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"Leftist" (larping) contacts are waxing verbosely about how to flee the US. To quote one:
For the most part, they don't understand how immigration works, imagining they can just go to relatives in e.g. Norway (surely, only the US has immigration laws!) They all believe they're next, that the Reichstag fire will occur, that their occasional meming or anti-Israel comments will get them sent to a Salvadoran concentration camp.
No one has the least idea of e.g. debanking, let alone how to cope with it. Their networking all happens through FB or at best ... gmail. I was kicked from the conversation for mentioning such matters (why crypto, https://odysee.com/ etc. exist etc.) and the performativeness of their whole program. They don't realize that... They have been on the (deep) state's side the whole time, while nominally opposing it? Baffling!
Anyway, https://landchad.net/ is lovely. Everyone should cyberhomestead.
What do we do now (that we "won")? What interesting projects do we have to move forward?Edit: Our community's migration here went into full swing when Reddit admins removed a common of mine about quotation marks. It turns out, I don't understand quotation marks either - my load bearing quotation marks get misunderstood. This is of course my fault; I must write better. But I have not the slightest clue how that could be construed as "consensus building". As I can't magically write better, I will write more words to clarify the final question(s):
The previous system is collapsing, how do users of this forum plan to insulate themselves from the shocks and take advantages of the opportunities going forward? I shared tidings from frenemies of the old regime, who never fully captured (or wielded) it to their liking. I am curious how to e.g. influence things as a fellow traveler and not be hit by blowback, how to protect and continue to amass wealth amid dedollarization and inflation etc. New world, now what?
We, kemo sabe?
I'm pretty sure the Motte's rules prohibit coalition-building like that. There isn't a "we" like that, and this is not a forum to strategise for a particular cause.
I also feel obligated to note that there is no 'winning' democracy beyond the short-term. That's intentionally not how it works. One group wins an election, gets a short window, and then have to justify themselves and fight the same battle again, and again, over and over. There is no final or lasting victory.
Now, that aside...
I have noticed the usual panic about fleeing the country. To be fair there were (smaller) panics like that in 2020, in 2016, in 2012, and in every US election in my lifetime. That said, there are more this time around. The other day I ran into someone sharing this and it's obviously quite comical. The Trump administration does a tiny amount of deportation theatre and too-online people predictably panic. I am not saying that any of the administration's deportations have been right - that one university protester idiot should not be deported, despite his idiocy - but I am saying that in terms of realistic threat assessment, this is lunacy. I do not think there is any benefit in indulging it, or treating it as anything other than theatrical flourish from people whom we know are not going to leave.
My wife wants us to move. I keep arguing that if America goes down the shitter, Europe is probably an even worse place to be even if we can live there indefinitely (we can).
Her argument comes more from a place of virtue ethics, rather than utilitarianism. She feels invested in America and we raise our kids here and reading all of this bad stuff in the news feels bad and makes her want to get America out of our lives. It does not matter if our quality of life would be worse in Europe, at least we can live in a society that is not so sick.
As @IGI-111 hints, Europe is not so sick as America, but instead is differently but certainly no less sick.
By all means come here if you want to trade the sickness you know for another you don't.
I’m an outsider - what are the ails of Europe?
Ignoring the "Europe is doomed because they are not following my preferred policy" style of arguments, the big ones are:
"NIMBY" is a bit of an Americanism to begin with, and I'd say it violates your "doomed because not following my preferred policy" constraint,
Excessive rents in tier-1 metro areas (even for poor-quality accommodation in less-good neighbourhoods) is a near-universal problem and near-universally recognised as a problem. So I don't think this is a "doomed because not following my preferred policy" issue - it is a "doomed because universally recognised problem is not being solved" issue (although the simplest solution would be to adopt my preferred policy and increase housing supply). Certainly my intent when stating the proviso to exclude issues like "taxes too high" or "you can't own a gun" where the question of whether there is a problem at all is controversial.
The problem is worse in the UK and Ireland than in Continental Europe, but Barcelona, Paris, and Frankfurt all show the classic pattern, with the same retarded political response as London or San Francisco.
Are you sure?
You keep doing this thing where you want to school ignorant Americans on how the world is, and act like you know about a whole bunch of things that... well, let me just say if you really do have deep knowledge about all these subjects and their peculiarities in all these different places, my hat is off too you, and I really respect you.
I lived in a bunch of European cities, and have indeed noticed that the housing prices are too damn high. What I don't know is whether this issue is caused by NIMBY. I have no knowledge of the ins-and outs of real estate development in any of the places I lived in. As far as I can tell there's a historical center (and I mean actually historical) in most cities that they like to preserve, and otherwise there isn't much of a fuss to build anywhere else. Definitely none of the car-centrism, or allergy to "density" that the YIMBY's love to complain about.
This is "doomed because not following my preferred policy", because calling it "NIMBY" implies the solution is "just build more, bro", when it's an open question how affordable that would be, and how much it would even help in the face of the current immigration numbers.
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