Actually, that’s exactly the point of “act fast” as described in the text.

If you assume that many will sell their cars, you also assume prices will drop. That means, it’s better to sell now, when prices are still somewhat high. It’s the same mechanism as in any stock crash.

With the amount of resources that are spent every year on anything from building schools to distributing clean water and vaccines, saying “we don’t give a shit” is a bit of a stretch.

Then look a bit closer.

Who do you think drills the holes? European contractors.

Who pays for the staff working in the schools? Not Europe.

There is a ton of money being poured into development aid, absolutely. But that money is mostly wasted on administration and vanity projects.

At the same time, Africans get hardly any working visa for Europe. It would help dramatically to have a few million Africans working legally and safely in Europe and sending back billions in remissions. Instead, poor bastards have to risk their lives on overcrowded dingies and get sunk by the Greek coastguard (not an exaggeration, there’s video evidence).

Another point: coffee. The real value add in coffee is roasting. But roasted coffee has very high tariffs, so african countries only export cheap, unroasted coffee. There’s no reason for that - except that this might lead to cheaper coffee and could undercut European roasters.

Of course it is true for the rest too.

You think I’m writing this from a US perspective? I’ve never been even on that continent. I’m in Germany and this is 100% what is happening here.

I think you still didn’t understand.

Yes, our lives are better, but the many Danish books are bought by (figuratively) having less arabic books. Denmark has next to nothing, just like Germany or Austria. But with cheap energy from the global south and cheap manufacturing in third countries they could get ahead quite a lot.

Yes, Spain got rid of its dictatorship, but that’s been 50 years ago and Franco’s grave is still a place of worship.

The EU is only inwardly inclusive. It doesn’t give a shit about Africa for example. Ukraine also only became relevant when the EU proper was threatened.

Actually, I think your reasoning is part of the problem.

For decades the “it gets better” and “best of bad systems” narratives kind of worked, but if we’re being honest, our wealth and freedom was always bought by oppression somewhere else.

We don’t have serfs or slaves domestically anymore, we have them abroad in Vietnam or import them semi-legally for a few months or so.

We uphold international law, but only if it suits us. Our wars are all justified.

This hypocrisy is what’s fueling the current downfall. The economic disaster alienated the population, it’s not getting better for them, they’re worse off. Liberal democracy didn’t deliver.

Every petty dictator can invade somewhere else and can (rightly!) claim that we didn’t do anything about Iraq, or Kosovo, or Israel, or Yemen.

Maybe we used to be somewhat free, but we’re not anymore. And we’re actively destroying freedom elsewhere.

Do you assume a dead body has feelings?

The fact that you immediately jumped to depression seems like you didn’t even think about the question.

There is literally no reason to live, we’ve made that all up. That’s not depression, that’s reality. Pushing fundamental questions into a pathological corner is condescending.

No, I fully understand your point, I just think it’s shit, and since your first reaction to being challenged is a shitty attempt at belittling, I have to assume you’re about as valuable as your point.

Why would I trust the judgement of someone who can’t even fathom the concept of “someone else might have a valid point”?

That’s exactly what I mean. Condescending, arrogant, and confidently incorrect.

See, acting like a condescending asshole without any substance is a task that AI may never take from us.

Translation on a level an AI could do is already pretty cheap, nobody’s gonna throw a nuanced legal document at an AI and rely on it.

Junior devs are much smarter than any current AI, because they know what they want to achieve and why. There’s a reason why all the demos are toy examples. Actual code is messy and full of quirks because of weird requirements.

Thing is, it doesn’t replace workers. And it won’t for the foreseeable future. Even Microsoft itself had to admit that their studies show AI assisted coding to be bad and making developers worse.

There is hardly any market where these systems can reasonably compete with exploited humans. It’s just that the tech bros have nothing left to invest in. The same idiots that pushed crypto, NFTs and the Metaverse are now pushing for AI. There is hardly any innovation anymore, so the only ways to make line go up are rent seeking and investing in bubbles in the desperate attempt, that something might stick.