Comment by sunshine-o
2 days ago
What I am gonna say here is not a political point but I hope someone can point me the pattern (and some something to read about it) I have observed with for example the EU.
Yes it sounds like a parody or an onion piece. We know the European search engine, cloud, blockchain never got anywhere. I don't even believe that anybody ever really tried.
Now you have to put yourself in their head for 2 minutes and here is what I noticed by knowing a few of them (the "EU type").
In their perception of reality it seems they really believe that if they declare something it is real. This is why they get so deranged if you dare pointing to the facts or just asking questions. It seems they really believe they succeeded in all those projects. I they say it, it exists.
I am not really satisfied by the explanations we usually hear: they are incompetent, it is corruption or even insanity (some sort of mass hysteria that would take root in some institutions).
What I am wondering is, is there a concept in philosophy or some similar pattern in previous civilisation that could help us understand what is going on with the EU?
Because Gaia-X or OpenEuroLLM is one thing, but it is worrisome they now believe they can raise an army and declare war on everybody.
As a European, the sad reality is that I see parallels with the late-stage Soviet Union and its satellite states.
NOT when it comes to the level of violence and repression or quality of living. Those two things are world-class.
But in the sense that there's a more or less unelected political establishment that's
a) Recursive: It does things only to show them off to itself.
b) Not exposed to real-world consequences.
c) Has a non-falsifiable pretense to validate whatever they do and caution against undoing whatever it is. For the soviets, it was anti-capitalism. For the EU it's some notion of safety or sustainability.
d) Inadvertently benefits itself and other elites and harms the people they pretend to protect.
My hope is that as a democratic institution, the EU is capable of reform.
Yeah you are right there is probably no need to look very far ...
Now what worry me is from I understand of the collapse of the Soviet Union (but I might be very wrong) is they kind let things happen and was less aggressive by the end.
On the contrary the EC is now consolidating power rapidly and are getting very aggressive.
well you can only compare the communist party and the EU in those narrow ways I described above, not in its "aggression".
You can't even compare the EC's aggression (pointless regulations) with Soviet ones (no need to elaborate, but it's gruesome).
As someone who grew up in late-stage Soviet Union nope. Not even close.
There's various EU cloud providers. It seems to me it is difficult to compete with these energy prices.