It appears to me Trump Inc. found a way to weaponize the inconvinient Epstein files by chosing which names to erase and which to publish. Don’t get me wrong: They’re all guilty. But it’s intersting that the fallout of the last release happens mostly in liberal democracies with an anti-Trump position.

My point would be that, correct me if I’m wrong, so far AI companys are burning huge piles of money while forcing AI into every application even though a significant amount of customers have no use for it or even feel hindered by it. While ,the LINUX year" until now depended on voluntary switches of users requiring them to leave their comofort zone (and a product they were familiar with and which more or less fulfilled their expectations) AI companies are slaves to the rules of market… and once buzzwords alone won’t suffice anymore to keep investors happy things might go south really fast as no one wants to be the last on a sinking ship.

(AI isn’t USELESS per se but is currently maketed as a one-fits-all solution for everything which it wouldn’t be even if it wasn’t non-intelligent stochastics)

,Sanction human rights watch! … and do Amnesty also if you’re at it" ~ some orange probably /s

Sorry to revisit this so lately!

Yes, competition is better for innovation than cooperation… hence why mono/oligopols like google, meta etc. are harmful for innovation even though those companies are undeniably very innovative. Outside of economic I still prefer lame, boring cooperation as it costs societies, and in the last resort people, less money and lives in the long run which tend to be otherwise wasted in for example competitive wars.

This devolving of power to smaller forms of organization is, in general, a good idea. However it may rapidly become a disadvantage as political and economical power are dwarfed by bigger organizational forms like national states (let alone billion people collectives like China and India). Those powers can, in the competitive scenario which is still the norm, strong arm small nations (like Wessex or Mercia) into unfavorable conditions for them.

Final note to your last paragraph: My ideal would be a direct democracy, leaving out any potentially corrupt representative. I honestly believe this is within reach due to the communicative advances you mentioned.

That’s a part of the problem… also this ‘protective’ approach labels prostiutes per se as victims and denys them autonomy.

Here are two intersting reads about ‘the nordic model’ :

https://www.academia.edu/50493737/The_Nordic_Model_in_Europe_Prostitution_Trafficking_and_Neo_Abolitionism

https://scholar.google.de/scholar?as_ylo=2025&q=nordic+model+of+prostitution&hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5#d=gs_qabs&t=1770060948847&u=%23p%3Db8BF5LYTIuwJ

Over all it seems like ‘the nordic model’ doesn’t make prostiution disappear but reduces its general visibility… rather to the worse for men and women working (or being forced to worked) in this profession.

Imho: This was forceable… declaring things illegal doesn’t make them disappear, being it postitution (for which the efffort was made many times in history) or e.g. alcohol.

Given the current ‘success’ of protests against Trump Inc. I highly doubt there will be a point in the near future were enough Americans can be mobilized to actually achieve something even if the elections are skipped… they’ll come for the active opposition leads (identifiable by the stock pile of data they process) first framing them as terrorists. The remains will have to wait till this admin as inevitably turned the whole country so shitty a majority is actually ready to leave their comfort zone.

Currently protest are as effective as ‘strongly worded letters’ as both rely on the addressee to actually give a fuck about the sender.

I know I’m being pessimistic here, and God knows I hope I’m wrong… but the last few months, watching the “land of the free, home of the brave” turn into a hyper-corrupt dictatorship without any significant resistance, have made me very sober.

Ministry of truth at work…

Yes and no.

Better diversify by also relying on one unstable dictator instead of just one batshit crazy one.

You can’t. We can’t. We need each other,

Pretty telling were he sees his loyalty when he in fact should represent ALL of NATO instead of just the US.

Actually this makes things even more interesting imho as it allows or even demands a sophisticated museum and exhibition concept.

I’m just in favour of decentralisation, every time power has been centralised in Europe it has ended badly.

I want to express my thoughts on this point. I believe that two things are true at the same time:

1. Cooperation beats competition since competition wastes resources by hindering each other when those could have been better invested in reaching the shared goal.
2. Representative systems get less efficient and more prone to corruption the bigger they get.

Concerning European this imho boils down to two contrary tendencies: The bigger the EU and its bureaucracy gets the less efficient it works while at the same time the efficiency of the EU economy is increasing through ever deeper cooperation and standardization.

Following this line of thought, the question of whether the EU benefits or harms its citizens is largely decided by the ratio of additional costs due to bureaucracy to benefits due to cooperation. Since the advantages of cooperation, especially within the single market, are immense (and are becoming increasingly important in a world where the major powers are increasingly hostile to European states), I tend to view the EU positively, even if centralized administration can create new problems. After all, what would be the alternative? European nation states have worked against each other and waged war for centuries. Now that the European colonial empires have collapsed and lost a great deal of influence, I find it highly questionable that this model would be promising in today’s world.

Makes sense. If nothing else is available, we have to work with what we have.

And thank you for the clarification. To clarify my point: I am not saying that Brexit was an absolute economic disaster… but that some wealthy Brexit supporters benefited disproportionately compared to the average citizen and therefore pushed forward the populist campaign that ultimately led to the exit.

Yes it’s normal and usually makes sense. In this particular case, however, it distorts the data basis, as the UK GDP is valued higher than the two eurozone countries due to the very high reference exchange rate.

And I said ‘you’ because you could have chosen other normalizations as well… yielding a different picture.

For example you could normalize by annual % growth of GDP.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2024&locations=GB-DE-FR&start=2007

(Side note: Thanks for the source, this database is amazing!)

GDP per capita doesn’t contradict the statements of the sources I posted above since it’s a mean of economic activity and therefore, it does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about winners and losers among social groups after Brexit. Also interesting you chose ‘fixed 2015 US $’ when this was an all-time-high exchange rate (US $ - £) compared to the one in your selected time frame.

https://www.cer.eu/insights/brexit-four-years-answers-two-trade-paradoxes

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/lessons-from-brexit-on-the-effects-of-trade-disintegration-20260116.html

https://academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/38/1/82/6514758?login=false

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/slowing-economic-growth-brexit-and-the-productivity-challenge/

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/brexit-lies-and-rich-folk/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/03/observer-view-list-of-brexit-wins-is-in-short-and-feeble

https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/100089116/4_Morgan_Glenn_1976_Brexit_1/_.pdf

Dismantle the EU once you established close and successfull cooperation with other socialists and formed a functional organisation to replace it.

Calling for an end of the EU without having the means to replace its protective role for all its citizens, also workers, against foreign imperalistic powers makes you a tool of said powers, nothing else. An adaption to Chinese or American work ethics and worker rights is NEITHER a goal of the european working class NOR a socialist ideal, even if the former imperialistic power paints itself as being socialist.

‘Workers of the world, unite!’

Since you’re talking about ’ the working class of Britain’… Do you know who said that?

Some aspects that come to my mind:

1. Is the safety of Sigapore exclusively liked to strict drug regulation or aren’t there many other confunding factors which might have an even bigger influence?
2. Given we see this approach as successful and therefore legitime (assuming that in 1 the policy is the main/only driving factor): Would this be applicable to other countries? Singapore is a verry wealthy city state… comparing it to a country like Britain with more area, less population desity and also lower ecomonic performance per area seems missleading. Prosecution becomes more difficult and costly the bigger the area gets I guess.

All-in-all if the approach is sucessful for Singapore: Excellent! Accunsing other countries with different prerequisites of failing on this basis seems to be nonsense as comparing countries and societies in a single aspect while ignoring the gaszillion other factors at play itself is a pointless approach besides populism.

If you see them condem them. I’m not a judge and neither are you.

The posts are, in comparisson to the actual content, intentionally misleading.