Nah. I've been saving up quotes as I've been reading, just for the day when I meet the internet right-wing edgelord who calls himself a Machiavellian, because it's full of stuff like this.
"A princedom is impossible where equality prevails, and a Republic where it does not"
"A people is wiser and more constant than a prince"
"the ambition of the great is so pernicious that unless controlled and counteracted in a variety of ways, it will always reduce a city to speedy ruin"
I mean... probably, but he wrote other books. Discourses on Livy is a pretty good read, and definitely not very fascist, or even conservative by today's standard. The guy straight up wrote "it should be the object of every well-governed commonwealth to make the state rich and keep individual citizens poor"
He is on the cynical side, though
Oh come on, don't link me an article from a billionaire-sponsored think tank and expect me to take that as anything but propaganda for lower taxes. That is just what those think tanks are for.
I tried to find the article they link to as a source (their link is dead), and I think it might be this: https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2018QJE.pdf - here's a quote from it:
"In the United States, the stagnation of bottom 50% incomes and the upsurge in the top 1% coincided with reduced progressive taxation, widespread deregulation (particularly in the financial sector), weakened unions, and an erosion of the federal minimum wage"
So yeah, much more progressive taxation, stricter regulation of the financial sector (including whatever capital controls are necessary) and strengthening of unions. All great ideas. Not sure about the federal minimum wage, but that might be a different discussion.
If the far-right becomes more extreme, people will reject them because most people prefer moderate views.
What's moderate is relative, and as people get more desperate they will reach for more extreme solutions. Trump's policies would be unthinkable just a few decades ago.
I will repeat: as people get more desperate. And they will, because the status quo is that things are getting worse - so voting for the status quo, is voting that things should keep getting worse. People understand this.
stock android on a fairphone 4 - I do use Syncthing for syncing, though
my Raspberry Pis are all resting atm, but I really should set one up with pihole and syncthing again...
Not very. X11 is still widely used and works fine. Wayland is the future, but you'll probably be fine either way.
I copied this table from here: https://www.linuxteck.com/x11-vs-wayland/
| Feature | X11 | Wayland | |
|
|
| | Architecture | Multi-program chain (X Server + WM + Compositor) | Single unified Compositor handles everything | | Render Method | RAM multi-copy — pixels duplicated per frame | Zero-copy GPU — same buffer start to finish | | Security Model | Open trust — any app sees all input and screen | Isolated by design — apps see only their own window | | Screen Tearing | Common — vsync not guaranteed by protocol | Eliminated — compositor controls frame delivery | | HiDPI / Fractional Scaling | Inconsistent — requires per-app configuration | Per-display — clean scaling built into protocol | | Multi-Monitor HDR | Limited — retrofitted support only | Full support — designed from the ground up | | SSH Remote Display | Native — X forwarding works out of the box | Needs external tools (e.g. Xwayland, RDP) | | GUI Automation Tools | Rich ecosystem — xdotool, wmctrl, AutoKey | Limited — protocol restricts cross-app access | | Legacy App Support | Full native support | XWayland compatibility bridge | | NVIDIA Driver Support | Stable — long-established | Good — driver series 495 and above | | Battery Efficiency | Higher overhead — extra RAM copies per frame | Lower overhead — GPU buffer reuse | | Development Status | Maintenance-only since 2024 | Actively developed — expanding scope |
I did address what you said. Adopting less extreme policies of a far-right group undermine its appeal.
Ah, okay, fair enough. In practice, though, since the fundamental problems will persist regardless of immigration policy, I think they're still likely to keep growing in the longer run. They might also just chose to become even more extreme. I'd say we've seen this in Europe, with calls for "remigration" becoming part of the alt-right manifestos as mainstream politics has gotten more restrictive on immigration.
That being said, it's not impossible to do a very progressive economic policy, combined with restrictive immigration policies.
The tax on the wealthy can be increased to lessen inequality but only to a degree because it would decrease the motivation to be rich. Making money is the basis of the capitalist system.
Well, I personally only want to go back to some version of what was the western consensus in the three decades following WW2 - I don't think that's very extreme really, but some people think it means I'm basically the ghost of Yosef Stalin :/
People innovated and worked hard in the 1950's too
I'm an ECE who's worked with toddlers for quite a while, and I have to question the methodology here.
Adults interpretations of the motivations of toddlers and babies aren't reliable enough to form the basis of such a conclusion - they are always colored by those adult's basic view of children in general, and of that specific child. E.g. I've often seen adults who've assumed that a child is feigning deafness, while the child might as well just have been very concentrated on something else.
The conclusion might be right, but they need to find a better way of studying it. I actually clicked this because I was curious about the methodology.
must be tuesday
Merz adopted a stricter stance on immigration but not as harsh as the AfD party. Likewise, a centrist Democrat could be tough on border security but give migrants already here a path to citizenship.
This has no bearing on what I said, I'll repeat myself:
a centrist will not actually address the underlying issues that make actors like AfD, and the Trump-wing of the Republican party, get bigger and bigger.
Inequality can never be completely eliminated because people aren't equal in talent
Nobody is talking about completely eliminating inequality
We are where we are because we've allowed inequality to increase every year since the mid-'70s. Allowing that to continue - especially without establishing an actually leftist alternative (New Deal Democrat or democratic socialist at the least) - will just make the populist right bigger and more extreme.
Maybe, but a centrist will not actually address the underlying issues that make actors like AfD, and the Trump-wing of the Republican party, get bigger and bigger.
To put it differently: a Bill Clinton-type might manage to get elected and be popular, but he wouldn't do anything to keep inequality from rising even more.
it doesn't really matter - regardless of how difficult it is, we should be doing both