweets about voting by SMS. The former kind of content likely killed 100,000s of people, the latter was illegal.
Spare us your Trumpy gaslighting on DEIA - having a goal of having a more diverse and inclusive workplace and educational institutional isn't illegal.
Maybe try doing your own research instead of sputtering out MAGA talking points.
I hope we will finally make peace with reality and stop giving sh*t about things valued in this or that country.
It is completely irrelevant for the EU what US values or loves and what kinds of authoritarian practices are present in China. What matters is what they can give us and what do they want in return.
US makes it clear it won't give us anything, and will demand a lot. It is China, then.
More likely in my book is the existing wars in the EU spreading, and civil war breaking out in the US. The EU wars are already expanding, loosing stability, and generally getting more politically divisive even if US policy had a strong impact on them. Those tensions aren't new, and at least from this side of the pond it seems like the US was keeping those expansionist actors in check more than encouraging them. Things are not going well in the US politically, and I'll leave it at that.
From the economic side, if there is a US economic collapse, and its definitely not going up, the economies that are going to hurt the most are going to be those built on top of the US dollar as they have outsourced control over the fundamental tools you can use to stabilize your economy in rough times.
These labels are being misapplied in my opinion. What people saw after the first assassination attempt was the opposite of cowardice, and I think it helped Trump win. As for bullying - there’s certainly some. But you can also look at how Biden bullied private companies to implement the Democrat’s censorship machine and find that bullying appears in many forms. Is the EU any better? Given their love of censorship and slip towards authoritarianism, I don’t think so. What about Canada? We saw their authoritarian handling of protests, where they literally denied protesters access to financial assets, and I view that as extreme bullying.
> He might be willing to go for a small country like Panama (and that would still be an _insane_ move)
Would it be insane? The canal was built by the US. It is a key part of economic and national security. Panama is violating treaties around its handover (https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/1/senators-sound-alarm-...). Why do you think China is so upset about the recent sale to Blackrock? It’s because they have been quietly gaining control over the canal.
> the economies that are going to hurt the most are going to be those built on top of the US dollar as they have outsourced control over the fundamental tools you can use to stabilize your economy in rough times
I would say the opposite is true - they benefit from the world’s most powerful and best managed currency. That stability makes them resilient as well. Countries trade in dollars and accept debt in dollars for basic but well thought out reasons. They aren’t making irrational choices.
Yes. Invading Panama, a peaceful democratic ally, would be insane. Let me clear that up for you.
They are a sovereign state. They get to build relations with whoever they want. That's how sovereignty works. The way you win those countries over is with the use of soft power, something that China understands but seems to be outside the grasp of the current admin, who is banging around like a band of drunken apes.
Also I’m not sure what you mean by “huge trade partner”. Panama isn’t even in the top 20 trade partners of the US.
You're somewhat mistaken with this assessment. The modern convention is that any treaty can be annulled simply by one of the parties declaring "what kind of idiot would have made this treaty".
It's worthwhile to stay informed on how modern global norms treat treaties.
As an example, when we were in Portugal 8 years ago we needed to get my wife's prescriptions refilled and the person we were staying with said to go to the ER. We confirmed repeatedly and then did as they suggested.
The doctor at the ER questioned us and said "we could have been busy and you would have had to wait."
But long story short, we spent about half an hour all up to get the prescriptions, and it cost us $27. That was with zero insurance, paying full freight. Filling the prescriptions with no insurance cost less than the co-pay in the U.S.
As far as I've researched:
Portugal will let retirees in and after five years you can get citizenship -- you might still want insurance, but it's affordable.
Spain is similar I think, and we're also looking at Italy, Greece, and Croatia.
In Uruguay you need insurance, but if you start a business it's straightforward.
In Thailand healthcare in general is excellent and mostly affordable.
We're looking at 30-40 countries all up, but those are the main ones we're looking at.
"Wealthy" is relative -- for example the minimum monthly income to get a visa for Portugal is something like $1,000 for one person, $1,700 for two. And we don't plan to live the high life, we just want someplace with nice weather, nice history/scenery, and that won't require us to do GoFundMe's to fund our future.
Sure something is always the most pressing threat to stability, but that does not imply all eras are similarly unstable.
i personally believe communities composed of the former cannot survive. coincidentally enough, american people are overwhelmingly of the former type.
HMOs, later PPOs, etc. in the U.S. seemed like a good idea, but health insurance wasn’t available or affordable for the minority. But there’s Medicaid, Medicare, the ACA, and much more, so the U.S. government has subsidized care and assistance.
Another “workaround” for unaffordable health insurance is going to an emergency room at a hospital, assuming you can get there, but many can. It’s slow as hell, but being seen in hours can be better than being seen in months. The downside is that this results in crippling debt for some. Bankruptcy can be declared, but then your credit is shot, and if you’re poor you may need credit.
Healthcare quality overall is quite good, though, even for the minority. It’s far from perfect, but compared to rest of the world, it’s not the worst place to get sick.
Now- why did an activist president, house representatives, and senators get elected that are cutting funding for global and U.S. healthcare? I can’t imagine it’s not the fault of foreign actors and the ease of manipulating 50% of the country through Fox News and social media. You wouldn’t believe how different the belief sets are here between that group and the rest. It changed radically in the last ten years.
The rest of us are far from indifferent to what’s happening. We just don’t know how to fix it. Protesting probably won’t change it, though we protest. Boycotts probably won’t change it, though we boycott. We don’t have enough in the government to even impeach, and what good would that do? They own all three branches of government. They used Gerrymandering and fired election officials, replaced leaders, subordinates, and did mass layoffs to ensure all future victories. They kicked certain news media out of the W.H. and are considering shutting other media companies down.
It all happened so quickly. Much more quickly than in the past in Germany or Russia.
Also remember that you can significantly contribute in non-financial way (ie: teaching, connecting people to jobs, etc..)
The cost of gutting healthcare is going to go way up. It’s much more costly to fight 10 pandemics that are affecting 90% than it is to maintain vaccinations and control of 10%. That 10% affected becomes 90% affected quickly without assistance.
The nonsense tariffs being thrown at allies and uncoordinated destruction of government foreign aid/social services seem like net negatives to me. I could see the United States Bitcoin reserve thing bumping up the value of crypto, but that whole space is so volatile I would only put in money I'm willing to lose.