We (Europe) already did most of the heavy lifting for Ukraine. The US mostly gave old stockpiles of weapons that they would’ve needed to destroy anyway. We are the ones actually paying cash to keep them afloat.

The problem is, in the post-WW2 order, our defense and our defense industry was made dependent on the USA by design. And even up until last November, Europe didn’t want to challenge this arrangement and just went full steam ahead with this arrangement, ordering US made weapons. I think Europe was in denial that Biden could lose or that NATO could ever end.

Only France, and to a limited extent, Sweden and Turkey, have independent defense industries.

In the future, we will have it again. And Ukraine will actually be a key player.

But in the short term, there is no magical button to press that can produce the arms.

Undoing decades of integration isn’t going to be easy.

No it would not be even close to being equivalent to gov+dd, because the government and fund would be totally separate power structures.

You could modify the scheme so that dividends and profits only go to retirees, which would make it a giant retirement fund.

Some people argue China is capitalist and others argue it is socialist or communist.

Truth is, these are all 19th century debates on archaic terms. Every developed country today has a mixed-mode economy with some form of capitalism combined with some form of communism.

It’s more fruitful to discuss how we harness the power of each system in a way that benefited humanity.

It depends on what you consider capitalism.

Suppose you would take the system we have today, put all the stock of every company in a big fund and give everyone equal voting rights in, and profits from, the fund.

That would be a very anarcho-communist world. All economic power would be with the people, not the state, evenly divided, so no one would be richer than anyone else.

But others would call it capitalism because it would be the exact same system we have today.

I always think, capitalism is like fire.

Left unchecked, it will burn everything down.

But properly harnessed, it can feed, heat and transport people.

The BRICS are already trading without dollars. They might price things in USD, but the actual trades don’t use USD.

But is he really gonna tariff 55% of the global population?

The world economy will just adjust to operate without the USA. It will be painful and take a few years, but it will also be irreversible.

To be frank, we don’t need a global reserve currency in this digital age. Businesses and consumers can cheaply trade any currency pairs with minimal costs.

The dollar’s status is a leftover from the past.

My (great)-grandparents were part of the Dutch resistance during WW2. Along with a full 1.5% of the population.

Most people will not do anything, even if they are literally rounding up people for a genocide.

On the more positive side, a lot of people will support the resistance in small ways.

The number of people who actually, whole heartedly collaborated with the Nazi’s was quite small.

Even some of the German soldiers stationed in their village would turn a blind eye. Some of them realized they were on the wrong side and they just did the bare minimum of what they needed to do to not get in trouble and not get killed.

As I understand, he was part of a brigade that killed people in the context of a civil war where his brigade was fighting against ISIS

Quite an important footnote.

“All” is stretching it, but I think TikTok and the fediverse have definitely attracted significant portions of the progressive left.

What remains on reddit is mostly the liberal left and a few progressives in niche subs.

But if you go to a sub such as r/worldnews, it’s clear that there are no actual progressives commenting on that sub. They either got banned or they left.

You are talking about people who voted loyal to Democrats for decades, donated and campaigned.

The democratic party took their votes for granted and wasn’t even willing to talk to them.

So what’s your point?

Was this election so unimportant to the Democrats that they couldn’t pressure Israel into a ceasefire in October?

Biden had all the power for the past 15 months. Failing to deliver anything and claiming they are “working tirelessly” can only mean incompetence or deception on the part of Democrats.

Blaming Palestinian-Americsns for staying home when American bombs were killing their families is just such a weak take.