This polemic is quite sad. Wars are only cool in movies. And - apparently - in US politics. The reason the EU shirks talking about war is because it actually lived through it. And it wasn't cool.
The US is waging wars far from their borders (of which they all lost since about 50 years) while the topic in the EU is self defence within their borders, that's a different ball game.
A third of the US economy is propped up by waging wars. That's not even being imperialistic that's just a very costly and damaging social service program that costs a lot of lives.
> Even if it were true it's not the taxpayers responsibility to import all the degenerate murderers and rapists from all over the world in the hopes of civilizing them.
That's just not how any of this works and I think you know it. You're just being obtuse, although I don't know why.
1. As long as these are measured they are not a problem: Switzerland - and most of the EU countries - do simply not have a problem with poor people leeching the welfare systems, but rich people not paying their share: tax evasion by the rich is a problem going into the billions while social security fraud is around millions.
2. That's also measurable by crime stats and Switzerland is really tough in re-patriating people that broke the law.
3. That is something you cannot measure and where you cannot guarantee freedom or fairness in a society. What if I were to deem you too stupid to vote because you're advocating for a fascist mindset that might overthrow the democratic fundamentals? You wouldn't want that, I suppose.
So there's nothing to be done that's not already been done.
From a logical standpoint there really is only one rational step you can take: you have to leave because you are a migrant.
And that's exactly where all of this thinking falls apart: in an equal, democratic society no group should be able to decide who's a good or a bad citizen. There's only the laws of the country that should count and everyone has to obey.
You should soften up your idea of "migration" because there is no inane biological quality in humans that make them good or bad.
99% of "immigration problems" are because of poverty and inequality (both too little or too much money can influence behaviour) and not because of some sort of gene that makes human behave badly.
This does not make sense. How can you differentiate between "good" migrants (apparently you yourself) and "bad" ones? Shouldn't you remove yourself because you're a migrant to increase the quality of life for the "natives"?
There are so many other leavers to pull than this weird and random initiative: stop urban sprawl, extend public transport, curb automobile traffic, extend public spaces, reduce private property rights (Stichwort "Seeanschluss") to name some.
I'm still kind of hoping we're going this way instead of something like this initiative.
Europe is a lot more diversified than the US (subtract the whole AI / internet tech sector and US treasure bonds and you get a lot less volume than Europe) and spends more in social security which is good for the economy as a whole.
The US has inflated numbers through soft power influence throughout the whole world but that makes its current course only more self-destructive including bond yields when they come crashing down.
Cozy small time agriculture in the west is a small part of your general food supply. The rest is in places you do not want to live and is called monoculture.
A huge part of your food supply is not produced "in the countryside" in either Denmark or most of the West.
It all starts with oil and energy. Nothing else matters as much. So getting off oil and producing energy in other ways is at the forefront of our struggle as a species and if you deny this progress because it hinders the view from your detached house porch I get the impression you have not really realized the situation we are in.
Cozy small time agriculture in the west is a small part of your general food supply. The rest is in places you do not want to live and is called monoculture.
All "raw materials" you mentioned are not produced "in the countryside" in either Denmark or most of the West.
It all starts with oil and energy. Nothing else matters as much. So getting off oil and producing energy in other ways is at the forefront of our struggle as a species and if you deny this progress because it hinders the view from your detached house porch I get the impression you have not really realized the situation we are in.
Thanks for your thorough response, I appreciate it.
My point was less that "everything comes from the city" but that living in the countryside has massive externalities that get deposited elsewhere as I mentioned.
So it would be kind of fair to at least start accepting some externalities - like energy - to be actually part of your living reality.
In essence: you need energy, get it yourself and don't NIMBY your way out of the consequences of "living in the countryside".
You know that all that "nature" you desire is synthetic? Living in rural areas without actually working there is as far from a natural state as it can be: the whole lifestyle is based on subsidies by cities and technology: your concrete, your car, your heating, your power, groceries... it's all getting brought to you by fossil fuels and plastics.
So maybe accepting some part of that technology to stand on your "natural" grass in your front yard might be necessary to at least offset _some_ of the costs you're imposing on the environment living your lifestyle.
I mostly agree. In a technological society jobs and money are kind of virtual. The productivity gained by technology in the last 150 years made lots of work redundant and we've been managed by economists to still organise around wage labour. This is nothing new with AI. We could have abandoned wage labour 50 years ago during the 70ies and got neoliberalism instead. So we'll get more of the same with AI I guess.
> This MSN "article" seems oddly out of place on HN.
Maybe there's something sinister going on: I suspect the shoe sole industry what with these huge foots and all. It'd make sense since Covid people are walking less. Maybe the sole industry caused the lab leak?
The US is waging wars far from their borders (of which they all lost since about 50 years) while the topic in the EU is self defence within their borders, that's a different ball game.
A third of the US economy is propped up by waging wars. That's not even being imperialistic that's just a very costly and damaging social service program that costs a lot of lives.