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There’s really no guarantee anywhere of safety

Frankly, there’s no guarantee anyone will allow you in in the first place. A lot of these people really, really overestimate the strength of the American passport and think this translates to some immigration advantage, but in most cases it doesn’t. You still need a, usually very specific and skilled job that’s hard to find people for, marriage, or close family that’s already there. A few countries extend that out to grandparents, but that seems uncommon.

Immigrating anywhere is really, really hard just from a legal perspective, nevermind the cultural and/or linguistic isolation that wears on you over time. There’s a reason a lot of people don’t do it and of those that do, many go back before too long.

Yup, agreed completely. I think the best you can do is preface it with acknowledging wealth inequality is still obviously a thing, some people clearly are really and truly in a tight spot, but some aren’t doing themselves any favors (while also acknowledging it’s sometimes the bleak conditions themselves that feed that behavior).

But yeah, that’s a lot of prefacing to do every time and ultimately some people just aren’t going to view things in a nuanced way… whaddayagonnado, I guess.

I agree, but at that point we’re really just saying you have a responsibility to be prepared to be especially frugal if you’re going to have kids while poor. I think that’s a subtle but important distinction. It is true, though.

It’s a hard conversation to have, because people bringing up wealth inequality certainly have a point, the data is there (at least for the US and where I am in Europe now), and I think there’s both a moral and practical argument for why that should be addressed. But again, lifestyle creep is real. For example, Americans are complaining about exorbitant housing prices… meanwhile the average American home size is something like twice most of Europe. Of course that’s going to be comparatively expensive. Part of that is the fault of construction companies, but that’s partially driven by demand.

Leasing cars and changing them out every few years is way too common, I knew plenty of people near minimum wage doing that. Like you said, food delivery is a big one. Instagrammable vacations is another.

There’s very much a “keeping up with the Jones’” culture that leads people who should by all rights be firmly middle class to feel like they’re much poorer than they really are. They get conflated with people who truly are poor, which is a much harder position to be in… the constant stress and anxiety of being poor, especially as an adult, leads to dopamine seeking from sources like cigarettes, alcohol, fast food… then there’s the issue of many working poor being “time poor”, encouraging that kind of delivery eating.

It’s a hard nut to crack because there are legitimate systemic, material issues driving some of it, and some simply “bad culture” around money and they’re pretty tangled up.

Do you want a good life for them or not?

I grew up poor. I’m happy to be alive and overall had a loving childhood. Yes, I had to deal with anxiety around necessities some of my peers didn’t, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying my life and building some memories I still hold dear.

It is possible to be happy even in those circumstances.

I think humans have been having kids for thousands of years in all sorts of conditions, and we only recently have developed this “perfect or nothing” approach to when it’s okay to have kids. Some kids grow up poor. You can still build a fulfilling life for a child. You really don’t need to build a shield from every life struggle first… we’ve never needed to as a species, and my own experience confirms it isn’t necessarily all misery. Especially in countries that provide pretty generous financial aid specifically for those kids.

Some monthly expenses I see - £250 on multiple food deliveries a week. £400 to constantly have a new car when the car they drove 3 cars ago is still working fine, while only commuting 2km to work. £80 on a phone.

Stop doing that for 18 months and you have a pretty good house deposit in most of the country.

I will say that my juxtaposed experience both in the US and central Europe is that while a certain number of Americans are definitely struggling hard, there really is some lifestyle creep in that country that doesn’t get talked about with the nuance it deserves. It’s either ideologues bringing it up in bad faith to undermine arguments about wealth inequality, or people insisting that there’s no problem at all with overconsumption among anyone making under $50k/year. So I don’t entirely disagree with this.

I would first like to have some solid evidence that these are caused by the confederal structure of the EU,

I mean, they are self evident, no? A balkanized investment market exists because there’s no single structure to manage one large one. There’s no single EU military. No?

So far that seems to me like pure conjecture and also a huge gamble that could destroy the EU in the process.

I can’t be arsed to give any other than logical arguments such as the above. That’s why I said I’m happy to leave this as an ‘agree to disagree’ moment, because that’s really hard to prove one way or the other, and I consider this casual conversation not debate. So I’m happy to just say we have different perspectives here and call it a day. I’ve cited a few examples, as have you, I don’t think either position is stupid or poorly thought out, I just disagree with your conclusion.

But that is exactly what a confederacy isn’t. And the concrete example is that people in other states voted for Trump and thus directly interefered with the affairs of a state that didn’t.

Isn’t this just libertarianism?

That isn’t at all comparable to a state internal problem.

You’ll have to explain to me how. Whether you “zoom in” or “zoom out” the principle is the same, as far as I can tell.

Pretty sure reddit uses some algorithmic stuff to push threads, no? If you jump all over a bullshit political post, for example, doesn’t that help push it into ‘hot’ or whatever? (Honestly asking, been off reddit for years at this point).

Lemmy/piefed/etc might be less prone to it though, that’s fair, though I’ve so far run into less outright propagandistic stuff here so far… might’ve just been lucky on that front.

The US was at most very briefly a confederacy, and the US civil war had little to do with that despite one side calling itself such.

I was referring to the articles of confederation, not the Confederacy, and how short lived it was was my point.

The EU is an obvious successful modern example

The EU as a governing body and not just a trade group really isn’t that old yet.

and if you want historical examples, then the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations lasted a millenium and despite sometimes nominally having an emporer it was practically a confederation.

The needs of a modern global economy are completely different, though.

That said, I’m happy to just say we agree to disagree on whether this is broadly true or not.

I would like a response to my specific points though about trouble the EU is running into and how up fix those problems if not more federal power to the EU? How do you stop EU companies from jumping ship to the US for their large single investment market without a competing consolidated European one? How do we mount our own effective defense force without a central power to manage it?

And besides, ask some person living in a Democrat majority US state how they feel about the current Trump administration of their federal government interfering with their life and sending a militarized police occupation force into their cities?

This can still happen (and historically, as the birthplace of fascismhas, has happened) in European nations within said nations, though. That’s nothing inherent to any political system.

The breakdown of the US political landscape seemingly doesn’t have a lot to do with their version of federalism; most of Europe has far more explicitly central national governments and this hasn’t happened (lately). That kind of abuse of power can happen under literally any system from fascist to socialist.

Not sure arguing with them really does either. I think this was true in simple chronological message boards, but anything that boosts content due to engagement is just going to make it worse…

First two that come to mind as the most problematic and needing reform are the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the United States nearly collapsing with the confederation is an obvious example. Can you think of any in the modern era that have succeeded long term?

in an misguided attempt to force unity where there isn’t any anylonger

Put another way: they were already falling apart. Them falling apart wasn’t the fault of centralising. It was the fault of the loose union giving the governing body too little power to govern effectively. I’ve given some examples of this in the EU with both the military and balkanized access to capital directly leading to us losing lucrative companies we created to the US. It’s like a brain drain but for wealth generating businesses. Military problems are obvious to all with Russia now and the tough spot we’ve found ourselves in outsourcing our defense to the US for decades… what is the solution to these problems if not stronger federal power for the EU? Because they aren’t going away.

I’d suggest the federalism of the US isn’t what we or most people despise about the US. The two aren’t related.

You are making the mistake to believe the EU can only compete by becoming what it despises.

shrug I don’t see a path away from it; separate, the individual nations aren’t big enough to be relevant. China isn’t going to be supplanted for the manufacturing hub nor the US as the financial hub without more cohesion, and so Europe will continue to lose relevancy in terms of ability to influence world geopolitics.

We’ve seen time and time again promising European countries jump ship for the US when it’s time to go public… the money is here in Europe but broken into fractured markets with just as fractured rules and regulations. Why would a company looking for investment bother when they can just go to the US and get one big pile of it?

This isn’t even addressing even more practical problems like military.

Confederacies just don’t last very long historically. They either break or become more centralised eventually.

If 48% of the people are having their authority to rule superceded by the 52% then how can you say it’s rule by the people? It’s rule only by the majority.

Wouldn’t a more elegant solution be more thought put into what kind of votes need a supermajority or some specific % over 50 to need a successful vote? Surely at some point, for it to be a democracy, you do need the majority rule to win the day, right++? I’d argue one or two nations vetoing a thing agreed upon by everyone else is more explicitly anti democratic than those nations needing to abide by a vote they handily lost.

I think the EU is at the limits of what a loose confederation can do, we’ve seen historically these arrangements just can’t really function long term on a large scale. And the argument here is that for Europe to stay relevant in a world where the US and China, not to mention Russia, exists if not as outright adversaries then stiff competitors, there needs to be a better ability to coordinate this like military and money. Especially the latter, I’d argue… how many European start ups immediately abandon ship for the US as soon as they go public because there’s a pile of investment money there rather than the fractured markets of Europe? That problem is never going away on its own, even with the US playing target practice with its feet (slight digression there, but I think it’s one of the most obvious examples of why the EU needs reform towards stronger federal power).

At a certain point, if you want a large functioning democratic body with any power, you need to submit to the decisions of that power whether you agree with the decision or not. That’s not just colloquial versus not, that’s the very essence of democracy imo. If you can just opt out of decisions you don’t like, that’s not really democratic rule, that’s just a forum for discussion.

++(Obviously, this implicitly needs rights and protections to prevent one group from outright repressing another, but still, a veto seems like a really, really inelegant solution to avoiding tyranny of the majority situations.)

Personally, I’ve just started downloading the local app… it sometimes has outages that haven’t been put into Google yet and as a bonus you can usually get things like tickets right there.

Maps is still hard to beat for smaller transit systems that might not have a dedicated app with navigation, though…

it’s a spaghetti mess here

I mean, considering the chili…

This entire thread is so bizarre. People pick the oddest hills to die on sometimes…

Jury nullification? Never heard of her!

Because for important data, most people don’t have off site storage available that’s not a cloud unless they go to the trouble of renting a safe deposit box with a hard drive or something, which most won’t. No off site means one bad fire or burglary could wipe you out.

It doesn’t replace everything, but Nebula replaced maybe half of my YouTube viewing.

I have absolutely no idea where you’re getting “nearly a third” from.

Private aviation is 2% you said. Air conditioning is 7%. That’s between 1/3 and 1/4. And that’s for a frivolity vs a thing that measurably reduces deaths.

You suggest meat, but livestock is about 4.2% of US emissions.

This number doesn’t cover the actual impact though as it doesn’t account for imports, opportunity cost of land, or the amount of agriculture necessary to support that livestock. As I recall from my ecology days, only about ~10% of energy makes it to the next step in the food chain. So you need a much larger amount of land, energy, and water to grow crops in addition to direct emissions from livestock industry for the same calories.

we absolutely should criticise people for eating meat

Minor point of contention, but no; I’m suggesting we should encourage people to eat less meat.

but absolutely shouldn’t criticise people for using AC

The difference being very, very few people need meat to live, certainly not more than one a week or so barring some specific medical conditions. Much of the US experiences summers where 40C is normal and 45+C isn’t abnormal. It is literally a necessity in much of the US unless you’re just willing to accept a lot of extra deaths due to heat.

And even where it isn’t strictly necessary for health reasons, we’re talking hot enough to be extremely uncomfortable; I’m not going to browbeat people for using AC in that kind of heat while we’re literally building data centers that are using diesel generators and allowing various much more frivolous use of electricity.

It’s not like this is purely Americans Americanning with overconsumption either; southern Europe sees almost ubiquitous use of AC for the same reasons. It varies from actually dangerous to bloody miserable without it.

Do we expect northerners to not use any heating until wearing their parka indoors is no longer effective? Or can we afford some degree of comfort to the unwashed masses?

That doesn’t make sense to me given that, where I live (not in the US), AC is definitely not necessary for most people at home.

With respect, this may be why you’re not treating this with the seriousness it deserves and see it as “not willing to be a bit sweaty”. I come from a place where, even before the kind of climate change we’re seeing today, a week or more of 45C weather wasn’t unusual, 40C was very normal, and deaths from heat stroke happened every year. That’s a big chunk of the US. Obviously, in places like San Francisco, air conditioning is much less ubiquitous and it isn’t unusual at all to have as home without it.

Look, I’m starting to be over this conversation if I’m being honest, so I’ll sum it up as such: AC use is less frivolous than you seemed to be implying and is a necessity in many places, witnessed by Europe going through a bit of a crisis with heat deaths as we catch up and change our culture to adapt to a new climate reality. Even where it isn’t strictly necessary, it is often required for any level of comfort. Considering that, the portion of energy it uses is relatively small; the other things I’ve listed are almost purely frivolities. They simply aren’t necessary in all but the rarest circumstances (remote Alaskans needing private planes, some medical conditions requiring more meat consumption, etc). If the energy use of AC was much higher, I might be with you, but telling people they need to live in misery when there are bigger fish to fry… no.

Remember, my whole premise here is mass cultural changes are relatively ineffective… I cited meat eating culture changing as one of the few that are somewhat, not as a keystone or anything (and again, there are reasons that 7% isn’t comparable to 4.5%… the latter isn’t accounting for a lot of factors that hide its true impact and the former has at least some % of truly necessary use baked into it). It would be far more effective to push systemic change like eliminating fossil fuels for energy production entirely, as electricity production is still one of the biggest emitters. It would be far more effective to work to reduce private auto use, especially for solo trips, and more conversion into electric vehicles powered by non emitting sources. We have better solutions that don’t require misery or death from the masses.

yet flying accounts for 4% of global emissions, and private aircraft (so, little Cessnas as well as private jets) account for under 2% of that.

So in other words, the unnecessary actions of a very, very limited few alone consume nearly a third of the entire country’s use of a pretty basic comfort.

I see this as rather damning if I’m being honest.

But the fact is that we can’t afford to wait for the ultra-rich

No, the fact is reducing a portion of 7% of energy use (because again, we’re excluding health reasons and such which are ever more relevant in 40+C summers) will not have any noticeable impact on climate change. It just won’t. And let’s keep in mind this is in the shadow of many deaths here in Europe this summer… nah man, we just do not share the same principles here, I flat out disagree that’s in any way a good take.

There are some cultural changes that can make a big impact; if we convinced most people in the industrial world to only eat meat once a week or go vegetarian entirely, this would definitely make a large impact. AC use will not. For the most part, systemic change is the only thing getting us out of this. And yes, our odds of accomplishing it don’t look good… you not using AC in extremely hot weather will have no impact on that outcome at all, not measurably anyway.