Europe wouldn't spend the agreed 2% of GDP on the military. Many presidents for many years tried to make them comply with the agreement, but they just ignored it. It was thought better to spend on the healthcare of the public and mock Americans for not having universal government healthcare.
Many people in countries in Europe, like Spain and Ireland, that effectively don't have militaries, are still laughing and mocking.
Again, this was a considered policy choice on the part of the United States. Unipolar military supremacy bought us a quiet Europe, a stable and high dollar, and the ability to set the terms on nearly every other negotiation we made with European countries. This was an intentional trade: we will spend on the military so you don’t have to. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, some US policymakers deluded themselves into thinking geopolitics didn’t exist anymore, and so we’ve come to start bitching more about our side of paying that bill, but we bought the American century with military spending.
And, to be clear, the US not having health care is a policy decision on the part of the US, not some lack of funding, as becomes clear when one looks at the expenditure per capita on healthcare in the US compared to other developed countries.
American supremacy was due to the previous superpowers smashing themselves against each other, and then being relatively poor for decades after while rebuilding the continent.
Sure, but we also spent time, money, and effort building a unipolar system and getting buy-in for that from Europe as a considered strategic choice. To turn around and then say “they’re freeloading” when the policy of the United States was to encourage them to freeload so we had unfettered control over large sections of the world’s geopolitical policy - yes, they took the deal we offered.
Which agreement are you referring to? The commonly cited 2% agreement that I'm aware of was for 2025 - which all members reached. When was Europe ever non-compliant?
It's part of the conditions for NATO membership. Oh and to have 4% as a target.
Of course they have renegotiated, and so now the target is 2% by 2027, with all historical arrears forgiven, and several countries have already publicly announced they agreed to it, won't do it (Ireland and Spain I'm aware of, I doubt they're the only ones)
You could also see this as most countries joining, promising to do this starting in 1949. Not even in the first years did most countries do this (except France). So most countries are let's generously say 1% of GDP in arrears, for 75 years now ...
> It's part of the conditions for NATO membership. Oh and to have 4% as a target.
Could you please share where the 2% were defined in the requirements since 1949, and where the 4% are currently defined?
As I already stated, the 2% requirement I'm aware of was negotiated in 2014, to be reached by the end of 2024. If this is indeed where the 2% come from, it's obviously completely ridiculous to act like the member countries didn't meet the requirements - it wasn't a requirement of the treaty they signed!
So yes, you're talking about the target of 2% by 2025. Why are you saying that the countries didn't comply with the target, when they did?
If the US wanted the 2% target to be met before then, you should have negotiated an earlier deadline. Don't agree to one deadline and then cry because an arbitrary earlier one hasn't been met.
There was never any demand by the public for the output of such departments. They have been perceived as existing in their own bubbles. It's got nothing to do with conservative professors. It's just there's really no need for these departments in every university.
It is strange when unrelated topics get lumped together, almost forcing people to have to take sides they don't want to take. It creates animosity beyond what's at stake.
There is a paramilitary force murdering people with impunity in the streets of America, commanded by a demented pedophile conman. What do you think is beyond those stakes?
In retrospect, it turns out that in the 90s we had a paramilitary force murdering people with impunity in the streets of America, commanded by a demented pedophile conman, and it went down quite smoothly.
Some time ago, about 25 years ago, I realized that travel had become a status symbol. Wearing gold bracelets and flashy clothes, driving a fancy car, and doing other showy things was no longer cool. Telling someone that you went to Budapest last month was now the thing. And those that didn't go to Budapest were very sad that they didn't. Maybe that's why you're also sad for those that didn't travel?
That's reading too much into my comment. No, it's not about bragging, wearing gold bracelets or driving expensive cars.
It's about not being a shut-in and understanding there's more to life than what you can see on your computer screen. Google and Wikipedia are just excuses for this kind of people, anyway.
I cannot go into details because I don't want to overshare.
What did you hate, the act of traveling or the rest of the world?
I'm not being facetious: I really enjoy being other places, but the physical act of traveling, preparing luggage, etc, feels stressful to me. I hate airplane travel, as many people do.
But being there, when I'm not carrying heavy luggage... I love it.
It seems like these days most places in Earth have become simply different versions of each other. How people dress, what they eat, what they know, their interests, and other such things are very similar almost wherever you go.
Maybe traveling to central Africa or North Korea, or other very remote areas, would be radically different, but most travelers go to places where cell phones work and a portion of the public speaks English. Now traveling to another country is how traveling to another city was 60 years ago.
Learning is effortful. People can travel and not learn anything, but people can not learn from many things they should learn from. Travel is something you can learn from no matter where you go, but you typically have to put in the effort.
That isn't really true though, unless your itinerary is focused on the centre of major cities and you're determined to stay in chain hotels, eat international food and get taxis everywhere (if your main experience of travelling overseas is business, it might look like this)
Sure, Premier League branded football shirts turn up in the unlikeliest of places and it turns out that actually people don't wear what the internet says is their national dress all that much - that's one of the first things you learn when you travel - but there's plenty that's different, even if you can only communicate with the English speakers.
It's difficult, and you detainly have to step foot outside the tourist trails for 5 minutes, which most tourists maybe don't. If you stick to the brunch places and the tourist trap museums, then yes. But the world is still incredibly diverse; if you travel you can experience this diversity, but you have to make an effort, including research and probably learning a bit of the language.
And they didn't work on a nuclear bomb, because Iran only has a civilian nuclear program, since they were not uniformed. It's all very convenient when what something is is defined by the label on it rather that its true nature.
In any case, North Koreans are not taught that South Korea is just like any other part of North Korea. The idea that the North Korean people and leadership are all buffoons who make the weirdest of lies possible is already Orwellian enough.
It's a sign of an uneducated populace that a political campaign's success depends on visual design. The good thing for that kind of populace is that it can be made to think it's doing better, or on the way to better, when it's actually not.
Marketing works and propaganda works. It's as much of a science as it is an art. When done effectively, both leverage characteristics that:
1) exploit known aspects of indivdual human behavior (more reliable when based upon aspects that stem directly from physiological processes)
and
2) play to the the social climate of whatever emergent phenomena are presently occuring in society.
Strategies for 2) tend to be less evergreen. Many people are always hard at work doing reaearch to bolster techniques for 1) and 2).
I agree with you that education helps build immunity against "cheap tricks" used to influence human behavior.
I also want to add that if one has the privilege of decreased susceptibility to these strategies, it's only that: decreased susceptibility and not immunity. At which point, if the goal is not to be influenced, then a useful strategy for the "marketed-to" is to maintain a healthy respect for the power these techniques can have.
No, they're not electrically powered, but given that you can buy an electrically-powered 5-horn kit from eBay for $20, it's certainly the cheapest way to go for a typical HN-reading hobbyist/hacker. Getting 14 horns is then $60, and the rest is relays a microcontroller, and a bit of 3D printing for the horns.
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