https://www.politico.eu/article/friedrich-merz-is-right-to-reject-germanys-nuclear-phase-out-says-iea-chief-fatih-birol/

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s admission that Germany’s nuclear phase-out was a “serious strategic mistake” has won an emphatic endorsement from Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency.

For me, this was not mistake but rather a crime: the closure of the atomic stations has lead to an increase of oil consumption and buying the oil in Germany, and in fact this means that Germany is now funding the Putin's war in Ukraine (exchange with Saudi Arabia). And it is very possible that the decision to close the stations was payed by the Putin's lobby (as an example, Gerhard Schröder has been working in Russia for a long time).


https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/two-thirds-germans-against-shutting-down-last-nuclear-power-plants-point-survey

Two thirds of Germans against shutting down last nuclear power plants at this point – survey

As far as I can see, Europe (in comparison to the USA) is close to USSR: it has more equality, but less freedom.
There is often some correlation between the authoritarianism and the equality: for example, in China there is a large middle class now. Maybe the explanation is that since China is a hightly authoritarian country, its rulers are not afraid of the middle class (while in the Western world the middle class could overthrow the ruling elites, because it has more civil rights).

Speaking of the financial elites, I can explain who they are:

https://kimgriest.medium.com/real-reason-the-american-middle-class-is-disappearing-901cb78ababf

Many people I’ve met have concluded that it is getting harder to “make it” in America. When I was a kid in the 1970’s our neighbor worked as a butcher at a chain grocery store and was able to own a nice house, support his wife and two kids, and live a comfortable life, purely on the basis of wages he received. This was typical in my neighborhood; regular working people without advanced degrees could live well in America. Now, people who work 40 hours/week at a grocery store have no chance of buying a house on their own, and can barely afford rent. What happened?

The top right pie chart in Figure 3 shows the USA in 2014. We see how the middle class has shrunk and the top 1% have increased their share due to current economic policies (mainly low taxes on the wealthy).

Since the wealthiest 1% own and control most large corporations, we see that “business friendly” really means policies that help the 1% at the expense of the middle class. Also, since almost all mass media are owned and controlled by the 1%, we almost never see meaningful discussion of these ideas in the mainstream press. So-called liberal media such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC in fact almost always ridicule these ideas as impractical, socialist or even communism, even though they were part of main stream American economic policy from the 1940s through the 1970s, and are a big part of what made America great after WWII. The supposedly liberal media are owned and controlled, of course, by large corporations and the extremely wealthy, so it is not surprising that, like all privately owned entities, they serve the needs of their owners. In my opinion the US mainstream media do a “good cop/bad cop” routine on the American public, with Fox and AM radio playing the bad cop and the “liberal media” playing the good cop, but both conspiring to not let these ideas out. As proof of this, note that in 2016, when Bernie Sanders started outlining some of these ideas, ALL the “liberal” main stream media ignored the ideas, instead focusing on personalities, etc. Fox and the right wing media did focus on the ideas, but only to distort and lie about them, knowing their audience was not very demanding of factual information.

So these 1% welthiest are the "nobles", while maybe the FED bankers are "monarchs".

Yet remember that it's the authoritarians themselves who push exactly this rhetoric that you say: that Western democracy is an illusion, that it is totally ruled by the financial aristocracy. This is the classic argument from the left — ssu

Very strange - from the Left? For me, the ruling elites are in full collaboration with the Left in Europe (before Trump, in USA too).

The real rulers of the USA and the Western world in general (financial elite) do not allow smart and honest people to start a serious political career, because a smart politician can become a threat/competitor for these rulers. So only bad candidates can participate in elections, and so the voters do not have a good choice.

I have two questions relating last US presidential elections:

1) Am I right that the US mass media like CNN and Fox News supported Disantis instead of Trump, stating that Disantis is “a young and smart Trump”, “let it be the Trumpism without Trump”, “the approval rating of Disantis is increasing while the rating of Trump is decreasing”?

2) I saw the presidential debates between the candidates; Haley said there that Putin is a murderer. Disantis always said that he plans to stop supporting Ukraine. Logically this means that Haley must had hated Disantis, but instead they rather were “friends against Trump”. Am I right?

↪Linkey I agree with your premise, but would suggest that this system is better than all the others (except perhaps some forms of socialism, which are rarely successful). — Punshhh

Of course, but a better system can be easily invented - just if many referendums would be performed in each country. Currently the best political system is in Switzerland, since they have a referendum each 3 munths. But I believe that even in Switzerland there is o lot of manipulations by the politicans, which offer to the people only "politically correct" initiatives for the referedums.

Let me continue. A common situation is when candidate A promises something ugly regarding question 1, but something good regarding question 2. Candidate B promises something good regarding question 1, but something ugly regarding question 2. So the voters do not have choice.

For example, some candidates promise to supress gays, while others promise to supress homophobes; and when these candidates change each other, nothing changes, because both parties are rather spoilers serving the financial elite. This is clealy seen in case of USA and Poland.

Can you provide the blog? — AmadeusD

Sorry, no - it is in Russian and in Telegram.

A 2/3 support for the war is quite high. — ssu

I have already written above:

It can be said, that there are three peoples in Russia: an apolitical majority, a pro-war minority, and an anti-war minority.

In today's Russia it's very difficult to get truthful polls were what you say depends on the people you are saying the things to. As the saying went in Soviet times, a Russian has one opinion at work and another at home in the kitchen, when surrounded by trusted people. — ssu

The number of people who do not support the war (consciously or maybe unconsciously) can be estimated by the number of famous musicians and writers who are against the war now, and have emigrated Russia. Their number is approximately 1/3. Below I showy some music videos which illustrate how man Russians are against the war:

https://youtu.be/q07dm6lPs2k
https://youtu.be/RMg0AGE11oo
https://youtu.be/l07MYf2iPr4
https://youtu.be/6vHufynMM1g

I've come to the conclusion that about 20% of Russians get sadistic pleasure from inflicting suffering on Ukrainians. It can be said, that there are three peoples in Russia: an apolitical majority, a pro-war minority, and an anti-war minority. And the pro-war minority ("vatniks") impose Putin's current policies and persecute the democrats in power. Putin wouldn't have started the war if the “vatniks” didn’t persecute people like old liberal Medvedev, A.Chubays, I. Nabiullina; and his war is turning them into sadists.
I can explain why Putin has to torment Ukrainians, causing them as much suffering as possible. For the past 20 years, there has been a clash of two ideologies: the Russian imperial ideology (Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, etc.) and the Ukrainian pro-democratic Maidan. The Maidan gave Ukrainians a lot (in particular, a fight against corruption), and if Putin hadn't bombed them, they would now be happier than Russians. And in this case, the Russians would also want to inspire a revolution (Maidan) in Moscow. This is precisely why Putin is artificially making Ukrainians unhappy. The "vatniks" have their favorite meme: "The ukrs had jumped on the Maidan", meaning that as long as Ukrainians live worse than Russians, the “vatniks” believe that a revolution against a government is a bad idea.
I constantly read news about how the Russian army bombed a Ukrainian hospital, a medicine warehouse, and so on—at least unconsciously, all of this is aimed precisely at causing suffering to Ukrainians. It can be said that Putin no longer has a choice: if he will loose the power, he will lose his life.

I want to add to my post about Trump and Ukraine, that currently he can implement the plan I suggested, but in future it can be too late. Currently many Russians sympathize Trump, because in the past Putin considered he as a useful ally, and both Putin and Trump dislike LGBT. But the Putin’s propaganda have started ridiculing Trump, and in future the Russians will dislike him. This happened once with Zelensky – when he became president in 2019, many Russians sympathized hi, but then the propaganda made they think he is a “addict” and “looser”. Besides that, possibly in future Putin will be able to successfully block mass media where the Russian can watch Trump’s appeal.

If someone suggested a referendum, wouldn't Putin just send them to the front in Ukraine? — frank

Maybe you believe that most Russians support the Putin's war? This is not so. When they vote for Putin, they vote for "stability", not for the war.
I see that in Russia there is an apolitical majority and two minorities: those who support the war and those who are against it. The number of people who are against the war, or maybe have some unconcsious protest, can be estimated by the number of famous writers and musicians who have left Russia after the war - nearly half. Below I present some anti-Putin music videos, which give some insight how many people in Russian are against the Putin's war. Can you look at these videos?

https://youtu.be/q07dm6lPs2k
https://youtu.be/RMg0AGE11oo
https://youtu.be/l07MYf2iPr4
https://youtu.be/6vHufynMM1g

They probably already know that. — frank

Not truly.
The authoritarianism in countries like Russia is supported by LIES: the rulers declare that they fulfill the will of nation, but in fact they ignore this will in critical points like freedom of speech.
Trump will be able to go further; for example, he can declare that he plans to supply Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, but he would refuse to do so, if Putin nevertheless performs this referendum. Possibly Putin will start again making his nuclear threats. For him, possibly it can be rational to choose the nuclear war instead of the referendum, because if his lies would be exposed, he will loose the power and with the power - his life. But if this becomes obvious for the Russians, they will overthrow Putin.

We could give them South Carolina. — frank

Can you stop kidding? I am serious.
Probably Putin wouldn't perform this referendum, but the fact of his refusal will make the Russians experience a cognitive dissonance, they will start understanding that Putin lies to them.

I believe that currently Trump has a very easy way to end the Russian-Ukrainian war and ensure the victory of western democracies. He should make a public proposal to Putin on YouTube: Ukraine will voluntarily cede some territories to Russia, for example Balakliia and Izium, if Putin agrees to hold a referendum in Russia with the following points:
1) Unblocking YouTube
2) Unblocking messengers
3) Cancellation of 280 articles of the Criminal Code
4) Signing a peace treaty with Ukraine.
In the future, a 5th point could be added to these four: the return of 2013 territories to Ukraine in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against Russia. firstly, as we suppose, this point should not be declared, because in Russia there is the 280.1 article of the Criminal Code which prohibits public statements with suggestions to give somebody a Russian territory (this will prevent spreading the proposal by the Ukrainian supporters in Russia). On the other hand, the 5th point is important for calming Ukrainian patriots.
The gist of the idea is that Russia essentially consists of three peoples: an apolitical majority and two minorities - democracts and anti-democratic “vatniks”. Authoritarianism in Russia is based on widespread "sectarianism": everyone only makes friends with people who think like them. "Vatniks" talk only with other vatniks, and they believe they are the majority. If the referendum is held, most Russians will probably vote for all points, and the vatniks will experience cognitive dissonance; they will realize they are a minority, and their views will start changing. If Putin refuses to hold the referendum, the fact of the refuse will make the Russians change their views too.
The goal of this plan is to force Putin to implement democratization in Russia.

Cool. So now I know to ignore you in the future. :up: — Mikie

This is very sad that you don't understand my ideas.
As far as I know, currently Trump is planning an invasion into Venezuala. It is possible that Putin will start using again his nuclear threats; and it will cricial important for Trump to tell some information to the Russians. If Trump makes some posts or videos for the Russians, many Russians will watch them. Currently many Russians sympathize with Trump, including those who support Putin, because Trump is homophobic, and the homophoby is a sacred element of Russian state ideology. This gives Trump a chance to start lowering the rating of Putin in Russia; when the rating of Putin will become smaller, very soon a general will ovethrow him.
Trump must carefully and politely tell the Russians that the USA has a lot of nukes, incliding the ones at submarines, and the USA will nuke the Russian cities if Putin starts nuking other cities. I hope that eventually the majority of Russians will start hating the Z-activists, pro-war minority which is responsible on all the horrors of current war, and this minority will eventually go to prisons for their crimes.

- Cryptosceptics aren't in authoritarian countries, on the contrary, authoritarian countries are prone to have problems of inflation and severe limitations on holding wealth in other assets / foreign currencies than the fiat currency of the state. Hence many authoritarian countries people are far more aware of the perils of a fiat currency and love cryptocurrencies. — ssu

I have made some polls in some forums, and it was revealed that people who value democracy and liberalism are more prone to agree that the bitcoins are not "ponzi schemes".

As I have already explained, each week a referendum will be performed, but these referendums will not be "referendums in strict sense", they will not have a legal force. If the government considers a referendum as "profane", it can reject it; but it will have to explain its position to the people, otherwise the ruling politicians will be possibly imprisoned after leaving the power - through a new referendum. And this leads to the following conclusion. If a ruler (President) rejects a referendum selfishly (e.g. because he does not want to loose money, etc), he will realize, that after leaving the power, he will be soon imprisoned. And this will easily make him a dictator - he will use the force (administrative resource) to keep his power. This means, that the proposed model of referendum democracy can work properly only in conjunction with the Ukrainian political model, "ideology of Maidan", the readiness of population to overthrow any power if it becomes corrupted. That's why the survival of Ukraine now is critically important for the human civilization...

So the simple solution to stopping the war in Ukraine is to let Trump ban trans people from sports? :rofl: — Christoffer

I live in Russia, and I know the mentality of Russians. The Putin’s propaganda manipulatively states that Russia needs a “Tsar”, not the Western model. The Russians use the word “Gayrope” (Gay Europe), and many of them connect LGBT with the democracy in Europe (at least unconsciously). Some Russians use the word “dermocracy”, the word “dermo” in Russian means “sh…t”. As far as I know, only in German 80 years ago there was a similar word – “systemzeit”. This is caused by the fact that both Germans and Russians had been living under democracy with very big economic problems – the Weimar republic in Germany and the Yeltsin’s time in Russia. But I am sure that if Russians see that under democracy people can vote against transgenders, they (the Russians) will experience a cognitive dissonance.

This is a joke, right? — Mikie

No.

The Putin’s propaganda in Russia instill the hatred for the West to Russians. One of its points is the excesses in the West relating LGBT – unpleasant gay parades, transgender athletes in big sports, and so on. The Putin’s propaganda states manipulatively, that these excesses are caused by democracy, especially in Europe, and the word “democracy” is partly connected for the Russians to gay parades (”Gayrope”). In reality, the situation is vice versa: the problems of the Western countries are caused by the lack of democracy (the ruling Left ignore the will of people). The Left has created a meme “democracy is not the power of majority, but the protection of minorities”, and pro-Putin Russians have believed in this meme. But recently the Americans had elected Trump, and the Trumpism is ideologically close to Putinism – Trump dislikes gender diversity too. So my question is, maybe eventually Trump will change the relation of Russians to democracy? What is he doing now to stop such things as promoting transgender athletes in sports?
I believe that there is a very easy way for Trump to stop the war in Ukraine: he must initiate an all-US referendum with suggestions to prohibit big sports for transgenders, and establish that there are only two genders, men and women. If such a referendum is performed, Russians will experience a cognitive dissonance – they will realize that democracy leads to prohibiting gender diversity – and their worldviews will evolute, so they would stop supporting Putin and his war. This is so simple…

Speaking of gold, I have one more question. Bitcoins are analogous to gold; both gold and bitcoins are limited in total amount, making them an effective way to store money without paying the "inflation tax". However, there are currently many problems with cryptocurrencies, such as the division into "pure" and "dirty" crypto, and I am not sure that cryptocurrencies are more convenient to use than gold. And this leads to a new question: why the gold is not growing as fast as bitcoins? Maybe buying gold is illegal in the US/Europe?

↪Linkey I can see crypto being useful in an authoritarian society with high inflation. For me, I'll just buy gold and silver as hedges against inflation. They're also more useful than crypto SHTF scenarios. — RogueAI

Do you deny that there is a big dollar inflation in the world? By the way, the price of gold has increased twice in last 5 years...

If there is a demand for pipyruses and they serve as a store of value, how can they be worthless? — Nils Loc

The gold if an example of such pipyruses - it is nearly worthless in regard of its current price.

I suggest you to read about the Easterlin paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlin_paradox

The economic growth itself does not do anybody happier. During last 500 years, the productivity of labour of the planet has increased maybe 1000 times, but the people haven't become happier because of this. Only psychological factors can make the society happier, and they include the aim in life, which helps people gather friends (for friendship people need to have common aims). A referendum each week will give people such aims, and this will end the lonelisess and misanthropy...

A.k.a "Direct Democracy." An old idea. — Leontiskos

Does the idea of direct democracy described in the article include the possibility for people to make the decisions which are currently considered as a sphere of judicial branch? For example if the people of USA could vote for releasing Julian Assange...

Here’s the telling phrase in your post - “As far as I know…” if you’re going to speculate like this, it’s your job to have done the research, to have the knowledge, required so that “as far as you know” is further along than it seems to be in this case.You haven’t provided any evidence or shown us you have any particular experience or expertise in this area. — T Clark

Well, if nobody comments my speculations, this will mean that none at this forum have any particular experience or expertise in this area...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15998/the-history-of-mongolia-after-genghis-khan

These were always my own thoughts and speculations, I just asked ChatGPT this question and it agreed.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15997/the-history-of-mongolia-after-genghis-khan

Is my thread ok now?

No, I meant a newer thread.
Maybe there was some error or bug; now I decided to create this thread again:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15996/the-history-of-mongolia-after-genghis-khan

Be good enough to give us your working definition of "democracy." — tim wood

I hear these words from Russian anti-democrats, Putinists, Z-activists when I argue with them (trying to convince them to stop voting for Putin).
Ideal democracy is when any decision is choosen via a referendum. Currently the highest level of democracy (but still small) is in Switzerland.

Maybe more importantly: Are you suggesting that dictatorships are necessarily more stable than democracies when it comes to large populaces? — javra

Of course this was in the past, before the printing press. Do you know any democratic state in ancient history, larger than one city?

Which brings to mind: Ancient Athens was an exceedingly functional democracy (among male citizens) with excellent military prowess all in one bang. So this would directly speak against a non-democratic governance being necessary for war.

While I'm not claiming it's easy to obtain and sustain, it is nevertheless quite possible. — javra

Please read the op and see that I have written the same.
The democratic city-states fought well, but the were just too small in comparison with the huge Persian Empire. This is explained that before inventing the printing press, only small territories could have a democratic government. And again, this is the same thing as the on I mentioned in the op.

I don't think that's a true for most of history, honestly. "The West" being the leading force of innovation seems very particular to the Age of Enlightenment (and Renaissance, to a somewhat lesser degree), much of which was triggered by an influx of (Middle-)Eastern scholars fleeing invading nomadic conquerors. — Tzeentch

What about the Greeks? They were the inventors of science...

Yeltsin groomed Putin for his political ascension. Then resigned. No accident. — jgill

If I am not mistaken, firtly Eltsin planed to support another man, Stepashin, but then choosed Putin because Stepashin did something wrong.

If my hypothesys is true, this have a lot of applications.
Have you heard the word "Egregore"? This is something like a mind in the collective unconscious; we have the Christianic egregore, Comminust ergerore, etc. From my point of view, an egregore is an analouge of a state of a social network, which uses the quantum entanglement instead of common ways of communications (more exactly, a combination of both). In other words, an egregore is a pseudostate or pseudosocnetwork in the same meaning as the pseudotelepathy I mentioned above.
The concept of egregores can be of a great practical use for political science, because it explains a lot of problems in the Western world (the explanation is that the Western democracy is illusory to a significant extent).

This sounds very like what I know as citizens' assemblies. They seem to be very helpful in formulating policy. But I don't think that anyone sees them as a possible legislative bodies. For more detail, see, for example, On Citizens' assemblies — Ludwig V

From this link it is not fully clear for me, what principles do these assemlbies use. Firstly, using a lot (random selection) has a problem: if a small number of people who received the offer accepted to participate in this group, these people are not a representative sample, and their opinions do not represent the opinions of the whole population. To solve this problem, sufficient sums of money must be offered to these people for participating in these groups.

The population of ancient Athens was about 250,000 people with only about 30,000 able to vote. That's comparable to a large town or small city. In the US, about 250,000 million people are eligible to vote. — T Clark

Are you sure with these numbers? Why onle 30 000? I thought the right to vote had all free men (not slaves), and this must be approximately 60% of men or 30% of all population.

So decisions on major public issues now hinge on a video of people - 200 people! - arguing? I'm trying to imagine the sound level and clarity. — Vera Mont

As far as I know, in ancient Greece the "lottocracy" was trusted more than democracy, because in usual democracy, usually not best but the worst people come to power. You can clearly see this in the US now. This phenomenon is explained by the fact, that in usual democracy, for comong into power a man must become a part of some elite which already has the power. With the "lottocracy", average people come to power and the average is better than the bad.

So somehow you’ve gone from hundreds of millions of people voting on laws to 200 people voting. I don’t think you’ve thought this through very well. — T Clark

For me, a better solution would be as follows: these 200 people will perform a vote, also they can vote for spending some state money for creating a video illustrating their argues and decisions; and after the vote of these 200 people, all nation will vote on a referendum with the suggestion to simply accept the result created by these 200 people. If the referendum will be rejected - a usual voting for all nation is performed.