At the same time “global economic integration” and “global trade” including outsourcing of production to countries with cheaper labor were sold to the populace as a logical continuation of liberal democracies. Increasing efficiency, thus increasing the level of life. That the level of life also depends on having leverage, and moving critical production outside means reduction of leverage, nobody thought (well, the majority of population didn’t think that, bread and circuses).

While this is a system old as humanity, Chinese imperial bureaucracy and Roman one and Assyrian one and Persian one worked like this, to build hierarchical systems. Troops quelling rebellions in one province are from one in the opposite part of the empire. Troops fighting wars in a province are never local, because wars between empires always involve stimuli to change masters. Bureaucrats are too foreign, everything is foreign and not reliant on locals. Even food and drinks are sent from other provinces and tightly guarded - despite that being far more expensive then than now.

So today in a western country all the digital products are made mostly in other countries, all the electronics are made mostly in other countries, much of the food and much of the clothes and much of everything. And this is treated like the good free western way of life. The further from WWII, the less everybody feared such a situation.

While the firmer is integration, the harder it’s to leave it, and the harder it’s to leave, the less meaningful any freedom is - your vote matters only for the bosses in you part, and they have the combined power of the bosses to deceive you, to misdirect your vote, or to plainly steal it, or to go around it.

Historically integration built empires.

The USSR, a recent example of an honest attempt at autarky, which is often used as an example of who tries autarky and why, didn’t really try. It’s the other way around actually, in 20s it was rather democratic, in 30s it was basically buying foreign technologies and machinery for gold and grain for everything (that’s the Stalin’s industrialization), in 40s too (war and all), and the only parts of its history where it really was trying to do autarky significantly enough was during the Thaw and Brezhnev, and while that didn’t work so well, that’s also the most democratic period of its history.

But at the same time high autarky degree means lower level of life. I’ve been excited with Trotskyism once, despite most of time being a ancap. Because, well, it involves direct democracy and mass participation in all political activity, and no career bureaucrats and politicians, the need for that is substantiated by any limited minority of politicians or bureaucrats being possible to covertly threaten, blackmail, buy, groom, etc.

I don’t subscribe to their “democratic planning of the economy using modern means of computation” thing - I agree it’s possible if Amazon is doing just that on scale far bigger than needed for a government in one country, don’t get me wrong, and that demands fewer resources than all this “AI research around”, but there’s inherent degeneracy in such a planning system because, as a specific example, you don’t know you have to design and produce a good that would be in high demand but isn’t already produced.

I think Trotskyism in many of its parts is still very good, actual participation not only is beneficial for the system, it also gives the populace the psychological understanding that politics is not about casting your vote once or twice for the guys who frighten you less. Feeling of holding the wheel. Personal responsibility and ability to change things for good. These are important exactly to compensate worse level of life (locally worse, because good level of life combined with tyranny eventually becomes worse too) emotionally, because otherwise it’ll be impossible to institute a political system nobody wants.

Yes, but with modern technologies where easily done. TLS, markdown-like markup, MIME, prompts for input.

Meshtastic, Briar.

A simple Web-like hypertext system without styles and scripts. The protocol can be implemented in two days by a complete idiot (I have my own Gemini viewer, I may not be terribly proud of it, but I like it).

One can technically put a trojan into your UEFI firmware. And from the description the law doesn’t specify which kinds of trojans it allows.

And - a hint - it’s called trojan because you don’t know you have a trojan when you have a trojan.

Reason one - both were kinda German, reason two - both were kinda fascist, reason three - you don’t say “no” when there’s no such variant in the poll.

The interior minister Gerhard Karner, described it as a “special day for security.”

This might be a Hollywood association with German accent, but feels like a really ominous quote. Like that sadistic guy in round eyeglasses in the Indiana Jones movie.

Well, it is one big process.

Hard to trace the power which allowed for all those slow processes of subversion to happen, but a lot of it stems ultimately from the USSR’s breakup and those who managed to make profit on it.

Western countries’ MIC’s which no more had to prepare for real war, so same big funding, but less accountability. Western politicians making profit on reducing their militaries - it’s a profitable process of selling properties and scrapping tech and such. Western advisors in ex-USSR helping their new mafia elites. Western businesses who first managed to secure some agreements to do business in ex-USSR.

Then - the tech sector, via plenty of qualified labor from ex-USSR moving to USA and other western countries. Cheap fossil fuels sold by Russia to EU countries, which became a major factor in their economies in the 90s and 00s.

Politicians in this were very notably not complacent, just looking out for themselves and noticing opportunities for themselves.

Also a lot happened just due to technical progress and lack of macro-level competition. Soviet system notably had deadlocks because interested parties couldn’t agree to one countrywide system. Suppose USSR somehow managed to survive till now, with its collegial and totalitarian-bureaucratic, but not mafia-style, government. Then total surveillance being introduced in the West now and long ago in China wouldn’t be successfully implemented in the USSR, for the similar reasons EU countries want to have their own surveillance, but not US surveillance over their citizens. In USSR it would be between ministries and factions not willing to be controlled by others. So in USSR there’d likely be some status quo.

I mean, it’s purely a hypothesis, it already imploded and there’s nothing more to say about this. Just - such things as now would sometimes happen during the Cold War too, but having a big totalitarian state as a counterweight helped a lot. Like an example of what will happen if this is allowed, and like an alternative (if we are going to have totalitarianism, then let’s at least have the red workers-and-peasants kind), and like a real threat in case of weakening of western nations.

So one can imagine that USSR’s breakup did lead in many ways to what we have now. At the same time had it not happened, then maybe on my side of the screen everything would already be surveilled (or maybe it is).

A few stolen elections in a row were approved by US politicians and various European politicians almost unanimously, because of “supporting Yeltsin against reaction”, and “if not this imperfect democracy, then Commies or neo-Nazis”, and “but we’re having a reboot of relations”, and then with almost open realpoliticking shit about how Putin is convenient to do business with, and if there’s a change of regime, it won’t be as easy.

So I would argue about root causes a lot. Especially since the root cause would be Western interference during USSR’s breakup, first aimed at preserving USSR, then after that failing aimed at preserving Russia as 1) some sort of superpower, 2) authoritarian regime led by Yeltsin’s crowd.

It doesn’t even matter that they likely didn’t know what they were doing, likely led by Tom Clancy books style idiotic ideas of the dangers and chances in that process, and the main “threat” perceived was some “radical reactionary takeover” leading to someone launching nukes just for the sake of it. It even reads idiotic, but such opinions were said officially, however nuts it was.

EDIT: And also there’s the subject of Ukraine’s nukes. If someone didn’t know, it’s not Russia that pressured Ukraine to get rid of its nukes in favor of Russia. It’s USA. Convenient to have one hegemon in a region, with whom you can deal, except that hegemon might eventually accept the idea that they are the hegemon.

Früher war mehr Lametta?

As someone still in Russia, a bit of the same.

That is, I expected things to get worse, but not “avalanche of shit, cockroaches and rat bones” levels of worse.

Except the idolization part started receding much earlier, when I actually learned English well enough to understand that these are very intolerant societies. Say, where in Russia people disagreeing with you on some key matters would look at you like a fool or just decide to stop this conversation so that neither of you would offend the other, in English-speaking countries, it seems, there was simply no way to survive outside of some echo chamber and God forbid you find none to fit into. But that was like 10-15 years ago, now, of course, in Russia you can get jailed or strongly fined for words.

But I thought there’s some deeper wisdom and in those harsher societies people are also somehow better capable to maintain their common freedom and dignity yadda-yadda. In fact that’s not what I see.

As a bit of gloating - at least now the “why are you not all revolting against Putin” Western types can be answered with their own regrettable example instead of common sense and logic, these are fine, but an example is more efficient.

They’d be fine with ministry of alternative facts

“How to lose an election but make bank on selling a book”?

I’ve thought of all these, but what I’m describing should be a comprehensive system in itself and at the same time have global identities and addressing of all content, so that data model could be applied, for example, for a sneakernet or for some situation where you’d have to synchronize data over delay-tolerant networks.

Most of all like Briar or Usenet or something else.

As, eh, someone living in Russia - comparisons of the Russian military with the IDF are at this point unjust. It fights a war of aggression, and it does that the Soviet way, which is imprecise and costly in lives of civilians. But it doesn’t intentionally starve a whole city, shooting at those coming for aid it pretends to provide and intent on “deporting” them entirely.

Just to make it clear, the whole situation sucks, and there is a right and a wrong side, but not comparable with Gaza.

I think you’re overdramatizing it. Humans do shit when they can. The secret to prevention is to make so that they can’t. Not to make them promise they won’t. Not to pick “good” people who “certainly” won’t. Not to say many words how the wide masses will riot if they will.

Just make it so that they can’t. If they can, they will.

are the wooden hobby drones

They are using pretty normal drones. There are just different distances and different tools for different strikes, but they are pretty competent. BTW, learning from them is right too, Russia and Ukraine are now two nations with very competent and up-to-date militaries, in terms of modern warfare and not justice or glossiness. Evolution works.

in that one successful strike against Russia

They are, eh, making successful strikes all the time. Disruption is an achievement too.

Dunno, I’ve seen quite a few Spanish second names on that site people link here in comments.

I’d say it’s going to be a problem for everyone, but not like Kristallnacht. That was, a reminder, SA public action, rather artistic, in line with the Nazi official policy. A show.

Though one can say today’s elites love a good show too, I won’t repeat again that thing about impression economy I’ve read about from Cory Doctorow, I think. I think in line with that some Nazi approaches are possible. That’s what they did with Gaza and Alawites in Syria (no way this was without Israel’s and US and EU approval, just no way).

But - impressions also were a big thing then. Radio just became popular. Olympic games. Automobiles gaining popularity. Airships. Electric lighting. Radiola, pianola, such various automatons using radio and punchcards. Tabulating machines that Nazis used for their population census.

That wasn’t just goons given right to do whatever (they were in Nazi Germany too, but that was small stuff - once a few dozen times someone failed to say “Sieg Heil” they might have been beaten or even killed by a Nazi, and in general Nazis were openly against any kind of due process, - all that “fanatisch, total und radikal” stuff about just vibing through grotesque cruelty and aggression, they were LARPing a tribe, after all, - so acts of random cruelty were normal).

So yes, the time is similar in some way. But when thinking that, let’s also remember that in the 30s many people would think Hitler is the future in Britain and in USA, and in east Asia that old impression still holds.

The steel monsters that broke this one’s back were too not nice, but they did the job and learned some of the lessons.

When I worked for DoD. This was CBP and Other three letter groups biggest fears. Having their private lives invaded.

Might be unwise to frighten them before you have something to substantiate that fear with, they have weapons and an organization.

Cause frightening them without such basis is how you accelerate fascism. They would want to just enjoy their newly gotten power and - for the top - stolen money, but fear compels them to also press against threats to that.

Like after Bolotnaya protests in Moscow the Russian regime started doing various crap with increased tempo. They might not even have attacked Ukraine without it.

It’s not the bright side, I live in Russia, so many people here thought that it won’t start a big war because with all the corruption it can’t prepare well enough.

It doesn’t need to prepare well enough, LOL, it did that anyway.

Just like with your things. However much they’ll steal, I think they’ll do the prisons too. Worse and more expensive, but yeah.

See, when a prison hasn’t been built, it’s not their problem in a holocaust scenario. It’s the problem of the prisoners who’ll be crammed like sardines into spaces intended for smaller amount. Or kept under open-sky tent camps. Or something else.