Alaska has it since 2022(, and Maine for federal elections).
However, a same ranked-choice voting election doesn’t mean the same outcome, since we also need to decide on the way to count the votes(, e.g., Ranked Pairs, Schulze, …, or even Borda count, STAR voting, …). Concretely, as a result of Alaska’s instant run-off system of “exhausted ballots”(, i.e., if a voter’s ranked candidates have all been eliminated, their ballot no longer contributes to the final round,) Nick Begich(Rep.) ended up eliminated first, despite being the Condorcet winner, since he would have beaten both Mary Peltola(Dem.) and Sarah Palin(Rep.) in head-to-head.
To be noted that, yesterday, alaskans voted in a referendum 51-49(, final results still unclear yet,) to keep the ranked-choice voting.

I’m very much in favor of real/direct democracy(, e.g. sortition to prepare the laws later submitted via referendum, as in ancient Greece), but in the meantime ranked-choice voting isn’t enough :
- We could/should counter this “winner takes all” through proportional representation, i.e., a party receiving 20% of the votes would receive 20% of the seats. Ranked-choice make it easier to vote 3rd party, but proportionality(, which Alaska doesn’t have,) increases the chances of them getting a seat ;
- There should be campaign-finance reforms, as well as an equal mediatic representativity ;
- gerrymandering of course(, even though proportional representation would already reduce it) ;
- perhaps an open primary like in Alaska, where all candidates compete in the same primary, regardless of political party, and more probably(, e.g., why should there be only one representative per congressional district ?)

The thing is that we all agree that there are problems, and we all agree that solutions exists(, better than the ones quickly sketched here), that these solutions would solve these problems. There’s a lack of will, just like the disparition of investigative journalism, which is a vital public service, as important as hospitals/firefighters/…, that should be financed by our taxes. Among other things for which there’s neither a lack of widespread complaints nor viable solutions.

Sam is running for congress, with a message that crystal clear : instead of bombing houses/schools/hospitals/… we should be building those things here

In these times when Venezuela is just giving up any natural resources under the barrel of a gun[1], it’s good to remember that Bolsonaro intended to privatize not only Petrobas(, and almost all public enterprises), which would have been bought by westerners, as his father did with Eletrobas, but also to give out Brazil’s rare earths(, the second largest in the world), instead of transforming them locally as Lula logically intends to.
[1] : the translation may not make it clear that she’ll return or sell non-essential state-owned companies(, before giving up power to someone who’ll reverse the rest of their policies), and here’s the full speech(, transcript).
The authoritarianism of weaker communists always seemed required to protect the revolution from stronger anti-communist attacks/influences, accusing them of defending themselves from the local and not the foreign opposition is our{western} great lie, our citizens usually don’t have the first notion of the extent of our influence worldwide. China, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, etc., only concerns color revolution and not everything surrounding it, and we(sterners) already justify authoritarian measures based on alleged foreign interference(, even cancelling the romanian election and jailing its winner), so how could we not understand them in front of much higher powers ? It’s unfair, and as usual we(sterners) are the assholes.
Everyone knows that N.Maduro was literally desperate(, that’s an understatement,) to alleviate the huge suffering that the west inflicted on venezuelans, but never forget that Venezuela was finally overcoming the sanctions and objectively returning to growth, which is when/why the US invaded. I also disagree that electric cars will make their oil useless(, it’s partially a bad example, but the chinese coal mines will be useful to make synthetic diamonds, and you can’t find oil on asteroids).
Feable attempt at a solution : she claims to hold their democratic revolution, then pass these decisions through a referendum while being clear/transparent about the consequences from the west. If these decisions are accepted, then you wouldn’t lose much. If these decisions are rejected, then you can always submit a new referendum once the sanctions come back, at least you wouldn’t hide the real situation to venezuelans. But i do believe in direct democracy, they’re in charge of their future, and will either assume the responsability of their mistakes by falling to the US, or somehow manage to overcome these difficulties together. If they want to suffer more then it’s their choice/freedom, i think.

https://x.com/evoespueblo/status/2103275989249720683

Also, our theories are asking for a small state, but the poorest countries around the world, e.g. Bangladesh, have an almost inexistent state, which collects nothing and hence invests in nothing.
It’s only indirectly related, but i wanted to mention that somewhere.

Slovenia jailed the leader of the opposition, Janez Janša, three weeks before the 2014 elections. A decade later, in 2025, he’s acquitted, and has now been re-elected prime minister in 2026.
As in Hungary and Poland, but in 2022, when Robert Golob came into power he ended prematurely the mandate of public radio&television leadership, while firing most employees(, in France we’re still believing that journalists are unbiased/objective instead of aiming for multi-subjectivity/pluralism, not that i’m saying that Slovenia has anti-capitalist&anti-imperialist TV channels)

When/If such means were used by governments opposed to Brussels they were described as democratic backsliding, but now it’s democratic restoration, what a contradiction.
And we’ll only hear about, e.g., Georgia or Hungary, or other opponents, exaggerating their misdeeds while ignoring ours

(Of course they’ll attack Serbia( again), i cannot wait for our turn to be sanctioned to death ; we made it abundantly clear that diversity isn’t allowed, so as you make your bed you must lie in it.)

Pro-Russia Narek Karapetyan in Armenia as well

In New Caledonia, France just closed 48 polling stations out of 56, greatly complicating the votes for the poorest part of the population(, usually pro-independence). I’m from France and that’s one more thing not known.

They’re still not totally clear on their foreign policy(, which is required to join the EU), e.g. by refusing to recognize Kosovo and sanctioning Russia 🤷

But they may change their mind after being elected, and yeah, big victory a few months after winning Hungary.

I think it’s mostly economics related

Undoubtedly, that’s why sanctions work, but they let their oligarchs take control despite the economic disaster post-1991 and that’s partly because of propaganda ; they also considered that there was no viable economic model to their East despite China’s rise, and that’s also partly because of capitalist-induced propaganda.
Their institutions right down to even their statistical institutes were already controlled by the west before 2014, and almost all of their minister of Culture came from western Ukraine(, excepting Ivan Dziouba and Iouri Bohoutsky), among dozens of other things, without counting western lies(, one out of so many).
So while socio-economics(, especially right next to Poland,) clearly are the main driver behind leader&population decisions, i’ll still continue to accuse propaganda when it affirms that there is no alternative.

I just hope V.Zelensky and ukrainians won’t give up on a slav/Rus future(, there’s not enough diversity/centers).
Western interference in driving Ukraine away from Russia isn’t something that should be demonstrated anymore(, each sanctioned country is attacked, there were so many lies, systematically, dozens in 2004 and 2014, western ingerence in every facet of their society, and no pushback/awareness, no more than we(sterners) push back against our oligarchs’ influence), we(sterners) would never accept a tenth of the interferences practiced abroad.
Of course, we promised NATO wouldn’t expand, and proceeded regardless despite many warning of the consequences, classic.

(source)

I hope the Rus future will hold even if it doesn’t gain back Ukraine’s historical support, it’s not as if they aren’t used to suffer/struggle, but it’s sad how easy it was to manipulate ukrainians(, not that difficult to prove).

Anyhow, whether or not ukrainians join back russians, perhaps that the Rus exception will fell as well in a few decades, and stop supporting Cuba, Venezuela, China, North Korea, etc.
After all, there are none more scarier than the Empire, who proved again and again that one rule of the international ugliest “game” is «the winner takes all»(, it’s we{humans} who make up these rules, not Nature, we could see our diversity as a wealth instead of a cause for disunity).

Some solutions to stay Chouardian :

- the Subcarpathian Ruthenia(, 12.000km²,) could be exchanged for Transcarpathia(, 4.000km²).
That would be a big unequal exchange for Ukraine-Belarus-Russia, and stay conditional to a local referendum, so that the population could choose independence instead.
I’m against it because it’s unequal.

- Eastern Galicia(, 55.000km²,) could be given to ‘the European Union’/Poland without anything in return, except perhaps one more lie that we’ll stop relentlessly attacking our eastern flank.
I’d also be against that, of course.

It seems that there could be a path for a frozen conflict that would turn into Ukraine later joining back the Rus side in order to recover some territories(, probably by joining the Rus under a common army), but that would require europeans to stop having claims over Ukraine.

(This post was insufficiently sourced, most westerners ignoring the extend of our interferences in Ukraine and around the whole world)

I saw a comment which made me do some research for ChatGPT(, could have used Deepseek or an other chinese LLM as well, i have not double-checked the data) : https://file.garden/aqbfeK4DJSCL_vhC/GNI_Atlas_PPP_US_relative_2013_2023.xlsx

My main observation would be that the USA grew at +49%(, +20% in constant-PPP GNI per capita,) while the world only grew at +23%(, +15% in constant-PPP GNI per capita).
There is no catch-up, and even if the world growth rate was twice ours it’d still wouldn’t have caught up by 2100. So the gap is already huge, and keeps getting bigger.
(Double every price and income, you’ll double the nominal GDP(, measured by the Atlas method,) but not PPP-ajusted, although even PPP-ajusted it’ll still double with the number of good or services(, such as the example of digging holes to fill them afterwards). I should probably search for other/better measures of prosperity.)

The difference between the table and his tweet is that mine is per capita relative to the previous years of that country, while S.Bhalla’s table is an aggregate relative to the world income(, i ended at 2023 since some data was unavailable, but should have started at 2011 like him).

The EU “decline” in nominal/Atlas is caused by the euro//dollar exchange rate.
A weaker exchange rate will end up reducing our{european} purchasing power as well(, when we’ll import goods&services from the US, invest in their companies, go to work/study there, …), even when domestic purchasing power is relatively stable. But after all, our theories say that it’s good, because european exports will be more competitive, like the t-shirts of Bangladesh, or the price of mines in the Global South, so we win, right ?
And protecting our industries from foreign investments is communism, so they’ll be cheaper for the americans to buy.

The BRICS average(, population-weighted,) was 10% of the US level in 2013 and is still 10% in 2023 :


(Here’s an ourworldindata equivalent for the second graph)

For France, here’s in nominal, and in PPP after faithfully applying trickle-down economic policies.
The right is always presented by capitalist-owned medias as the sensible choice for economic prosperity(, and who doesn’t want economic prosperity), even when they failed their mandate they still present themselves as the responsible choice for the economy, with the exact same promises for decades leading to the destruction of past social gains, with the same absence of results when elected, and with the same repeated failure, followed by the same promises, and they keep being elected and failing because “it’s difficult but it’d be worse without me”, there’ll never be a time when we’ve ended unemployment(, or homelessness,) like the u.s.s.r. did, they’ll always want to make us more competitive by slashing social benefits and increasing inequalities).
A poorer working class means a wealthier capitalist class(, less social mobility, etc.), which apparently means a wealthier working class, in theory. African countries ought to increase inequalities if they want to be wealthier, the share of the capitalists will increase but the overall pie will increase even faster, so it’s all good)

(Even if bottom-up policies were in effect during the Trente Glorieuses, i don’t think that trickle-down policies have a greater impact than neo-colonialist policies.
And i don’t know if enriching citizens to let them waste their money in non-productive things like holidays/entertainment is worse than having fewer capitalists waste much ‘more individually in luxury items/services’/‘less globally than wealthy workers’, after all economic development aims to improve human lives.
At first sight, it seems like 100% of the profits should be invested in the company(, r&d, infrastructure, …, but neither for salaries, nor lucrative properties, nor even a state if it’s mismanaged i suppose(, some countries like Venezuela even let citizens decide how parts of their taxes should be spent, while North Korea has no taxes since the state keep the profits of its public companies, both cases in which we(sterners) deny our involvement in destroying them through sanctions/…) ; since one of the many negative externality of competition is to discourage from R&D, it’ll lower the selling prices if there’s no oligopoly, and if there are no problems anywhere else in the long chain of events, then it may end up making the consumers/workers profit.
It’d be much more direct to give the profits in salaries, and even let the workers decide on the company investments, with the advantage of motivating them with a bonus directly linked with the company profits ; however, there would be large inter-companies inequalities, and a company who gives less to its employees would have a competitive advantage, nothing new, just saying. I guess tests in socialist countries weren’t that successful if they didn’t extend democratic workplaces/companies, nor unsuccessful enough to completely get rid of them.
Public companies seemed like a good enough solution anyway, and french public workers can attest that they had better working conditions than in private companies, so it was a relative success compared to the private sector. They also had a more reasonable salary grid, no capitalist taking their passive share(, and being the sole deciders of its amount), etc.)

To stay with the theme, it’s worth repeating that western companies make a lot of profit per product, while the global South has much thinner margins.

[3] : Their initially less reliable infrastructure would be one starting disadvantage among others, and they would unavoidably need to rely heavily on imports as long as an ecosystem isn’t built(, a western electronics company benefits from the competitive advantage of their access to experienced local suppliers, toolmakers, engineers, logistics, subcontractors, …), which only seems doable for large countries(, smaller countries would need some kind of union). And there are other cumulative advantages they’d have to compete with.

Apart from the other unsatisfying ‘’solutions’’ exposed above, and i.i.r.c., “my” main solution exposed in the past was an alliance of the South to increase the price of all raw materials(, until the wealthier countries start mining asteroids, and become able to cultivate any plant cheaply enough to compete with better climates), like the O.P.E.C. did for oil.
It is currently the contrary, since these countries are competing against each other to lower this price, as well as to offer less taxes, royalties, labour/environmental regulations, a cheaper land, more subsidies, … It says here that the worldwide corporate income tax decreased from 40% in 1980 to only 23% in 2021, which isn’t counting the increase of incentives.
Increasing the price of these raw materials wouldn’t hurt the competitivity of any company, because the price of their competitor would also have to be rised, it’s only the consumer who would have to pay a higher share to these developing countries.
I’m told that it’s a classic prisoner dilemna since it’d be more profitable if all joined compared to none, but it’d be even more profitable to be the only country not joining the union ; after all, it’d also be more profitable for workers to strike and they don’t.
The International Coffee Agreement didn’t have an export floor price, and dissolved in 1989, but it kinda represented such alliance. These kind of cartels will have to sort disagreements over : quotas, entry of new members, cheating from some members, competition from substitutes and non-members, … Their strategy was to reduce their exports in order to increase the price, which seems less ambitious than an export floor price, but may be necessary, i just don’t like it.
We(sterners) will finance production in non-member countries agreeing to sell their raw material at the previous cheaper price, while launching trade/investment negative consequences at member countries, and if that’s not enough then they can restrain aid, security cooperation, or even market access, and if that’s still not enough there are covert actions, sanctions, and even war. The pressure wouldn’t only be foreign, but domestic here as well.

If the problem isn’t that we don’t want the Global South to reach our standard of living(, i’ve been light in the accusations here, but it’s a bit suspect that our ‘’friendly advices’’, like our structural-adjustment programs, are either bringing back or maintaining these countries in poverty, while those disobeying our advices are the ones performing the best), but that we’ll refuse to give these countries a higher share because we’re only oh-so-concerned about an increase of price for the consumers(, reminder that the competitiveness of all companies would be the same), then there’s the solution of inversing the tariff escalation through export tariffs and/or a floor export price, e.g., a lithium-producing alliance would have a very high tariff export on raw lithium concentrate, but less and less for lithium carbonate, then cathode materials, then battery cells, and eventually 0% on complete batteries.
There would be a disadvantage for western companies because new non-western international companies would emerge, and our whole economy is based on transforming their raw materials, so perhaps that there’s no mystery to unveil, and that it’s just our selfishness that is once again the core of the problem, but that’s never a satisfying answer.
Just take the psychedelics you’ve banned without knowing and realize that there’s no distinction between your self and the collective, or don’t and continue to complain about the ‘’problem of evil’’. Or, more realistically, we(sterners) are good people who have a very good reason for participating in the ugliness of our present and not wanting to fix/improve it, and i just failed to search/find correctly these reasons.

I don’t know if the reader is satisfied by my “solution(s)”, i’m not, it feels incomplete, and there’s always the reply “then why have they still not put in place such solution by now ?”

• protectionism(≠autarcy) : Infant industries should be protected(, e.g. through state credit without interests, tariff protectionism, subsidies, public contracts, …). If it’s a private company, then such privileges ought to be revoked in favor of better companies if promises aren’t kept(, in terms of productivity increase, successful increase in the exports, investments in r&d, …), they’re not here to leech off the money given by their fellow citizens. The problem here would be to correctly assess the directions/objectives to set, and to act adequately.
  A non-socialist state unable to retract subsidies&aids when the targets aren’t met is capitalist-owned, the experiment has run long enough to realize that their greed is insatiable and that they should be constrained into doing what politicians/experts consider to be good for the collective at the expense of their personal bank account ; they’ll argue that they can do both because they mostly care about the latter, then set objectives constraining them into caring for the former, and only help companies able to meet them.
  Kinda out-of-topic, but i believe that some sectors should be heavily taxed, whenever it’s ‘used only by the wealthiest individuals’/’not essential’, then it’s usually a worst allocation of ressources. Just like digging holes to fill them afterwards employ people but is a waste of their time, what we call ‘’not productive’’, i consider that the quantity of materials and number of hours spent into creating&operating a yacht for an individual are mostly wasted in comparison to more productive activities. Examples begin with luxury items, maintaining empty houses, cosmetic surgery, extravagant resorts, …, but also include the rents and the speculative activities in finance, real-estate, …, and i’d go as far as pointing at restaurants, gambling, entertainment, ~tourism, cosmetic renovations, short-lived consumer goods, … This wouldn’t mean abolishing them, but if these are forms of consumption, not investments for the future comparable with money/hours spent in infrastructure, energy, machinery, education&research, …, then they should ‘be taxed in priority’/’not have subsidies’ when a state needs money to invest in productive activities.

• productive investments : The trade balance should indicate an import of machinery, specialized components, patents, anything that cannot be built locally yet. Even if they don’t manage to instantly get rid of the raw materials in the exports like Indonesia, they would at least end up with enough machines to (make machines to )become competitive in that export(, and/or, even better, retain a larger benefit if their alliance established a minimum export floor price). Producing( machines) locally instead of importing them would also help because the foreign dollar can be limited/scarce, leading to foreign exchanges shortages/rationing.
  (I.d.k. if it’s interesting, but countries that have so much foreign currency through exports that they decide to convert it into local currency, instead of spending it in imports, will apparently develop the Dutch disease, with an appreciation of their exchange rate causing more competition from foreign brands(, cheaper imports), and less competitiveness abroad(, more expensive exports), to the point that it could hurt their industrialization.)

• debt : These payments also lead to the rationing of a foreign currency needed for industrialization, and as unfair as it is, the poorer you are and the higher your interests become(, at a state level(, source), and at a factories level too(, source)). From 2022 to 2024, developing countries paid $741 billion more in principal&interest than the loans they received during that same period. In 2024, they paid 921 billions of dollars in interest-payments, which represents a 10% increase from 2023. Being in debt doesn’t help in financing 20 years-long industrialization plans, and if higher interest rates lead to a reduction in investments, which lead to a reduction in growth/revenues, then it could be interpreted as an increase in risks justifying even higher interest rates.
  While they can’t create the foreign currency, a partial solution may be to consider that a sovereign state creates its own money, it doesn’t have to borrow it from private banks(, with interests !). To avoid inflation after printing money, you just have to keep the same amount of money in circulation, by destroying it through taxes afterwards. The interesting thing here beyond the absence of interest-payments is that there could be a bit less destruction than money created if you accept a small inflation, at least in (modern monetary )theory.

• tribunals : Last but not least, when governments attempt to reserve raw materials for their domestic industry(, or even just impose a minimum of local-content, or a bias in favour of its national companies), the affected foreign states&corporations will find a way to prevent their sovereign decision, because their trade or investment agreements were written in order to prevent that, and investment tribunals between states&companies, like the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, will judge accordingly. If a state refuses to abide by this decision, the foreigners will withdraw any future investments, restrict their market access, and exert different kind of diplomatic pressure.
  In the successful example of Indonesia above, when it prohibited nickel-ore exports in order to process it domestically, the European Union challenged these measures before the World Trade Organization, which ruled against Indonesia in 2022, who appealed in return, and it hasn’t been resolved yet.
  In 2014, their export tariff for copper began at 25% and was scheduled to rise as high as 60% by the second half of 2016, but that never happened, even the 25% was never applied. What happened is that the mining company Newmont Corporation immediately contacted in 2014 the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, and was so assured ot win its case that it withdrew several weeks later after reaching an agreement with the indonesian government, giving them an export tariff rate of only 7.5%, to be lowered if it committed to construct or support indonesian smelters. Other companies like Freeport-McMoRan Incorporation also quickly ended up exporting at 7.5%. It’s not easy.
  When foreign investments are tied with treaties prohibiting domestic-processing policies, they should be revoked as soon as possible, i don’t know how much could be done in this regard, but the future agreements should take the new industrialization policy of the state in mind.

In short, a government would have to :
- adequately assess which manufactured product to make(, each country shouldn’t export the same product, what’s the strategy to obtain a share of the market) ;
- capture a larger share of revenue from their resources without lacking in foreign exchange/money ;
- be able to nurture&monitor[1] these public/private companies(, despite unequal financing conditions, short-term transitional losses, foreign corporations, trade/investment rules, as well as the many (cumulative )advantages of already industrialized regions) ;
- resist domestic[2] and foreign rentier coalitions, up to the point of having a complete ecosystem[3] with an access to foreign consumers ;
- finance decades of suppliers creation, technological learning, infrastructure building, …, , and at any point an opponent may be elected and reverse that policy.
After all that and more, they’d still need to convince foreign retailers to stock their products, and even then they’ll have to compete not only with the local distribution agreements of their competitors, but with their accumulated consumer recognition as well.
[1] : Perhaps that the People’s Republic of China didn’t need the influence/direction of the state to use these foreign investments adequately, but it’s very noticeable that the country which respected the least our advices ended up having the fastest rise, and we’re demonizing/threatening them. South Korea operated an interesting form of state-directed capitalism in the 60s and 70s, which may be useful or even necessary for a successful import-substitution strategy.
[2] : It should at least be clear that national resources shouldn’t end up in the pocket of foreign/local capitalists, but be used entirely for investments, which requires a control over the local private/public companies, and eventually getting rid of foreign companies when they’ve caught up with them. They should expect short-term losses due to the transition, with political opponents to their industrialization probably supported by the west.

Exploiting human workers is much more problematic than exploiting robots. In a post-scarcity society everyone would have access to healthcare, food, housing, energy, and any goods and services.
Robots will make robots, and raw materials will be automatically mined until taken from asteroids.
I just wanted to point out that in such era of abundance where costs are reduced to almost nothing, and wages aren’t necessary for survival anymore, then why would we revolt against a non-existent oppression/exploitation, where would the capitalist theft be ?

However i agree that ideally these robots should be collectively owned, or equally alloted so that individuals loan them to companies, with a public control ensuring that the equilibrium is maintained.
There should also be a prevention over the influence of the wealthy in politics otherwise they’ll find out to have more at the detriment of everyone else in their selfish race to be the number one(, e.g. artificial scarcity, planned obsolescence, oligopolies, influence in politics, …)

I guess what i meant was to point at an almost complete elimination of the material basis of class exploitation.
However i agree with you that we’ll still need political institutions protecting us from the selfishness of the wealthy, otherwise they’ll find new forms of domination to increase their power at our detriment.

(Hence the word “soon”)

It’d change a lot about class conflict, perhaps even end the need for it.
Also i don’t see why you’re hesitating, they’re already replacing jobs since the industrial revolution, my grandfather has been using a mowing robot for years now, my parents use one to clean the floor and to clean their swimming pool, as well as to monitor their house. It won’t take many years before getting one to clean the windows as well.

Service robots for consumer use have experienced a solid growth rate of 11% with close to 20 million units sold in 2024 (source) »

Amazon has deployed its one millionth robot last year, they move shelves, sort parcels, bring products to humans operate forklifts, …
You probably already heard about China’s “dark factories”, which doesn’t even need any human assistance or supervision.

Robots are already replacing taxi&truck drivers. In agriculture as well they’re beginning to drive tractors, and are already milking cows, and are more&more distributing animal feed, cleaning some livestock buildings, spraying crops, destroying weeds(, with lasers), …

They’re also involved in mining, digging trenches autonomously, etc. It’s in China that the world’s first fully unmanned paving construction was built two years ago, an highway of more than 150km !
There are also automative toll booth, welding robots, …

If you were more specifically thinking of these multi-tasking androids depicted in sci-fi movies, that could just as well drive a car, mine, build a structure, or wash your dishes, then my opinion is that their humanoid precursors will be as numerous before 2035 as the current number of robotaxis, and be more widespread in 2050, including in homes.

On humanoid androids :

the Figure 02 robot supported the production of more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles over ten months (source from 2026)

Or here :

Digit, our general-purpose humanoid, has moved over 100,000 totes at GXO’s Flowery Branch facility (source from 2025)

I’ll have to try to do better than this thread one day, here’s something more to add to it :

Well, Călin Georgescu was forbidden from participating in the 2025 elections despite winning the first round, and Nicușor Dan ended up being the romanian president. Then he was/is arrested.

Moldova successively banned the Șor Party in June 2023, the Chance Party in November 2023, the Victory Bloc in 2024, and the Heart of Moldova in September 2025, but as for Ecuador you’ll never hear about that !
« the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc has 26.6%. The Russia-friendly Alternativa Bloc stood at 8.6% and the populist Our Party — which wants “balanced foreign policy” between East and West — has 6.3% », they also banned 18 Russian-language television channels and over 60 internet resources, and restricted access to opposition politicians’ channels on social media and internet platforms, while pro-western media operate in Moldova without restrictions to manipulate the votes.

Hungary is under sanctions. His opponent can do everything it wants now that he won(, he also modified the constitution to force the president into quitting three years earlier). I learned about Poland from Zbigniew Ziobro, who faces 26 charges over the alleged misuse of the Justice Fund, and whose tweet was posted five days before being the subject of an extradition request to the United States.

From 2015 to 2023, the Law and Justice party(, PiS), close with Viktor Orbán, held the power in Poland, but lost in December 2023 to Donald Tusk, much more fiercely anti-Russian, and previously in power from 2007 to 2014.
PiS then had its annual public funding reduced by 40%(, an alleged&contested misuse of state resources during the 2023 campaign).
Then not only did Donald Tusk replaced the management of public television, radio, and the state news agency, but he also placed them in liquidation(, which may not lead to their dismantlement, it’s apparently more of a legal reason/structure to end their independence, their liquidators being appointed directly by the polish government).
Journalists from the conservative, PiS-aligned TV Republika and wPolsce24 have repeatedly been denied accreditation to government press conferences and other official events, and then completely lost their broadcasting licence, their appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court is still pending so they’re allowed to continue broadcasting until then, they’re two large channels, even more in a “news channel” narrower ranking. On the other side, he declared TVN and Polsat as “strategic companies”, so that the ownership of these large private channels can no longer be transferred without government approval, to pro-russian people for instance(, which was the official reason).
The former minister of Justice isn’t the only one persecuted, there were also the former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński in January 2024 with his deputy, and the former deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski in July 2024, as well as the former intelligence chief Piotr Pogonowski, and National Bank governor Adam Glapiński.
He fired the National Prosecutor against the decision of the president and the Supreme Court, and since the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland was apparently too favorable to PiS, Tusk’s government just refused to publish any Tribunal’s judgment since March 2024, both institutions have still not resolved this conflict and the Constitutional Tribunal continues to issue judgments that the government refuses to publish(, update : he’s now been suspended, in what some call a coup d’état).
Despite that, in May 2024 the EU ended his article 7 procedure against disobedient member states to exclude them, they also gave Poland €137 billion a few months earlier, you now know the acceptable limits to the left and the right.
(lol, it is fulfilling EU norms, has he not seen where our war against so-called disinformation as defined by our states is heading towards ? Journalists don’t have time to investigate, that’s by design not out of necessity following a diminution of the revenues. Since investigative journalists are fulfilling a public service, a referendum should decide on how much of our taxes should go to them)

Ukraine overthrew Yanukovych with the help of the west, and already started after 2004 to “promote the ukrainian language” by enforcing subtitles, imposing ukrainian in the administration(, reverted in 2012 with Yanukovych), having more and more conflicts with Russia, promoting Stepan Bandera and others, they also launched a witch hunt against their anti-e.u. opponents(, e.g. Borys Kolesnykov). In Moldova, Ilan Shor and others were also attacked before 2014 under what may have been false pretenses.

In Estonia, they went even further by banning 6.1% of their population from voting.
In Latvia, the Harmony party was the main force of opposition but has now virtually disappeared after 2022, even if their leader Nils Ušakovs was already accused of corruption in 2019. And many diverse things against pro-russians

In Bulgaria, they tried to ban the Vazrazhdane party but ended up failing, so it’s now the third political party of the country.
It is good to know that with the Magnitsky Act, the u.s. can just ban pro-russian political candidates from participating. They sanctioned Delyan Peevski and Vasil Bozhkov in 2021, as well as Vladislav Goranov in 2023.
The Magnitsky act was used in other countries of the eastern bloc as well : Aleksandar Vulin in Serbia in 2023, Milorad Dodik in Bosnia from 2022 to 2024, Antal Rogán in Hungary in 2025, Vakhtang Gomelaur in Georgia in 2024, …
The first round of their election has ended recently, with only 23% of voter turnout. Interestingly, Vazrazhdane(, who ended in 3rd position,) campaigned for a stronger direct democracy(, already in 2022, Bulgaria could launch a citizen-initiated referendum after 400.000 signatures, and he wanted to reduce it to 100.000 ; however when they obtained 470.973 signatures in 2023 the parliament refused to launch a referendum, so we’re still quite far from the direct democracy he calls for).

Most people instead buy pre-hung doors.

Bad example against reparation i.m.o. since when the hinge break they don’t buy a new door(whole), but swap the broken hinge(part) for a new one.
Good example in the case of DIY though, since the hassle may not be worth the time spent.

most components can’t be so easily replaced.

Every module in my computer, mouse, keyboard, screen, or, i.d.k., lamp torch, can be easily replaced with a screwdriver.
Even phones could be made easy to open. If you have a counter-example in mind to « unless when the part is difficult to access, which doesn’t seem to be an engineering necessity in most cases ? » written above, then i’m interested.

Even if you have access to spare parts, it takes a lot of time to repair something even as simple as a radio.

But opening it and swapping the spare part(, well, welding it back then,) took less than 5mns.
What took a long time was opening it without breaking anything since it was fragile, with parts glued together. Radios were more complex than nowadays.
And they didn’t stop at swapping the spare part apparently, but ran a full diagnostic because other parts aged as well and, e.g., a shorted transistor could overheat a transformer.
To me, it seems like asking for an individual to repair his watch himself by getting a spare part, these are the kind of situations that should be done by pros. But then even if it takes many hours we’re not talking about a 20€ product, so it’s usually worth it to repair instead of buying a new one(, which is why people repaired them instead of buying new ones).
Other examples could include houses or cars, which are repaired because buying new ones wouldn’t be worth it.

But the example of the radio still goes in my direction, because back then it was difficult to swap the spare parts and yet people still went through the trouble of repairing it.
How much more would it then be pertinent for objects that are thrown away while a pro could easily swap the spare part in 5mns(, or an individual do it h·er·im·self).
The problem i.m.o. is that there’s no repair·wo·man and no spare parts at a cheap price with close warehouses, so it’s not profitable/widespread.
You’re saying that most objects couldn’t have their parts easily swapped while i’m saying that most could(, at least we agree that some can&can’t)

Unless you can automate the entire repair process, increased automation will make us more likely to throw things away.

I also disagree that more human labor would be required to swap a part than to build the whole product 🤷
I even think that less human labor would be required to swap a part than to build it.
Many humans are involved with the production process, from mining to selling.
And if you were thinking in terms of advanced robots taking human jobs, then they’d eventually be able to do simple reparation as well(, and more&more complex over time).
(Edit : and if we could have said that «this automaton will create 150 circuit boards of this particular model every model, while the previous generation only made 50/h», we can also say that «this automaton will create 150 different kind of circuit board, while the previous generation could only create 50», if that’s part of the counter-argument)

And worse, automation makes it easier just to start from scratch.

Not easier to build the whole than the part

You can always take a broken device, throw it in a crucible with a mountain of other broken devices, and just melt the whole lot down.

Not really :)
But you could strip its parts yes, that’d be the most sensical option if you can’t repair it.

Sure, i’m optimistic(, but it’d make so much more sense than throwing away)

It’s always going to be easier to automate the production of goods than the repair of goods.

We can automate the production of spare parts.
And swapping a part for another is quick and can usually be done by the consumer(, or by a pro if it’s more complex).
Repairing a part is hard, but swapping it is usually easy, unless when the part is difficult to access which doesn’t seem to be an engineering necessity in most cases ?

I looked into buying a DIY kit for making a mouse recently in order to easily repair it(, and eventually improve/customize it i.d.k., at least understand it better), but there’s not much choice so i gave up and bought one at 30€.

you often find it is made of parts you can replace

But good luck to find these parts, they have a serial number but from my experience with a computer screen, the circuit board is really expensive and takes a long time to ship, so they told me to just buy a new screen(, it was only one of its ~4 circuit boards, and a small component of it furthemore, but everything was thrown out).
That’s probably why most objects are just thrown away and people don’t even attempt to repair them(, if it was cheaper that practice would probably be more widespread)

I have repaired my computer mouse recently

You opened it and found a spare part online for a cheap enough price ?
It must be a big(&unusual?) brand if they sell parts for their mouse online.

now they’re like over $200

I’d have to look at the specs to see if the difference with a $40 mouse is worth paying 5 times more 🤷

Wow

It also reminds me that it was apparently cheaper to destroy most of the military equipment when leaving Afghanistan than rapatriating it.

Industry and automation made production way more cost efficient

It should still be cheaper to build a new part(, and change that part,) than a new whole(, and buy that whole).

And i.d.k. if it’s the only reason for the low prices : it’s cheaper for westerners to buy from non-westerners(, including mines or actions), and conversely.
Repairing is done locally(, otherwise the transport would take too long), and ends up being more expensive than buying new products made externally.
Our productivity may be higher[1], even if we’re deindustrialized, but their minimum wage is way less than ours.
[1] : I.m.o., even more obviously when considering that we’re in the finance sector, we may reverse things when saying that a high productivity explains the difference in living standards : it’s the difference in living standards and GDP that inflates the productivity.
Since productivity∝GDP, then countries with a high GDP will have a high productivity.
And a country that increased its GDP(, e.g. through increasing its minimum wage perhaps,) would hence increase its productivity. Just an uninformed thought on my part, i.d.k. honestly.

If i keep the example of the computer mouse, it couldn’t cost 20€ if it was produced locally, if only because it takes much more than 2 cumulated hours to build one, at a minimum wage of 10€/h.
Conversely though, it’d mean that it’d be very expensive for a non-westerner to buy products made in the west, which is the case, but we can still manage to sell them because we have a monopoly on new technologies(, with e.g. Japan or South Korea, but then again their minimum wage is high as well so it’s the same remark), such as planes or softwares.

Who knows, 50 years ?

I don’t think we’ll continue like that, it can’t make sense for too long that buying a new one is cheaper than repairing an old one.
I suppose.