I find that relativity is one of the greatest frictions against doing better - and it’s frustrating for this reason. 5 years is better than most other countries. That’s true. Is that a good number though, or is it just better? That’s the actual conversation I want to have, and I think relativity ruins meaningful progress and improvement.

Eating bland, unseasoned chicken is better than eating raw chicken - but that doesn’t mean we should settle for it.

Just because other nations have antiquated and arguably bad citizenship requirements doesn’t mean we shouldn’t improve ours. And reversing progress is worse than being stagnant, and defending that is encouraging it imo.

This is fucking depressing to read. As someone who moved to Germany two years ago, gaining citizenship is important to us. When we moved here they were just announcing the expedited opportunity and we were stoked to know we were welcome in this country. It reinforced our decision. Now they look to take it away and although the 5 year plan will still exist, it signals clearly that the CDU don’t want highly educated immigration - they will blame immigrants while they raid the coffers of their country - and the SPD will gladly move further to the right if it means they get to stay in power.

This is incredibly disappointing. It’s not enough to change our plans, like if the AFD won, but I consider the grand coalition to be a “continued decline” coalition. If another country offered me and my family a guaranteed path to citizenship, with similar worker rights and benefits as Germany, we’d now have to consider it seriously. As aerospace engineers we’re not exactly struggling to find technical work.

Furthermore the fact that both parties considered revoking citizenship for any reason from anyone is unbelievably terrifying. If anyone’s citizenship can be removed, everyone’s citizenship can be removed and that’s something I completely disagree with. It’s dangerous territory and completely disgusting to read that the SPD considered it.

As someone who moved to Germany in the last two years, gaining a permanent right to stay in this country was a part of our thought process. Gaining citizenship, which gives us voting rights and makes us “German” was just as important because we were picking our new home country. Who doesn’t want to feel “at home” in their country, instead of a guest? And earning EU citizenship which further protects us from shitty singular governments like the current grand coalition is even furthermore important.

So yes, this decision sucks ass and it has further cemented my understanding that the grand coalition are centralist or right leaning parties who will continue to allow the decline of society even if it’s more gradual than what the AFD would achieve. Our version of Democrats and Republicans-lite.

🫡

I swapped to Arch Linux in the last month and it’s been great. Gaming has been fun. The Nvidia drivers are still kinda confusing, and honestly I wouldn’t put my mom on Arch Linux as of right now, but it’s good enough.

I’m writing a document so my SW engineering friends can swap over as well within a day and be up and running, and it’s just neat to see Linux gradually growing in my circles.

If you’re on Linux, don’t forget to donate to your favorite SW creators even if they’re less flashy than say Larian studios or what have you lol.

I don’t know if controlling immigration is the problem or solution, right? It’s a scapegoat.

I think the problem is perception. What should happen is when any media org talks about violent immigrants or violent crime they should be forced to display a graph of violent crime for the past 5 decades or something. Germany is in one of the top 3 or 5 safest years it has had in the last like 50 years.

I’ve had German citizens warn me about the ghettos of Mannheim. These are stores without bars over their windows, plenty of people walking around at most hours of night, music and walk-in restaurants. This is no ghetto like in America. But natives see it as scary because humans are creatures of relativity.

If anything Germany needs to provide a simple, clear path forward to permanent residence (at least) and ideally full citizenship. This tells people who are open to joining Germany that they have a path to starting a life here. Germany also need to provide a security net for those people if they run into problems on their journey to permanent residence (at least) so they know that this massive risk of moving abroad has a minimum amount of safety (cause a work force that feels trapped at their job is not a well compensated work force and everyone wants good paying jobs for themselves and their neighbors). I think Germany does a great job at both of these things already, the scary part is AFD wanting to differentiate between blood-line citizens and naturalized citizens. The scary part is CDU conservatives wanting to reduce the social safety net. The CDU winning hurts the influx of highly skilled or specialized immigrants because now they know the move just got more risky if conservatives get their way.

As far as protecting their border or slowing the rate of immigrants in total or from certain areas… Idk honestly. I don’t know if that’s a real problem, I don’t think it is, and I don’t know how Germany could fix that. I have no doubt very smart people have several great solutions that are human-centric policies that improve the lives of everyone on both side of the fictional line - but I’m positive it’s not the policy conservatives will be pursuing. Because again, I don’t think it’s a real problem.

Real problems are housing for everyone, higher wages for everyone, infrastructural improvement, improving education, better medicine and access to healthcare, etc etc. Germany and most developed countries are wealthy enough to handle their current level of immigration without issue - if the money is spent well instead of funneled into the parasitic 1%'ers pockets. Cultures and integration happen naturally over time, that isn’t a fear for me either.

MAGA won because the economic decline outpaces the societal progress for too many decades, and the perceived solution was not based in reality. Germany has far more run way in the economic and societal race, but the influence on perception is both at a high in terms of strength and a low in terms of being attached to reality.

Idk what you’re saying is incorrect here. Conservatives are by and large Anti-Labor which means they are anti-80-90% of the population. Merkel began decommissioning nuclear plants and put more money towards oil, now we have an energy “crisis” that could have been entirely avoided. But conservatives are pro-oil when everyone in the world would benefit from being pro-green energy including nuclear power.

Conservatives are by and large pro privatizing public functions. The German train network has the issues it has today partially because it’s not publicly owned and operated. Conservatives are anti-infrastructural spending and they tend to be budget conscious only when it benefits the Uber wealthy.

Merz wants to complain about the fiscal budget but then wants to cut taxes for corporations. The CDU wants to fund that, last I checked, by cutting spending on welfare and social security nets. Conservatives want to take money from the sick, poor, and elderly and give it to big businesses and the only argument they have for why that could be a good thing is it could make the “economy better” and some of that money will trickle down.

We are in the mess we are today because of conservative policies. Voting for the CDU is voting for the declination of society based on all the data I’ve seen. I’d love to see what an SPD government looks like when it’s not being sabotaged by the FDP but I worry, like in America, they’re still too centralist to be massively effective at reversing decline.

Immigrants aren’t the problem. Germany needs more immigrants to stay functional in the coming decades, just like most developed countries.

Then don’t do what we did, vote for progressives not Conservatives. Conservatives are a plague on society.

Coming from an American who moved to Germany, Merz will pave the road to Germany’s Trump.

I agree, but the fear is that a government which doesn’t improve things at a rate greater than the rate at which things get worse for the bottom half will result in a greater swing towards populism.