Tober said:
Zkuq said:
It's becoming increasingly clear that the US is no longer an ally or even trustworthy and is starting to look more and more like an adversary we must tolerate to an extent due to economic reasons. This change comes in a situation where we've been under constant threat from Russia for a long time now, and it's bearing fruit due to the flaws of democracy and free speech. We really need to prepare ourselves against this two-pronged threat from two sides, and it's probably going to require some fairly drastic measures - and no, nothing notable I've heard so far probably isn't sufficient. We need to 1) urgently drive up our defenses militarily, 2) we probably need drastic measures against the ongoing pressure from both the US and Russia so we can buy some time for my last point, which is that 3) we need to find strong measures to increase the resilience of our population against external influence while also finding ways to accelerate growth.
I really hope I'm wrong, but the situation is looking worrying, and we need to be awake and ready to be decisive. The situation has been deteriorating since roughly the 2008 financial crisis, although it's probably not just a single point in time that matters.
To elaborate on my last point (3) earlier:
- We need our population to be more capable of understanding the big picture, both in the short term and especially in the long term, and they need to be able to learn to understand complexity better ('obviously better/worse' usually isn't as obviously anything as one might think, because few things are actually that simple). This probably involves serious changes to the education system, which also needs strong safeguards against indoctrination (we want to teach thinking instead of which political views are acceptable or unacceptable).
- We need to find ways to tackle immigration concerns in a more practical way - in a way that makes it impractical to try to utilize polarization about immigration policy as a weapon against us. Currently the two main views seem to be more or less keeping the status quo and not really doing much, and taking a stance that's fairly harsh and most likely against international agreements. I suspect there is middle ground to be had where we can still help those in need while assuring our population that people aren't coming here just to cause trouble.
- We also need to learn from the mistakes that took us where we are now and ensure we don't repeat them (e.g. by letting something else take the place of immigration as the polarizing factor).
As for my point 2 earlier (resilience against US and Russian pressure), it might involve some very carefully targeted restrictions to free speech. Social media seems to be the blight of democracy, which Russia has been utilizing for a long time now, and with the US also starting to apply pressure, it seems that we need to do something. We need to identify ways external pressure is used against us and find reasonable ways to prevent it. We don't need a dictatorship from the east (Russia) or oligarchs from the US telling us what to do.
Regardless of what exactly we do, the time to act is probably at hand. It doesn't have to be today, but the coming months should make it clear whether this is just looking like a major turning point in history or if it actually is one. I strongly suspect it is one, but there's a non-negligible chance that Trump slows down in a few months - I just don't personally think that's going to happen, and if it doesn't, we really need to rethink our position in the world. With 'friends' like the US, even China is starting to look more like a reasonable partner, since they don't meddle in our affairs like the US and Russia do (although we should also strive to reduce our reliance on China with strong determination).
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it might involve some very carefully targeted restrictions to free speech.
If one cannot win on The marketplace of free thought, one has to question if one's own perspective was as good to begin with. That's the problem with censorship. It's restricting the marketplace of free thought. Education, information and free debate is what is needed, not restricting it. Restricting will have the opposite effect long term, namely losing trust in one's leadership and democratic processes. Therefore opening up to radicalization in society.
Obviously Russia and USA always looked after their own interest first. That's nothing new. Trump is just more direct about it without the sugarcoating. What was happening behind closed doors between politicians arguing for decades is just more public now. The EU block was made to hold a stronger stance on the political stage after all.
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Absolutely, but what we have now is a huge bunch of idiots subject to Russian and US disinformation, and they are and will continue to be too stupid to even realize it. That's the reason for my education point. However, we can't really educate our adult population effectively, so it's up to the young to be educated better, but it takes time, and I'm worried we don't have enough time for that without other measures to buy us enough time.
We're basically waging information war without the proper equipment, whereas our opponents have the equipment and are also utilizing our own equipment (freedom of speech + social media) against us. To be honest, proper social media controls could probably do wonders already, but regardless, I think these exceptional times might require exceptional measures as well, even some we don't like. This isn't a question of whether our perspective is good enough, it's whether our adversaries can shout (largely lies) hard enough to overshadow our perspective.
Obviously I have some opinions about the left and the right, but ultimately I don't care which side comes out on top if it's after an honest debate and proper consideration of the arguments for and against both sides. If an educated consensus is against me, it's probably me that's wrong. But if it's repeated lies and propaganda to influence a population uncapable of properly considering it, I do have a problem with it.
And yes, I do realize that I'm probably being influenced in a lot of ways as well. Blatant lies and propaganda are probably not terribly common influences of mine though, whereas they seem to be for many others, and my bet is that the bigger the lie, the worse the outcome is probably likely to be if I fall for it.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, but I also don't believe in absolute free speech in the real world (and as far as I know, no country has it anyway). It's a beatiful ideal and one worth striving for, but evidently it has major issues if the society doesn't properly support it on all relevant levels. In all cases, it's probably the population that isn't capable of handling unrestricted free speech. If we let things play out for a really long time, the population will probably have learned, but I don't think that's a very reasonable way to handle things. Basically I strongly suspect that as ideally pure free speech as possible also requires several other conditions to be just ideal, but they're not. If all the conditions are not in just the ideal state, even the ones that are probably don't work as intended.
As far as I can see, the same goes for the free market, although I'm not sure we can ever reach a state where it actually works without screwing too many people over. It's a nice ideal to strive for though - within reason.
Last edited by Zkuq - on 16 February 2025
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