Comments by "" (@timogul) on "TLDR News EU" channel.

  1. I don't believe in purely demand-side decriminalization. That was what Prohibition was in the US, and it didn't work, because drug dealers will always meet demand, and that leads to crime, and it is the drug-related crime that is the real problem, not the use. I believe the best course is total decriminalization, along with government provided drugs for those that need them. Government sanctioned facilities would sell drugs at cost, but only to those with a prescription from a highly regulated specialist doctor (not just anyone with an MD), and the sales of those drugs would go to fund drug treatment and awareness programs to try and reduce the drug use. Remove almost all motivation for anyone to sell drugs illegally by making them legally available at affordable prices. Of course selling drugs outside of these controlled circumstances would be VERY illegal, much more harshly punished than even current laws, so it's a very carrot and stick approach. The point would be that anyone who has a drug problem could do whatever they need to do about that in a relatively safe and legal way, with low chances of overdoses or other adverse reactions, while also making it easier to quit, and harder to get into drugs in the first place.
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  2.  @themightycat7238  Well, the idea would be balance. If you have a drug problem, if you are dependent on them, then you should be able to get a prescription, and then get drugs legally. So if that applies to you, why not do that? But if you don't have a drug problem, then it should be fairly hard to find drugs, and VERY illegal for both you and the dealers, so the risks involved should make that not as worth doing. The idea is to sort of break the "middle" of the supply/demand cycle, to make it so that the "repeat customer" is zero value to drug dealers, which would effectively price them out of the game. I mean if they wanted to play, they could, but their costs would be astronomical, and their returns would be relatively low, so why would they even bother?
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  3. @ He agreed to think about it. Nothing's been signed yet.
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  4.  @JAG8691  There are no NATO proxies in this war. It's a war of aggression by Russia.
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  5. I don't see why any NATO forces would ever need to "seize control of the gap." I mean, if they wanted to cut off Russian access through it, they wouldn't need to actually occupy that region, they could just use artillery and bombing and various other distance weapons to make that entire pass (or at least the parts where there aren't civilians still there), into a no-man's land. I mean, if NATO and Russia ever came to war to the degree that threatening that corridor would be a serious strategic goal, you could do it from tens of miles within Poland and Lithuania's borders, or even further using less direct means.
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  6. The Us also currently has a coalition government, consisting of the Democrats, and Joe Manchin.
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  7.  @quinntinmann  Lol, no.
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  8.  @harshitrawat811  What the hell are you talking about? Russia has been committing genocide right this minute. NATO has not done ANYTHING.
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  9.  @banano24  Yugoslavia was committing genocide at the time, NATO moved in to protect people. If NATO was interested in taking over Russia, NATO would have taken over Russia by now.
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  10.  @quinntinmann  Your statement would only make sense if your world view was defined by soviet propaganda. Break free of their bubble.
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  11.  @banano24  I said Russia is committing genocide because Russia is committing genocide. I would not have saaid so otherwise. And NATO bombing of Yugoslavia ended their genocide of the Albanians. What else should they have done under the circumstances?
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  12. I think that he might invade, but that Crimea is a bad example. He needed Crimea for a direct strategic purpose, to ensure passage through the Black Sea. He wants Ukraine under his thumb, but that is much less vital to Russian interests, so he is less likely to take the risk. He still might, it's just less likely to follow that pattern.
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  13.  @User_J9000  Lol, no. Russia has been invading their neighbors since 2000, and the west has been telling them to cut that out. Outside of that, the west has made every effort to get Russia to calm the hell down and learn to play nice with others. That's why Germany got so into Russian natural gas, because they figured that if Russia had strong financial ties to Europe, maybe they would stop kicking their neighbors around like they owned the place. And yet Russia continued to kick their neighbors. Because that's what bullies do.
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  14.  @RasenSchwanz  You mean Yemen? That's a Saudi Arabia thing, not NATO. NATO has nothing to do with that.
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  15.  @RasenSchwanz  Again, NATO is not involved in Yemen. Comparing that to Putin's invasion of Ukraine is just gross.
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  16.  @RasenSchwanz  Again, that is not the fault of western countries, that is the fault of countries in that region. Those countries have purchased weapons from western countries that were intended as a defense against Iran, and many of those western countries, including the US, have scaled back their access to those weapons in response to their actions in Yemen. In any case, at no point did NATO get involved in that conflict.
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  17.  @RasenSchwanz  They sold them according to policies they already had in place, but have been scaling back their sales as the conflict intensified. The point is, NATO is not personally involved in the conflict, even if countries that they are allied with are.
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  18. To "decimate" a foe, it means wiping out one out of every ten men. The Russian forces have literally been decimated. Now we're just going for the double-deuce.
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  19. Telling stores "it's your responsibility to sort this out" is the WORST way to do this, because it means that the responsible stores will be out-competed by the irresponsible ones! Have they never heard of "the prisoner's dilemma?!"
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  20. Who let either Serbia or Kosovo OWN JETS?!
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  21.  @seneca983  But this was a region that had a lot of internal conflict, and that would have plenty of neighbors to protect them from external threats, so maybe put away the toys so they don't hurt themselves?
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  22.  @seneca983  But they have shown that they are less trustworthy to have them. If one of their neighbors attacked them unjustly, then other neighbors could act in their defense. They don't need to have jets themselves.
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  23.  @seneca983  You keep trying to make the case that they should just be treated like any other country in the region, and I would say that this is true, IF NOT for how they had a war a few decades back and are doing petty BS like this license plate issue, and cannot agree that their neighbor even EXISTS. Children don't deserve dangerous toys. In the meantime, if someone attacks them, Nato can defend them. If they decide to attack someone else, that's their problem.
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  24.  @seneca983  "By this logic none, of the ex-Yugoslav republics other than Slovenia and North Macedonia should have jets." Ok, twist my arm on it. "How would you do that anyway? What would you do if they refuse to give up jets?" Cut off trade. "Nato doesn't have an obligation to defend them. They have no reason to trust Nato here." They could if NATO made a deal with them to that effect. We've done it in the past.
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  25.  @seneca983  "The reason you gave was being at war a few decades back. When Yugoslavia broke up, to my knowledge only Slovenia and North Macedonia managed to become independent without fighting." Yeah, and I agreed with you. "That would be an excessive measure. It would only impoverish innocent Serbian civilians and make peace more difficult to achieve without any real benefit." That would only happen if the Sebian government found jets more important than their people, and if their people let them get away with that. Economic sanctions are a good way of achieving a goal without fighting. "It's at least unclear if Nato members would sign up for that but at any rate they don't enough reason to trust Nato." That's really their problem.
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  26.  @seneca983  "It's not a stretch to imagine that both the government and the people wouldn't want to be totally vulnerable, especially considering that past conflicts are still very much in living memory." Then they make their bed, and they have to eat it. "It's also a problem for anyone wanting to enforce some kind of no jets policy unless they don't care at all about causing misery to ordinary people in the Balkans." Again, you would enforce it economically, not militarily, and the misery to the ordinary people would be of their own making, since they could make it stop at any point by just giving up the jets. I'm sure they would even be fairly compensated for them, so they'd come out ahead. I don't know why you're arguing this as if there's a rational position on your side of the discussion. This is not a two-sided issue.
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  27.  @seneca983  People need to be responsible for their choices. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. "That's what I was talking about. You'd thrust misery in the form of poverty unto ordinary citizens." No, their leaders would be doing that, by preferring jets to fixing those problems. "I could say the same thing to you. Has any politician or diplomat who has been working this issue considered your idea to be a good one?" How should I know? Most probably don't care. But that doesn't mean it isn't the right course of action.
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  28.  @Jeroen_Maes  The facts I was referencing was that the video pointed out several "facts" asserted by Hersh in his blog post that seem to not actually be the case, or at least would be extremely unlikely, which casts doubt on the validity of the reporting. We don't know for certain who did this, and it's possible that it could have been just about anyone, but the story Hersh gave about how it was done is very likely extremely wrong.
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  29.  @chalinofalcone871  I don't see how the Vatican has anything to do with it.
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  30.  @rutessian  Ok, yes, gold does have practical purposes, but we were discussing it as a currency, and that's sort of the problem. When you use gold for currency, then you aren't doing practical things with it, it's just sitting around doing nothing. The point is, most people are not going to be printing circuits with it or anything, they just want something they can spend to buy groceries with, and in that regard, fiat currencies are better than gold backed ones.
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  31.  @dimmadometv  Fiat currency is tied to economic factors, allowing it to more flexibly adapt to economic forces. Massive inflation only typically happens when a country mismanages those tools. It is preferable to be able to adjust the value of a currency than for it to be based on forces outiside of a nation's control. If you want to horde a commodity, then you can always do that, but it's not in a country's best interests to make that their national currency.
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  32.  @DarknessProphet  Reports that claim the dollar amounts have increase "40-80%" are made by idiots who do not understand how economics works (or liars attempting to fool those who don't know how economics works). The actual amount of dollars did not increase that much. What happened was that in 2020 the Fed shifted how they were reporting money that already existed in the world, they had previously not been including money in certain types of banking accounts in the "big number" that people look to for "how many dollars exist," and they changed that, which made "big number go up," and the graph charting that big number got a huge spike on it, but that wasn't actually new money being created out of thin air, that was just money that had already existed in the economy being counted in a different way, similar to if you had a ton of coffee cans full of coins sitting in your house and you converted those all into dollars. It was always money that you owned, you just hadn't accounted for it.
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  33.  @yanntsala414  Why should the value of a currency be based on natural resources?
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  34.  @yanntsala414  But what if gold loses value? If a country has a very shaky economy, gold might be more stable, but if a country has a reasonably stable economy, that isn't really a concern.
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  35.  @yanntsala414  Nah, modern fiscal policy works better than gold for that, it's more flexible. People act like there weren't economic disruptions under the gold standard. The Great Depression was on the gold standard. Being off the gold standard makes it easier to weather genuine economic hardships, not more difficult.
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  36.  @yanntsala414  but in those circumstances the currency is pointless anyway. It's not really a concern that is relevant to a first world economy or its currency. If the dollar collapsed to the point that nobody would give you a Coke for it, then nobody would be giving you any gold for it either, gold standard or not. Ultimately, all any currency is backed by is faith that the issuing country is good for it. Gold is irrelevant.
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  37.  @yanntsala414  Anyone CAN make a currency with the same value as the dollar and exchange by faith without nothing backing up that currency. It's called "Bitcoin." Anyone can do it. All they need is that the person buying the currency from them for dollars has faith that the investment will work out for them. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. People who choose to sell things for US Dollars do so because they have faith that the transaction will work out to their benefit, that the US Dollar is worth what they are giving for it. Generally speaking, this will work out for them. All transactions are relative, and all transactions are based on faith. There are no absolutes. If you buy $1000 in gold today, and then tomorrow someone discovers a football stadium sized solid gold nugget, your gold will be worth less than $1000. You had faith in the value of gold, it did not work out for you. Nothing is certain.
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  38. So apparently "Citizens councils" are idiots. Who could have guessed?
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  39. Macron is an idiot for trying to appease Putin. Too bad that his political opponents in France are even more idiotic, so he's still the best they can offer. At least nobody else will listen to him.
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  40.  @kazedcat  I think if they attempted any deliberate shenanigans that were contrary to the purpose of the treaty, that the foreign powers would really put the screws to them to clean up their own messes.
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  41. Tl;DR, Dunning Kruger
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  42. "Right to disconnect" is good, but there should be mechanisms for workers and bosses to negotiate when those hours take place. Both would have to agree for the hours to fall outside of normal business hours, and bosses could get in trouble for pressuring strange hours without a specific business reason. So for example, a boss and worker could negotiate that the worker be 100% available from 2-6am, because that business does work overseas that needs to be done during that window, OR the boss and worker could agree that 2-6am is actually the best time for the worker to be working just because both of them are night owls that like it that way, but the boss would not be able to place pressure on the worker to agree to a 2-6am schedule just because he prefers working at that time. The latter point would be tricky to structure though.
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  43. Italy elects the fascist party. Fascist party is friendly with Putin. Shocked Mario face.
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  44.  @attilamarics3374  The war was already declared by Putin. They can't do a "double war." It's all just one war.
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  45. If Putin wants to reuinify the Russian world, maybe he should offer to surrender to Ukraine and let them be in charge. They did come first, after all, and have the stronger military.
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  46. No, the other way around. He's doing this because they "loved" his wallet.
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  47. You don't need to cut social welfare programs, you don't need to issue more debt, you just need to raise tax revenues. If everyone does it, companies would have nowhere to run.
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  48.  @bvanderford  Might not be a terrible idea. Maybe just massively increase hotel taxes (including to air B&Bs), with limited exemptions for business purposes. Likewise increase taxes on cruise ship docking.
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  49.  @niki75  The American parties swapped their positions on slavery in the 1960s. The current Democrats have no relationship to the 1860s Democrats, just as the current Republicans have nothing to do with the Party of Lincoln.
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  50.  @SirAlric82  The Democratic party predates communism. How could it "evolve from" communism?
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