I think you’re being overly optimistic about the dying part. Folks here are not exactly a random sample - even if many people see the enshittification of Facebook or Reddit, they will feel unable to leave. Especially for social media there’s a huge network effect - the value of the product is in the fact that “everyone” is there. Or for Google products: there are just so many different problems for the user to solve (if there’s a current solution at all!) before being able to move. So yes, the focusing on quarterly profits extracts value at the cost of everyone else, but it might not be enough to kill the product. Or at least not for quite a long time. For me the root of the problem is that we gave up on countering monopolies. This has always been a grave enemy of “efficient” capitalism, but over the last few decades we kind of stopped efforts to prevent this. It automatically leads to worse service for any client, not just in the digital sector. Worse, it leass to concentration of power in such few hands that any political system shifts into an oligarchy.

I was indeed not talking about the history of quality of life of the people, but about the way hard politics are organised. As far as I can tell, this has become even more centralised under Xi. When it comes to freedom of thought and expression of the people, I see as much reason for pessimism about recent evolution in the West (especially in the Anglo-Saxon world), but I don’t see much reason for optimism when it comes to China. E.g. look how they are not even allowed to know their own history, or how independent thought in Hong Kong is being stuffed out. Lifting, what, 800 million people out of poverty is an impressive feat, and certainly holds a few lessons for laissez faire capitalists. Then again, large part of that poverty were self inflicted wounds. And that growth shouldn’t blind one for the immense cost at which it came, and the large challenges ahead to keep things afloat.

Still the same party in control, still the same way folks get selected for power. Not exactly comparable to a country losing a war, getting split in two, one adopting liberal democracy, the other a Soviet style communist system. And then later rejoining into a single country again.

Well it’s been that long that they went full circle again. I guess my age is showing (I’m a geriatric millennial). Until a decade ago, or maybe two, a successful AfD would have been unthinkable. Just goes to show how far off OPs comparison with Germany is.

Interesting comparison to Germany. As you may be aware, there was quite a significant change in government structure right around 1945. While yes - if new evidence from that period were to be released, it would indeed reflect poorly on Germany. But everyone would know it’s news from basically another country. Whereas in China nothing has changed when it comes to the structure of the nation. And they sure as hell did not go through a period of national mourning or apology to reflect on past mistakes.

I’m not behind our prime minister at all, but the core of what he’s saying is “we’ll only do this if we share the risks involved among the whole EU”. Given that no-one seems to be willing to do that, it would appear that he has a point that the risks are significant. I also heard him call the idea “theft”, which sounds crazy in the context we’re in. But then he’s talking about the practice of taking money from countries we’re not at war with, setting a bad precedent if you want to be a financial center for the world. That one’s a little far fetched, even without a formal declaration of war, Russia isn’t just a random country at this point we have a few issues with.

We’re talking about an Israeli, not a Jew. One who has a prominent role in the cultural life of that country. As a “liberal”, I would not have had an issue with questions being asked if some high profile Saudis were invited to a festival in October 2001.

It’s pretty immoral in the current day and age, but it is something that should be made (near) impossible with better regulation until it can be done with a reasonable carbon cost

79 in fact. Pretty low for a country that rich, but to find 69 you have to go to Africa or the poorest Latin or Asian countries.

I haven’t read recent research on this, but at least until a decade or so ago, consciously not having children is a very small part of this. It’s more about economic outlooks and the immense pressure of expecting both parents of working full time and raising kids at the same time. Or wanting to have two kids, but putting off the decision so long that the chance of not having successful pregnancies rises a lot.

Apparently, they have been able to not be blatantly racist enough in their new incarnation. Perhaps they should have gone more after the core leadership instead of only the party.

Yeah, it was a little shocking to see this happen now. Though to be fair, it only happened with local parties that did not belong to a national umbrella party. All the parties that matter at the provincial level and above still maintain the principle of not working with them.

Still being kept out of government roles, still being dangerously big. Last municipal election they got an absolute majority in one town and got included in one or two coalitions. Last Flemish elections, they were tied as the biggest party with about 25%. While the other big party is also right wing Flemish nationalist btw

Exactly this happened with the extreme right in Flanders (Belgium). They were convicted for racism and promptly refounded themselves under a new name.

Sad, and likely true. I can’t wait for the Hitler meme scene where someone has to point out Greenland is much smaller than Trump thought.

There is a history of following through with huge fines https://www.theneweconomy.com/business/top-5-largest-fines-levied-on-tech-companies-by-the-european-commission

Thank you! Neither the BBC nor the Flemish public tv seem to say this yet (they just repeat the statement Trump gave)

Exactly. That’s what I heard from people who lived abroad a long time. While you’re away, the country of origin changes and after a while you’re homesick for a place that only exists as a memory.

They weren’t trying to convince you to come, they were trying to gently explain that it’s a little mean to judge 100% of the people for what is happening

As I said in the other place this article was posted: the source seems to be an online reader survey from t-online.be. That means the scientific value of this is pretty low. For decent surveys, you need a random sample. In this case, you need to be a visitor of t-online, and you decide for yourself that you want to participate. That’s already enough to skew results. Add to that that there’s a lot of online activism against Tesla (for obvious reasons), so the poll could have been partly hijacked. Such a low number of people who don’t care or haven’t heard about Tesla going rogue is not realistic anyway. There’s a lot of people who are weird, contrarian or simply avoid all news.