@m0xee @kravietz

Fascinating. Sweden and Poland in the top. Politically it is difficult to imagine two more different countries. One conservative, right leaning and one socialist, yet in this question the populations seem to agree.

Well, modern politics is multi-polar and not only right-left.

@h4890

Poland is not “conservative”. It’s like saying “America loves guns”. If anything, Poland is terribly divided between “conservative” and “progressive”.

That’s what I’m highlighting all the time - we can’t speak of whole countries as “conservative” or “progressive”, especially as the poll looks into public opinion polls and not state policy.

The same thing applies to Hungary for example, where the government is perceived as a Russian puppet (a view largely justified), yet Hungarians hosted thousands of Ukrainians and help Ukraine just like anyone else.

Neither Sweden is “socialist”, by the way. Sweden had always occupied top positions in Doing Business rankings and extensive social programs should not be mistaken for “socialism” (whatever that means).

@m0xee

@kravietz
I can see why a lot of people have that impression of Poland and I like how Sławomir Sierakowski explained that — at least I think it was him 🤔 as he was a frequent author for Project Syndicate and I was reading it a lot at the time, but anyway…
He wrote something like this: before PiS came to power, the government of Poland was more progressive even than on average in Europe, they did really impressive things, and that allowed a lot of younger Poles to get good education and gain confidence in themselves in general — and as much as Poland has a lot of potential, it can't compete yet in terms of wages with the more wealthy West European countries, so a lot of well-educated and progressive-leaning Poles have moved, seeking better paid jobs, including to the Nordic countries. Those who have remained were on average more conservative and that in turn brought PiS to power.
But ironically, in case of Poland, being conservative and right-leaning DOES NOT imply holding Putin's Russia in high regard — both because Poles learned their history lessons and because certain event made Jarosław Kaczyński grow a dislike of Putin personally 😏 And being a leader of PiS, like him or not, he's very influential. And I know how the Left today like to label "far right" everyone not sporting a "trans women are women" badge — to me Kaczyński seems more moderate than a lot of right wing politicians in the US, can't say the same about PiS as a whole.
But in any case, it looks like the pendulum has begun swinging back — Poland's political systems looks well-balanced to me. It's probably well learned history lessons that allowed Poland to stay away from Russia's foul influence and avoid a lot of what's happening in other countries taking the right turn 🤷

@h4890 @m0xee

@kravietz @m0xee

When it comes to countries, I'm obviously speaking of who has the power. I think it is obvious that any country has a multilpicity of view and opinions.

When it comes to sweden, I have been and am doing business there and what you read and refer to is bought commercials from public sector organizations.

Sweden is an absolutely horrible place to run and do a business.

@kravietz @m0xee

If you check statistics on wealthy you'll notice that social mobility in sweden is very, very bad, because of ridiculously high taxes which makes it very difficult to save money.

In terms of social programs, they are getting crappier every year and they are basically the definition of socialism since they take money to fund, give crappy results, and that money is stolen from the people.

My source is that I have lived in sweden for many decades

@kravietz @m0xee

and still have close ties and customers relationships, so no amount of articles or "best place to work" will change my view. I see the same articles of course, and I laugh at how bad they are.

Sweden is a disintegrating socialist society. The only difference with the USSR is that speed.

Sweden and swedes in general are pathologically slow to act, so that could be what saves sweden in the end, if, and only if, the population wakes up before it is too late.

@h4890

Okay, but how does that make Sweden “socialist”?

@m0xee

@kravietz @h4890
People in the West and especially in the US often confuse welfare state and socialism.
Well, it sure isn't libertarian heaven, but having high taxes still isn't socialism. True socialism is when most of what you have earned goes into taxes, but you don't even get to pay them yourself — they do it for you and you never see this money, you don't even know how much you earned (still present to a degree in Russia)
In mature enough socialism by the end of the month you have to take place in a queue to collect your pennies and some food stamps, and you have to pay those pennies for food in addition to having food stamps, sometimes you have to buy extra food stamps — food is scarce in well-established socialism… Hey, why are you hogging milk? What does it mean you want your child to have enough? I'm reporting you to the KGB!
Well, the KGB part is an exaggeration — at least I've never seen that in Moscow, but the rest — you can't make this shit up, I was born in the USSR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_Soviet_Union#Rationing_of_money
@m0xee

@m0xEE@breloma.m0xee.net @kravietz @m0xee@librem.one

Exactly like in sweden. You never get to see the majority of your money, you only see the net and the rest goes into the government.

The difference between the soviet union and sweden is just one of degree, not of kind.

We cannot have this apologetics for a west that is essentially socialist. We need to throw out all western politician and rebuild society from scratch.

Sweden has lost everything since WW2 and is not a third rate country.

@kravietz @m0xee

Easy!

Government decides over your life, 65-70% of your income goes to taxes, the government indoctrinates you in schools, decides when you can buy alcohol and where. Decides when you can go with your children on vacation and so on.

If that is not socialist, then socialism doesn't exist.

In order to speak of a society that is not socialist, the taxes need to be at least below 49%, but even that is too much. Probably we can start to talk about a free society around 10%-30%.

@h4890

I’m picky about the semantics because the term “socialism” is today used in a way that makes it almost meaningless.

Here’s what I mean:

https://write.as/arcadian/pragmatism-and-dogmatism-in-economy-capitalism-versus-socialism
https://write.as/arcadian/communist-china-really

So merely high income taxation in my opinion doesn’t make Sweden “socialist” country, because majority of the “means of production” (if we want to stick to the Marxist terminology) remains private and majority of economy is still market economy.

@m0xee

@kravietz @m0xee

That is an understandable reason.

But your definition is not the same as mine (massive taxes and a government that can, at will, take over any property) so we must stop this discussion since we would be talking past each other.

@m0xee

I don’t think these are actually really bad. Don’t look only at the blue vs red strip - note that “blue” represents Ukraine’s victory which most people understand as return to 1991 borders, including Crimea, which by now should be obvious to anyone following the war is a very remote perspective and only possible in the case of Putin’s Russia collapse. Which I guess many people including myself would love to see, but objectively it’s a low probability event.

So all other answers except for red are probably a mark of realism - if you’d ask me, I’d probably be in the “don’t know” group because there’s too many variables defining the outcome of the war that I can’t honestly answer the question about its “most likely outcome”.

I’m personally doing everything in my power to get it into the blue field, like thousands of other people, but fully realising my impact on the final outcome is limited.

@kravietz
Sorry for another long post, I'm trying to set my own thought on the subject straight and putting it into text often helps

> objectively it’s a low probability event
It's more likely than most think — quite the opposite, it's bound to happen — no matter what they tell you, Russia isn't religious enough to become like Iran, nor it's possible to seal it shut like it had happened to the North Korea — it's too big and it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle and go 50 years back in time.
But I'm avoiding giving any predictions at this point as every time I do it I underestimate the capacity for how miserable Western politicians can be — willing to sacrifice everything for short-term political gain.
Every time you do absolutely crazy shit and it plays out, you lose touch even more — that's how it is with authoritarian regimes. In addition to that, incompetence accumulates on every level — people qualified to do the job love freedom, every time you choose loyalty over competence you bring yourself closer to being with underlings who lie to you and then do exactly as they are told instead of warning you and doing what's better.
And that is why I don't think that it will happen as a result of some external influence or, god forbid, revolution — no, I think it will be something seemingly insignificant, some really dumb move — so insignificant that we might even laugh at it in a few years.
This makes it very difficult to predict. Could anyone predict the collapse of USSR? I don't think so — everyone knew where this was going, but still wasn't expecting it until it started happening, and likewise now — even the most devout patriot doesn't have a vision of Russia's future at the moment. But it also means that it might happen really soon — and it will put these scenarios of 2-3-5 years of war to shame.
Experts don't see it behind numbers, they might tell that the economy "overcame challenges", but how come that economy that was in decline in 2013 went through "invisible" war, sanctions, the pandemic, then full-scale war and major sanctions and now is thriving? Because it didn't overcome any challenges — I've seen it with my own eyes, how we went from half the phones on Moscow subway being iPhones to 80% phones being imported being Chinese brands — not made in China, Chinese BRANDS. Numbers get pushed around precisely to fool the experts, but if anything, the economy isn't in any better shape than it was in 2013. Maybe Putin could use all these challenges to carry out some important reforms? No, it's not the case either — remember the "Putin solving the expensive gasoline problem for 20 years" meme mentioned yesterday? That's exactly how it goes and he only uses the war to justify the lowering living standards. But even if you can fool the experts with numbers and patriots with reforms that are right behind the corner — you can't do it forever. If you want to play the arms race you have to have a healthy economy — the assets of international companies you can seize and give to your friends to manage won't keep coming.
I think economy is the first thing that might start showing cracks, some experts get fooled by numbers some are happy to tell you how resilient it is for a generous bonus from Kremlin, but it won't make me — the eyewitness of it, buy it.
There is one more thing — ethnic conflicts. Those are often used by authorities and FSB themselves to shift the blame and turn people against each other — and before the war they did it to a great success. It's easy to intimidate the students supporting Navalny or to crack down on the made-up "international LGBT movement" — but it's not so easy with ethnic or religious groups. And it's true, they still have an army to do the policing inside the country — probably even more numerous than the regular army, but war also brings lots of lethal weapons into circulation — one wrong move and it might spin out of control real fast. I can see this going ripe and now I can also see them losing grip of it, things like this will be happening more often: https://theins.ru/en/news/268383
Remember this guy, Ilya Ponomarev? He gave an interview to a US media outlet a few months ago — sorry, I don't have a link on hand. This went largely unnoticed in the West, nor is he popular in Russia, but that's not the point — in that interview he mentions the weak points and how ethnic conflicts could be utilized to destabilize Russia from within — I do not support that as it would obviously turn into a bloodbath, but I think he's very spot-on with that. If like Kremlin tells us, someone was willing to destabilize Russia — they'd be doing this, not… forcing the Danish shoe maker to leave the country 🤦
@m0xee