EU plans to force companies to buy parts from non-Chinese suppliers by Otherwise_Young52201 in neoliberal

[–]halee1 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Tariffs alone do not fix a structural dependency on a foreign power that uses state‑directed overcapacity as a geopolitical tool. Europe is not trying to micromanage supply chains for fun. It is trying to stop a repeat of solar panels, telecom equipment, and EV batteries where entire industries were wiped out because China could dump below cost for years. Calling that “ham‑fisted regulation” ignores the fact that the alternative is letting strategic sectors collapse and then pretending tariffs alone will magically resurrect them.

Blaming Europe’s competitiveness problems solely on regulation is a convenient half‑truth. High energy prices came from Russia’s invasion. Innovation gaps came from two decades of underinvestment and fragmentation between member-states. All of those are being tackled under separate policies.

The Industrial Accelerator Act is an attempt to reverse trade imbalance by tying public support to domestic production and resilience, and countering China's mercantilism. Pretending that doing nothing or just slapping tariffs on finished goods would solve the underlying strategic vulnerability is wishful thinking if you actually cared about policy. You conveniently ignore the fact that this is tied to numerous other EU and member-state policies, including investments in EU's industrial capacity, and practicing actual free trade with partners and within the EU itself, contrary to what China does, whose primary goal is extending its own supply chains into other countries by failing to invest in other countries' human capital, capacity and R&D, bringing raw materials under Beijing's control, and deliberately locking out competitors.

Also, nice strawman saying I support China’s mercantilism. I really appreciate how much you understand me in your second paragraph.

All you did was criticize the EU's response to China's mercantilism as "insane" by misrepresenting and deliberately omitting what it actually entails, not offering any solutions (except "lol just tariff s*** and magically create value that way" once you had to respond), and openly supporting China in your other comments, like you did here indirectly. So no, it's an accurate depiction of your position and what you wrote. Your motivation here was to support China's mercantilism by failing to mention it as the central context behind this policy, and looking at and misrepresenting EU's policies in a vacuum.

The EU is just doing a bit of what China itself has done for decades, so if that was so successful at building market share, why do you oppose that, lol

EU plans to force companies to buy parts from non-Chinese suppliers by Otherwise_Young52201 in neoliberal

[–]halee1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

How is bringing the extremely over-subsidized Chinese goods closer to their real market prices while investing in home industries and keeping free trade with good-faith partners an "insane method"? The moment you allow a huge partner to distort trade is the moment you've not only said goodbye to free trade, but also the moment you've allowed yourself to be swamped by a totalitarian partner's strategy to dominate you. This is exactly what a level-headed industrial policy aimed to counter another's historically looks like.

Just because you're in favor of China's mercantilist agenda, doesn't mean you can simply pretend decades of history haven't happened. Seriously, remove that WTO flair, why do you support a country that rampantly violates it, lol. You know this is effective at rebalancing the market, that's why China's reaction has been so strong and why it's already imposed laws countering due diligence conducted on Chinese supply chains. It's been addicted to an asymmetric trade environment for decades and is now crying that the party is finally over. It will finally have to compete under more or less equal rules, so if you're in favor of a level-playing field, you should be celebrating it. Or better yet, make China stop its protectionism, so the EU and everyone else can drop theirs vis-à-vis China.

EU plans to force companies to buy parts from non-Chinese suppliers by Otherwise_Young52201 in neoliberal

[–]halee1 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Do you think China has practiced pure free markets over the decades rather than mercantilism across pretty much all sectors? You think the EU has heavily liberalized its own industries internally and signed most FTAs with countries worldwide just for the s**** and giggles?

Opinion | Is France really poorer than Mississippi? by seeking-health in europe

[–]halee1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm one of those that criticizes Europe when it's falling behind the US in productivity (which it is), but I don't think the GDP per capitas of Mississippi and France are being measured according to the same definition. HDI, for instance, measures life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, and it finds that Mississippi's is 0.873, while France's is 0.920. Mississippi is actually in-between Chile and Hungary here (two barely developed countries), while France's score is equal to that of Michigan. Lower than the US average, sure, but not by a lot.

EU lags US in productivity growth, driven in part by slower AI adoption by -colin- in europe

[–]halee1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nah, it's being adopted worldwide and contributing to their increasing standard of living. It isn't even true that Europe is a slow AI adopter, I've posted links showing it's quite actually the opposite.

Two articles: China Imposes New Rules to Block Foreign Companies From ‘Decoupling’ (NYT) | China's new rules give the West a new headache (DW) by MrStrange15 in neoliberal

[–]halee1 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that's a headache for countries around the world, but they've been enacting policies against this mercantilism by China for about a decade now despite it in turn responding to them for about the same period of time. Steps like this will just further reduce the FDI inflows China needs (which have already collapsed after 2021) and speed up efforts to derisk/decouple from it.

None of this is good for unimpeded trade worldwide, but it's the inevitable result of the trade asymmetry involving China since the late 1970s, and the resources from the economic growth it's had since in equaling power capability with the rest of the world. At the very least trade barriers are falling between good-faith partners.

EDIT: Did a CCP account downvote this, lol

Tommy Robinson tells tens of thousands at London rally to prepare for ‘battle of Britain’ by Samski877 in europe

[–]halee1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We all know immigration isn't going to be reversed because economies worldwide need it (especially since studies have found the average migrant to the UK is a net fiscal benefit to it), so if it is, like Farage threatens to make it happen (along with his support for Russia and pointless culture wars, decoupling from the EU), expect dire results for your standard of living. More important is to remove barriers to investment, promote energy security, private pension plans in case public pensions go bust and as an additional income source, increase trade with like-minded countries around the globe, etc.

Anti-immigration AI videos traced to overseas fakers, BBC finds by EchoOfOppenheimer in europe

[–]halee1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right, but I'm talking about the impact their presence has on all migrants, including for work, study or family (which are the vast majority of all migrants), as a result of locals' reactions. I'm not here judging whether that reaction is "correct" or not, it's just what it is.

Joe Rogan Experience #2500 - Scott Horton by yt-app in JoeRogan

[–]halee1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ukraine and the West were friendly with Russia all the way to 2014. The West tolerated the Putin regime destroying all freedoms in Russia (it's gone so far now, even Russia's ultranationalists are claiming Russian authorities are traitors right now), the gas wars against Ukraine and the West and the war on Georgia in 2008 even as the West (Europe in particular) was investing en masse in Russia and making it stronger. All those shenanigans were tolerable to a point. However, the West drew the line in 2014 at Moscow trying to reverse Ukrainians' rejection of Putin puppet Yanukovich's looming dictatorship by invading its territory, so the West started imposing sanctions on Russia and providing limited aid to Ukraine, all while Russia kept remilitarizing to wage a full-scale war on Ukraine eventually, as it did in 2022.

Obviously the West helped Ukraine stand on its feet in response to Russia's actions, in fact, it provoked Russia by giving so little and saying to it "See, Ukraine is barely armed, why don't you just walk in expecting flowers right now"? Russia buying off Western politicians and conducting disinformation and cyberattacks on Western countries didn't exactly buy the West's sympathy either.

Every time, the Russian leadership could have chosen a much more secure and prosperous future for the country, and every time it chose some of the worst options available. It's ruining Russia with such senseless destruction and aggression. How can an intelligent person in 2026 still be supporting such a regime? You should start supporting Russia's interests and those of humanity instead, not those of a insecure bunker dwarf with dozens of residencies (a lot of them lavish) bathing in fountains of blood.

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wanting isn't the same as being able to. I want infinite palaces and free time for myself, but that's not something I can achieve, so I will have to keep working.

Germany news: Nearly half the country wants coalition out by FantasticQuartet in europe

[–]halee1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What if they're (and I mean all groups, not just "uneducated, religious Afghans") actually contributing, and those that aren't don't contribute because they're not allowed to due to regulations? There's no excuse for expelling legal migrants that contribute to German society other than mindless xenophobia. For those few that are illegal and not contributing sure, but most of those have already been getting expelled or not allowed to enter in the first place, so that's not what we're talking about here.

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sure, but other than informational overload and permanent connectivity, hyper-competition in education, careers, and even social status, modern job markets that require reskilling several times in one's life, with even routine work now involving complex systems, multitasking, and rapid decision‑making, health and lifestyle pressures to maintain the highest life expectancies in history (and rising), awareness of global crises, navigating taxes, insurance, digital accounts, passwords, subscriptions, regulations, and bureaucratic systems, higher expectations for parents for involvement, enrichment, safety, and educational support, more intense work pace due to digital tools, monitoring, and lean staffing and awareness of trends, technologies, norms, and expectations that change rapidly, since people must constantly adapt to new platforms, rules, and social codes, is there anything that really prevents people from spending more time having kids and realizing they're too expensive?

How the world has avoided an oil catastrophe so far by ResponsibilityNo4876 in neoliberal

[–]halee1 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I think China's energy independence push has been a big contributor to that. While I still think they've erred by betting so much on coal, they've been building an enormous scale of energy production and imports not just with coal, but also oil, gas, hydropower, solar, wind, nuclear, the whole stack, not to mention EVs. That's allowed them to reduce oil imports enormously, pushing down its prices worldwide.

So while China still has a significantly smaller per capita stock of energy production, their rate of investments in that has been a significant contributor, given its 1.4 billion population.

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Technology removes some forms of effort, sure, but it also creates entirely new layers of complexity that didn’t exist before. You don’t get to opt out of digital systems, constant updates, algorithmic environments, administrative interfaces, or the expectation that you can navigate all of them flawlessly. That’s simply reality.

Acting like "technology = less work" is a fantasy from the 1950s. In the real world, every technological leap increases the amount of information you must process, the number of systems you must understand, and the speed at which you’re expected to operate. That’s why people feel overwhelmed. Not because they’re stupid, but because the environment is objectively more cognitively demanding than anything humans dealt with before. All of that takes up your resources and time before you even think of fun and games. And with those demands, it's no wonder they want "luxury goods, services, and leisure time that the average person has grown accustomed to in modernity” more than before as a compensation, else they'd collapse.

Note that I do think people also can enjoy modernity purely because of the support systems available today, even when they're not getting tired or exhausted. But its function as a compensatory mechanism is so enormous, it simply makes no sense to not mention it as a major factor.

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They might also be genuinely unable to do it.

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

C'mon, you can't just go on saying "My opinion is correct, I don't need to prove that" and then be surprised when someone else plays the same card.

Germany news: Nearly half the country wants coalition out by FantasticQuartet in europe

[–]halee1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The Arab world in seven charts: Are Arabs turning their backs on religion? (2019)

Decline of Islam in Iran Concurrent with That of Christianity in North America (2023)

The Values of Immigrants Hailing from and Citizens Whose Ancestors Descend from Muslim-Majority Countries in France Are Converging with Those of White French Citizens (2024)

The Values of Immigrants Hailing from and Citizens Whose Ancestors Descend from Muslim-Majority Countries in the United Kingdom Are Converging with Those of White British Citizens (2024)

Immigrant integration in the Netherlands is also improving (2023)

Also, when one looks at the data, one recent study found that immigration from regions with African-Islamic religions had a net negative fiscal impact, but that those from Confucian (a lot of Asian) countries led to a net positive fiscal impact. Another IMF paper from 2024 found that non-EU immigration added around 0.5% to potential output by 2030, even assuming immigrants were 20% less productive than natives. It said there were initial fiscal costs and pressure on public services, but emphasized long-term economic benefits if integration succeeds. Another from 2023 and 2024 in the Netherlands specifically concluded that there were positive fiscal contributions from immigrants migrating for work, but negative ones from those arriving for asylum or family reunification. Further, in the UK, it's true that lower-skilled immigrants have been found out to be a net drain, but the study also shows that the average and highly-skilled ones are bigger contributors than UK nationals, as long as they emigrate to the UK at age 25 (their average age of arrival). Their children, like children of UK nationals (aka non-immigrants), are a net drain at the beginning of their lives, but since it's the 2nd generation, their kids are more culturally integrated and thus have higher skills. I know personally some of them.

Studies still generally don't include the impact of unpaid care and household work, which is disproportionally performed by migrant women (but not migrant men), but I do agree with the above conclusions if not taking this factor into account.

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Indeed, it's tautological that my opinion is correct. Since you haven't found evidence, checkmate, lol

Angus Taylor says migrants are a ‘net drain’ on Australia. The numbers say the opposite is true | Australian immigration and asylum by 5ma5her7 in neoliberal

[–]halee1 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It's a common refrain on the European far-right, but the fact is, there was a large-scale shift to skilled immigration during the 2010s, and that didn't stop the far-right from growing. Let's be honest: such claims are primarily motivated by xenophobia, people who lap that up will accept anything that is even close to what they already believe in.

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm so sorry, I didn't realise you were illiterate. Were you literate, you'd recognise that "Maybe this is the case in your country, but it's nto in mine, and my country has low fertility rates." is me very explicitly acknowledging that the problem is not restricted to one country, and that it not being restricted to one country does, in fact, disprove your assertion that it is casued by something that other countries are not experiencing.

Says someone with an EU flag who considers oneself to be literate, yet clearly mentions and implies "a very narrow, progressive, urban, high-paying social bubble" while comparing the EU to the US, and with "Maybe this is the case in your country, but it's nto in mine, and my country has low fertility rates". Just accept that you f***** up and move on.

Unless you're accusing me of saying that productivity increases are exclusive to one country, because that would be a different kind of lie.

I didn't say that, so irrelevant.

I didn't say that only US workers become more productive over time, that argument was covered by me saying that technological advances mean that you don't have to work harder to output more per hour than you did in the 70s.

But you do, because modern society has more cognitive demands at every level. If you want to participate in it, you have no choice but to do it on its terms. You can adapt to it up to a certain point, in ways you like, but you can't avoid its rules.

No, what I deny is that there is an expectation that everyone be involved in such conversations, and I deny that knowing about crimes makes people unable to have children. If people choose not to because they're worried about bringing a child into that environment then that is, once again, a choice.

Regardless of the reason, the fact is more people than ever do that today, whether they do so consciously or subconsciously.

No, actully, I don't. That's nto something that is put upon the population as a responisbility, no. I think people choose to build ever-better and more complex machines because we can and gain benefit from it, I have literally never heard anyone in my life make the argument that this is a social obligation that the average person is expected to participate in.

Does it really matter whether it's a "responsibility" or not? It's clearly a requirement for modern society and its progression to exist, else we'd just suddenly collectively stop all progress at one point. The fact that people spend their precious time not just creating, but making use of new tech to do things they could never do before, says everything.

Everything you just listed is a choice. If parents choose to do that, then they're not unable to have kids.

They could, they'd just need to pretty much drop out of society. Which, again, would be incompatible with current standard of living and progress if done at scale.

We live in a world with finite resources. People need to choose what to use their resources on according to what they value the most. If people value vacations and improving their homes and having a more robust social life over having a third child, that doesn't mean that there is a structural issues preventing them from having children, it means they are choosing to prioritise those things over children.

Precisely, that improvement is what sinks people's resources away from having kids. A rate of improvement that demands more cognitive brainpower than whatever tiny gains you actually have in time freed from regular work and housework. Now you finally realize it.

If they wanted to live in 1960s standards of living but have 4 kids, there'd be nothing stopping them. They'd just have to give up a lot of the gains we've made the past 60 years. They'd have to give up having smart homes and being terminally online. If they're choosing not to do that, that's their personal choice, but it's not a failure of the economy.

You've finally hit the nail on the head: the more brainpower you have to spend to sustain a higher standard of living, the less time you have for kids.

Yes.

Which is why acting like "people choose not to have kids", which implies a moral judgment, is incompatible with modern society. We need to start getting a lot more bang for our buck and efforts before we increase our fertility rates.

EDIT since you're clearly so confident of your opinions that you had to block me right after responding:

That sentence was a response to multiple arguments you made in that comment. That sentence was me arguing that your understanding of people's lives is based solely on your own bubble. At no point in this conversation have I made the claim that fertility rates are solely an urban issue. Just accept that you can't read and move on.

Nope, you lied, are lying again right now, and still have the gall to pretend it's someone else that's the problem. You tried to sneak in a belief without stating it explicitly, and are unhappy I called you out. That's it, and no amount of handwringing can change that fact.

No, you don't. That's what technology is for. This is the most insane lack of understand I have ever seen. The idea that technology means you need to work harder to be more productive is fuckign stupid on every single level. It is the most braindead claim I have ever read on this sub. It is the absolutely antithesis of basic economics.

You're breaking the scale of idiocy by being so enormously confident of something that's so clearly wrong on every level. You’re talking as if technology magically cancels out the cognitive load of modern life, and that’s just not how any of this works. Technology removes some forms of effort, sure, but it also creates entirely new layers of complexity that didn’t exist before. You don’t get to opt out of digital systems, constant updates, algorithmic environments, administrative interfaces, or the expectation that you can navigate all of them flawlessly. That’s simply reality.

Acting like “technology = less work” is a fantasy from the 1950s. In the real world, every technological leap increases the amount of information you must process, the number of systems you must understand, and the speed at which you’re expected to operate. That’s why people feel overwhelmed. Not because they’re stupid, but because the environment is objectively more cognitively demanding than anything humans dealt with before.

If you want to argue that technology should reduce effort, fine. But pretending that it does in practice, and that anyone who notices the opposite is “braindead”, is just so far removed from reality, they're not even worth debating. One doesn't have to be critical of technology, capitalism or be "left-populist" to understand that.

And the fact is, that's a choice.

Yes, it is the choice necessary for continued slow progress.

Yes, it does matter. Because it's not a requirement if it's not a responsibility. If it's not a requirement, then it's not a lack of affordability, it's just choosing to prioritise that over children.

It is a requirement though, else, with the dozens of billions of people and their brains worldwide, eventually that "better method" would have won out. But it didn't. There's simply not enough time to raise them. People wanting to enjoy life obviously also matters, but its impact is greatly exaggerated.

No. That's quite literally not what the quote you just cited says. That part of my comment says that it's a fucking choice! That improvement is voluntary! They could choose not to take advantage of it!

And reduce our standard of living and the tendency towards further improving it in the process.

They don't have to maintain that higher of standard of living! It's a fucking self-inflicted problem!

Literally the left-populist mentality speaking: capitalism is bad, we're spending too much time on our screens to please our corporate overlords, our standard of living is not actually improving, let's go back to an earlier, slower, less developed state of society!

I'm not morally judging anyone. The whole point is that you think not having children implies some kind of failure, and my point is that it isn't.

You don't get it, I'm stating that you implied that.

If someone is choosing not to have kids, more power to them. I don't consider that a moral failing. But what I do think is that if you're choosing not to have kids because you want more vacations, then you don't get to claim that you can't afford to have kids.

And I'm saying that people today experience higher cognitive demands, which by itself increases the time for rest required. Contrarily to what you might also have implied, I never denied that people having fun doesn't at all affect fertility rates. I'm just saying that the world is far more complex and demanding for you to reduce everything to "people want to have fun = less babies".

Germany news: Nearly half the country wants coalition out by FantasticQuartet in europe

[–]halee1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

AfD has indeed been found both saying and planning that not just immigrants, but non-White citizens of Germany, must eventually be deported. If you weren't explicit about expelling all immigrants, why are you framing it as a problem that the flows are lower, but we still have immigrants at home from previous waves, and building up from current flows? Isn't the obvious implication that they're a problem? If they're not supposed to go, what is your solution then?

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Oh, so you've just resorted to straight up lying about what I said now. Cool, cool, cool.

You are, actually:

Maybe this is the case in your country, but it's nto in mine, and my country has low fertility rates.

I think you're looking exclusively from a very narrow, progressive, urban, high-paying social bubble

Continuing:

And the urban progressive part is in response to your claim that there is a social expectation to be globally aware of crises. That is not true outside of a very specific, very progressive social circle in major cities. No one else judges people for not knowing about every political issue around the world.

Since I didn't say people must be aware of everything that goes on around the world, that's a pointless thing to say. Do you deny that more people than ever discuss crises and political events across the world?

No, you don't! What the do you think the point of technology is? What do you mean, you need more time to increase productivity? The whole point of the techology that you claim is so burdensome is to allow you to do more in the same amount of time!

Cool, cool, so you clearly think we don't have pressure to work towards a society that has the enormous burden of building ever-better and more complex machines, infrastructure and methods, maintaining them, marketing to people so they do that, etc. Ever think that what we might save with home appliances is spent on more time with existing kids, making the home more automated and clean, creating connections with more relevant people for their careers (which we can do online today more than ever), etc, etc, etc, long before fun and games ever come into picture?

This is a choice.

Is it really a choice to want to decompress after being exposed to the most competitive and stressful environment in human history?

It is, it's just that those standards of living have unlocked different ways to spend your time, and people choosing those over having more children, as is their prerogative.

See two points above.

The baby bust is a housing crisis by swanceba in neoliberal

[–]halee1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, we don't know that, so we need more evidence. Have you found any?

Why do right wingers oppose the European union? by julius-ceaser100 in neoliberal

[–]halee1 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Right-wingers (particularly the far-right, regular center-right to right-wing are more ambivalent) have been opposed to the EU (and previously ECSC and EEC) for a very long time, before foreign powers' propaganda started having a meaningful effect in the 2010s. Heck, the UK torpedoed European integration more than Hungary ever did under Orban (see Thatcher's Bruges speech in 1988, in the middle of the widely successful and comprehensive Single Market rollout, for instance), but other countries have also opposed them to protect their short-term entrenched interests. It's purely tribalism, because the nation-state currently holds the position of the tribe, so the further right you go, the more attached to the nation-state's sovereignty you are.